First-order effects

• The EPA's position that the public can't be trusted with vehicle software now collides with its own discovery that Volkswagen's code was built to deceive testers — handing the EFF's exemption campaign its strongest evidence yet.
• Independent researchers gain a concrete rebuttal to automakers' locked-down diagnostics stance: the security flaw VW suppressed for two years shows what happens when outside inspection of vehicle systems is slow or blocked.

Second-order effects

• Automakers must defend code secrecy on grounds other than safety-trust — the same code they control was used to game emissions — while the EPA has to reconcile wanting aggressive enforcement with opposing the independent scrutiny that caught the cheat.
• The Library of Congress's exemption process becomes the battleground: a favorable ruling would formalize reverse-engineering rights that currently exist only in EFF petitions.

Third-order effects

• The pattern did move: the 2016 DMCA exemptions granted legal cover for repair and reverse engineering, albeit on a two-year trial basis — pointing toward recurring review cycles rather than a one-time carve-out for vehicle code.
• If independent inspection of embedded software keeps expanding, automakers' software organizations face the kind of external audit VW's own $30B software push suggests they still struggle to manage internally — shifting verification power from manufacturer to owner.