[BobL]

“Can you all talk me out of my rampant paranoia that GE wants to do something dastardly to my fully functioning appliance?”

This one may be legit, I don’t know. But keep in mind that dishwashers are PRIME CANDIDATES for the “Smart Grid”. The idea would be to control them from “central command” (i.e., the government, or utility), and not have them operate when power production is tight.

So you build the required interface (a wireless link) into the new dishwashers, but what do you do with the old ones (tens of millions)? Good question - perhaps recall them for ‘safety’ reasons, and have ‘the man’ install the device...at least for 1.3 million of them.

[DAC21]

This is hardly the first dishwasher recall that GE gas had.
I had a Kenmore (built by GE) that if you had used the Rinse Agent reservoir there was a chance of leaking into the wiring > Fire.

They offered to send a guy out to fix it or give you a $150 credit towards a new Dishwasher. Forget that, I bought a Bosch.