[HN Gopher] DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate
___________________________________________________________________
DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate
Author : huerne
Score : 339 points
Date : 2024-06-17 13:00 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dronedj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (dronedj.com)
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Is there anything competitive thats even remotely close to DJI?
| sofixa wrote:
| "free market". Unless there's something better than what our own
| companies can do (Bombardier C-Series jets, DJI drones, BYD
| Electric Vehicles), then protectionism.
|
| Also, I have to say that I find it very weird that random
| unrelated legislation can be in the same "act".
| jarbus wrote:
| I agree that it's protectionism, 100%. DJI seems to have been
| remarkably clean from what I understand with no reason to
| warrant a ban other than it's Chinese.
|
| That being said, they have an insane lead in the market
| (rightfully earned). I don't think US companies could ever hope
| to seriously compete without some form of unfair advantage, and
| the US has no reason to not grant it, especially given China's
| tactics with EVs
| jpgvm wrote:
| The thing about EVs that I don't get with this argument is US
| auto has been bailed out, subsidized, protected and otherwise
| coddled for it's entire life. If that doesn't grant it an
| unfair advantage what will?
|
| The reality is that US protectionism has instead created a
| market where they didn't need to compete. Where they could
| build ever bigger cars with only Califonia even attempting to
| try nudge them in the direction of the rest of the world.
|
| China showing up and eating their lunch isn't because of
| subsidies, it's due to gross negligence on the behalf of
| legacy auto.
|
| Has everyone already forgotten the endless hit pieces on
| Tesla? The almost weekly espousing that "EVs will never
| work?". I haven't.
|
| This was entirely self-inflicted and just like the first
| round of protectionism that was designed to ward off Japanese
| auto industry it will probably end the same way.
| mpalmer wrote:
| C-Series is "better" in large part because its favorable
| pricing was heavily subsidized by the Canadian government.
|
| And I'm not sure you want to get into a discussion about China
| and protectionism, to say nothing of national security
| concerns.
| sofixa wrote:
| > C-Series is "better" in large part because its favorable
| pricing was heavily subsidized by the Canadian government
|
| Just like Boeing gets billions in tax breaks, various aids
| and in theory extremely profitable if they weren't so damn
| incompetent military contracts?
|
| And no, it's better because it's more efficient. Over the
| lifetime of a plane it's purchase price is a tiny part of the
| total costs.
| mpalmer wrote:
| I think we share the same opinion on Boeing itself. But
| what is the difference between Boeing's advantage in the US
| vs Bombardier's in Canada?
| sofixa wrote:
| Minimal (outside of the fact that a lot of the money
| given to Bombardier resulted in equity for Quebec and
| wasn't just handouts; but in terms of % of the whole
| program it's a wash).
|
| Yet Canada isn't out there banning Boeing planes or
| asking for 300% tariffs on them for "unfair competition".
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| When companies receive outsized state subsidies that allow them
| to undercut the markets, it's not an apples for apples
| comparison.
|
| As for the unrelated legislation, I agree. Too many things are
| tacked on / added on. NO ONE is reading these things in
| complete given that sometimes they receive the full 1k pages
| hours before the vote.
|
| The other issue is the number of things funded that shouldn't
| be in general but that's a whole other can of worms. It's
| become a i'll vote for your thing if you give me this thing,
| for every single vote and that's toxic and gross.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| If the US unfree market for automobiles (hello 2008) can't
| compete with Chinese state sponsored EVs, should we not do
| state subsidized EV and battery development here? Isn't
| electric transport that important?
|
| If the problem is privacy, why don't we legislate privacy
| instead of banning apps and banning items?
|
| My conspiracy theory would be that the US government doesn't
| want the citizen to have effective drones for surveillance
| and recon in the event of civil conflict. They want a
| Killswitch. (Totally crackpot but it sounds believable).
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| > If the problem is privacy, why don't we legislate privacy
| instead of banning apps and banning items?
|
| Yes exactly. If some companies are doing things that you
| don't like, like misusing personal information and
| transferring it to other countries, it is much better to
| enact general laws that prevent that, as the EU is doing,
| rather than passing laws that ban individual Chinese
| companies.
|
| It would be as if rather than regulating car safety, we had
| a situation where lots of cars by both US and foreign
| automakers had massive safety problems, but rather than
| fixing that in general, we simply chose to ban specific
| Chinese car brands on supposed national security grounds
| while ignoring that cars made by US companies had the exact
| same problems.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| Your questions are right, but the conspiracy theory is
| dreadfully wrong. If you want a motivating force for
| banning, but not actually competing by leveling the field,
| it's ideology. The US government doesn't do subsidies
| (except when they do).
|
| The saddest thing about these decline of American
| manufacturing, and the fragility of supply chains is that
| all of this was predicted 30 years ago, but Wall Street and
| the billionaire management class did their typical
| shortsighted profits taking instead of sustainability,
| soured on by ideological capture of both parties.
|
| I often think about how the world would be different if the
| people actual won the Battle of Seattle.
| sambull wrote:
| I'm with you here. It's not a D/R thing it's a top bottom
| divide.
| h0l0cube wrote:
| It does poke a hole through the concept of markets that are
| free of government intervention lead to cheaper goods. I
| doubt these subsidies don't further government revenue in
| some way, so is the Chinese government a better capital
| allocator than the free market? They've made bets on solar,
| EVs, battery tech, and pretty much everything related to
| advanced manufacturing bar the latest CPU lithography, and
| right now they're winning. Such a narrative couldn't sit well
| with the US that poses as the poster child of laissez-faire
| capitalism (though often with heavy government interference
| of its own)
| beacon294 wrote:
| The Chinese government is playing the "kill competitors
| with price cuts" game on the national level by not floating
| their currency AND subsidizing their major international
| tech. Eventually someone will foot this bill. They hope the
| marbles they gain will be worth the cost.
| FactKnower69 wrote:
| so has this ever happened in the past, or just baseless
| speculation at this point? this thread is chock full of
| china experts telling us with certainly what china is
| _going_ to do (justified with a lot of "just trust me
| bro") but I'm not seeing a lot of _evidence_
| h0l0cube wrote:
| Nothing stopping the US government making big bets of its
| own. But perhaps it has in military tech. At any rate,
| the free market ideal has been proven as fallible as any
| ideal in practice
| glimshe wrote:
| There is no such thing as "Free Market" when trading with
| China. Pretty every non-trivial trade with China is in fact a
| trade with their government, which is anything but a reflection
| of freedom in any shape of form.
|
| But this isn't simply protectionism. In terms of dollar value
| and jobs lost, the drone trade is minuscule. It's about
| military technology and spying - and this is not paranoia, I
| guess I can't prove it to you, but I can at least say it.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Oof, perhaps time to stock up if you rely on this equipment.
| neilv wrote:
| > _Oof, perhaps time to stock up if you rely on this
| equipment._
|
| (I didn't read the bill, but based on the article alone...)
|
| Looks like it's a tentative ban on _usage_ , not sale nor
| ownership.
|
| And currently with no "pre-ban" grandfathering-in, nor
| compensation for US people who'd be affected by the ban (e.g.,
| investments in equipment, operations disrupted, migration
| costs).
| neilv wrote:
| One measure that would be interesting: a buyback of banned
| DJI gear, issuing vouchers that can be spent with non-
| disapproved drone brands.
|
| That might help make DJI owners whole, and consistent with
| some of the presumed goals behind banning use of DJI. Though
| it's spending taxpayer money.
| Velofellow wrote:
| The problem from my perspective, running a small DJI fleet
| in Civil Engineering, is that there are few comparative
| turnkey options from non-disapproved drone brands that
| actually compete with what I'm using now. The ones that
| could, are drastically more expensive.
|
| From my understanding / research, the approved suppliers
| are largely focusing on the LE, Military markets.
|
| Current list of cleared UAS https://www.diu.mil/blue-uas-
| cleared-list
| seydor wrote:
| populist shot on the foot
| Havoc wrote:
| Seems a bit pointless banning the market leader?
| nacs wrote:
| Yes this is a strange one.
|
| There is no viable competitor to DJI for consumers when it
| comes to the software side especially -- DJI software is miles
| ahead of the other drone producers (on-drone and their mobile
| apps).
| rcpt wrote:
| When I try to download DJI fly app from the Play Store it
| always crashes.
| ganeshkrishnan wrote:
| which drone do you have? there is a DJI fly app version
| that you have to sideload. The current ones on playstore
| are just fine
| rcpt wrote:
| Mini 2
| rozap wrote:
| Like they said, the market leader.
| jvolkman wrote:
| I thought they stopped distributing it via the Play store
| and required side-loading now.
| bprater wrote:
| Correct. This is why all the drones come with screens on
| the sticks now.
| langsoul-com wrote:
| Worked with Huawei. Look at the smartphone market pre and post
| Huawei ban, immediate crater.
| jasonsb wrote:
| I'm sorry, but what exactly happen after Huawei ban?
| jpgvm wrote:
| They are probably referring to the period where Huawei
| struggled to even ship a device because of sanctions
| applied to them that made it impossible to source
| components.
|
| Once these were overcome they have bounced back and are
| looking stronger than ever, their revenue has now risen
| above the pre-sanctions peak.
| bx376 wrote:
| https://www.economist.com/briefing/2024/06/13/americas-
| assas...
| treprinum wrote:
| Huawei didn't have the best phones by far. DJI is miles ahead
| of anything else one can buy.
| NorwegianDude wrote:
| I agree that Huawei didn't have the best phones, but it was
| not that far off, and for the price it was arguably a
| better phone.
|
| Need a phone with a great camera? Then Huawei is much
| better than anything Samsung, Apple, and Google makes.
| Huawei market share was taking off at crazy speed before
| the bans on both the software and hardware side.
| asadotzler wrote:
| The Huawei ban's impact on smartphones was mostly a side
| effect. The real target was wireless infrastructure. Any time
| spent analyzing the phone stuff is a waste, that was all
| mostly collateral damage as we tried to prevent Huawei from
| dominating our domestic 5G (and related) networks.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| > Seems a bit pointless banning the market leader?
|
| I guess that depends on what the goal is? If a foreign company
| is the market leader, banning it allows US companies to take
| over the domestic market without having to actually figure out
| how to be competitive with the market leader.
| asadotzler wrote:
| Which US companies are going to have a $500 competent
| consumer drone with a great camera, solid reliability, and
| top of the line ease of use to sell me the day this ban goes
| into effect, or even 5 years down the road? The answer is
| none.
|
| There are no US companies capable of serving this market.
| None can produce the product DJI did and consumers will
| abandon the market before they'll transition to a product
| that costs twice as much for half the value.
|
| This is not like smartphones or laptops or televisions or any
| of that, it's not needed, it's a total luxury and hobby for
| 95% of buyers. They will walk before adopting a shitty US-
| based alternative and the market will shrivel and die.
|
| So, this is a fine policy if hurting US consumers by
| destroying an entire field of hobby to thumb our noses at
| China is the goal. It's a broken policy of stimulating a US
| alternative is the goal. To accomplish the latter, subsidies
| and reasonable tariffs are the right approach, not bans.
| Zealotux wrote:
| Naive question: what prevents Americans from simply buying Dji
| products in Canada? It's a physical product, so banning it like
| TikTok or big vehicles is impossible, or am I missing something?
| burnte wrote:
| Since the control apps tap into GPS so they know when you're in
| a restricted zone, the gov't could simply make them mark all of
| the US as a restricted zone and the drone will never fly. I
| have one, I'm not happy about this.
| flutas wrote:
| I'm going back to the first gen mavic here in memory, but...
|
| Didn't they run Android, and you could root them to remove
| the no fly zones?
| treprinum wrote:
| The old hack doesn't work anymore.
| bprater wrote:
| This is the correct answer. DJI will happily geofence any
| area in America to be able to keep selling their project
| here.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| This would have to come from the firmware in the drone
| looking up what the no-fly zones were. GPS is transmit-only
| location, it can't write no-fly zone data to a particular
| drone.
|
| The drone would look it up through a connected cell phone
| using a web service like this:
|
| https://tfr.faa.gov/tfr_map_ims/html/
|
| I think (hope) it would be a hard sell to send different data
| from faa.gov to DJI drone lookups versus other brands, but on
| the other hand this complete brand ban is apparently
| politically possible.
| dji4321234 wrote:
| DJI's no-fly zone database is completely independent from
| the US government. DJI would have to be compelled to add
| the US as a no-fly zone, which, if their drones are banned
| already, seems like a rather difficult thing to compel as
| there's no carrot at the end of the stick.
| moduspol wrote:
| I mean, the carrot in the short term would be to raise
| public opposition to the bill. And possibly reduce
| support for the politicians pushing for the ban.
|
| I've got a DJI drone and I've always been worried of some
| OTA software update essentially making the device
| useless. I've got a separate iPhone 8 that I don't
| connect to WiFi any more that I use only to control the
| drone. Though honestly my fear was more that the FAA
| would add dumber regulations and push them on DJI to
| enforce, which they seem to have already done quite a
| bit.
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| Nothing, they could even buy it in US... the ban is on Chinese
| company using Federal Communications Commission frequencies and
| they have all the good ones or even all of them.
|
| I can't imagine what it would take for them to enforce the ban,
| so people would highly likely continue using and buying DJI
| products.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _what prevents Americans from simply buying Dji products in
| Canada?_
|
| Because if you choose to do this, and it's against the law, you
| open yourself up to sanctions and punishment?
| alephnerd wrote:
| > what prevents Americans from simply buying Dji products in
| Canada
|
| Canada has significant regulations around purchasing and
| operation of drones [0]
|
| [0] - https://www.gazette.gc.ca/rp-
| pr/p1/2017/2017-07-15/html/reg2...
| ars wrote:
| The US doesn't care if Americans buy them from Canada. The
| point of the law is to encourage US made drone manufacturing,
| because we'll need it during a war.
|
| They don't care if a drone here or there slips thought, it's
| irrelevant to the point of the law.
| Thaxll wrote:
| Because Canada will follow every stupid decisions from its main
| partner.
| chinchilla2020 wrote:
| Nothing.
|
| But Canada is a long long distance for many Americans. America
| is pretty big and Canadian cities are sparse along the border.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| What is DJI, why is it being banned, and why should the general
| public care about this?
|
| (In all seriousness, nothing I've read about "DJI" even explains
| the basics of the issue.)
| Sparkle-san wrote:
| DJI arguably makes the best consumer camera drones on the
| market. Why ban them? Because they're Chinese probably.
|
| https://www.dji.com/camera-drones
| squarefoot wrote:
| Probably yes. The industry can fight with quality or price
| against Chinese bad products and non Chinese good products,
| but products that are both Chinese and top notch quality are
| going to dominate the market because of comparatively lower
| costs. Now, that law can indeed have some basis, in theory,
| but tailoring it to a single brand won't achieve much as the
| Chinese industry can rebrand products at a cost and in times
| that are a fraction of a fraction of what it takes to any
| western democratic country to adjust the law against another
| brand. On the other hand, they can't make a generic law
| against say _suspicious code running on consumer devices that
| could be used to exfiltrate personal data_ , as it would
| potentially hit every connected device out there, including
| western branded ones. My impression is that they (the law
| makers) are almost facing the wall where they should admit
| that closed proprietary devices are generally unsafe and bad,
| but can't because it would hurt the same industry that
| contributed to their campaigns, so they direct all weapons
| against the external enemy. "We're good, they're bad", and
| end of the story.
| WhackyIdeas wrote:
| I agree with your impression.
|
| It reminds me.. when someone is cheating on a partner, they
| are more likely to think they are being cheated on too. I
| have experienced this, being accused non-stop when actually
| they were the one cheating all along.
|
| Just because USA likes tampering with proprietary code and
| using NDA's with Silicon Valley to bug just about anything
| they want (because they can), that paranoia consumes them
| that other countries are doing the same.
| kube-system wrote:
| > Just because USA likes tampering with proprietary code
| and using NDA's with Silicon Valley to bug just about
| anything they want (because they can), that paranoia
| consumes them that other countries are doing the same.
|
| During times of war, other countries absolutely do the
| same.
| rubytubido wrote:
| When you can't justify the actions of your country -
| but..but..but other countries they do the same!
|
| Just looks at the western reactions about 'foreign
| agents' bill in Georgia.
| kube-system wrote:
| Who said I'm trying to justify anything? I _don 't_ think
| it is justifiable to do during peacetime.
|
| But obviously an existential crisis is not the time that
| many governments stand on their principles, which is why
| 'war powers' tend to be justified under extenuating
| circumstances when countries end up at war.
|
| There is no question, if there is another major war
| between world powers, they will invoke the authority to
| compel their industries to cooperate with the effort. If
| they don't, they'll quickly cease to exist.
| kube-system wrote:
| > they can't make a generic law against say suspicious code
| running on consumer devices that could be used to
| exfiltrate personal data, as it would potentially hit every
| connected device out there, including western branded ones.
| My impression is that they (the law makers) are almost
| facing the wall where they should admit that closed
| proprietary devices are generally unsafe and bad
|
| The issue is even bigger than that. It doesn't matter what
| the device does now, nor does it matter whether it is open
| or proprietary.
|
| When it comes to national security, ask yourself "what
| could happen in a time of war?" Some obvious answers are:
|
| 1. If it connects to foreign service providers, those
| services could be shut off or changed to be malicious
|
| 2. If the device uses parts/support/updates from foreign
| service providers, those could be discontinued, or changed
| to be malicious
|
| 3. If you need the product, but don't make them locally,
| they may no longer be available.
|
| etc.
| cherioo wrote:
| This feels like rehashing much of the conversation about
| TikTok, and earlier Huawei.
|
| It is a national security concern. Whether the cure is
| better than the poison only time will tell.
| teleforce wrote:
| >The industry can fight with quality or price against
| Chinese bad products and non Chinese good products, but
| products that are both Chinese and top notch quality are
| going to dominate the market because of comparatively lower
| costs
|
| I think the sooner the west (read US/Canada and Europe,
| some say Australia/NZ) realized and wake up from their
| denial the better. Gone are the days of the narrative we're
| not going to export to you our superior and more expensive
| products, but now the narrative we're not going to import
| your superior and cheaper products, how the table are
| turning 180 degree. It's not uncommon to watch western
| Youtubers praising the good quality DJI products and at the
| same being critical of GoPro sub-par quality products, and
| they're not even reviewing the products but just honest
| remarks from professional users going about their filming
| and recording routines.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > What is DJI
|
| One of the largest drone manufacturers globally and backed by
| the Chinese government [0] and several Red Families [1]
|
| > why is it being banned
|
| It is very closely connected with Chinese government
| stakeholders, with worries around privacy and data retention
| [2].
|
| There is also some lobbying by Skydio and Andruil [3][4].
|
| They are also breaking sanctions against Russia with Russian
| forces using their drones [5][6] (though the Ukrainians are
| using them as well), as well as sanctions around Xinjiang [7].
|
| > why should the general public care about this
|
| They are a popular low cost drone option. It might also spark a
| rise in domestic drone vendors - especially in the industrial
| and defense space [8].
|
| ---------
|
| Also, can we please have another source. DroneDJ is a DJI
| specific blog and as such is biased in favor of DJI.
|
| Here's some reporting from AP - https://apnews.com/buyline-
| shopping/article/dji-drone-ban-in...
|
| And the bill itself - https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-
| congress/house-bill/2864
|
| --------
|
| [0] - https://ipvm.com/reports/dji-prc
|
| [1] - https://tracxn.com/d/companies/dji/__-
| YU3B-qveVWiE0QN_8HPp2m...
|
| [2] - https://info.publicintelligence.net/ICE-DJI-China.pdf
|
| [3] - https://www.auvsi.org/policy-proposals
|
| [4] - https://www.auvsi.org/member-organizations-list/all
|
| [5] - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/21/business/russia-china-
| dro...
|
| [6] - https://djirussia.ru/
|
| [7] - https://ipvm.com/discussions/dji-xinjiang-human-rights-
| abuse...
|
| [8] - https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs
| itsacodething wrote:
| If you want to know why the US would have interest in limiting
| the growth of DJI look no further then Ukraine and the impact
| drones have on the war. The US wants to encourage domestic
| drone manufacturing by eliminating the largest Chinese
| manufacturer as an option.
| mc32 wrote:
| They have Skydio for that. There is no profit in consumer-
| oriented drones. The money is in lower volume professional &
| semi-professional use drones. You cannot compete with China
| even if we annexed Mexico for cheap labor in order to
| manufacture high volume low profit drones.
| kaibee wrote:
| This is exactly the problem. The military needs single-use
| drones in high volume, and the production capacity/scale
| for that can only exist if it's subsidized by the consumer
| industry.
|
| > You cannot compete with China even if we annexed Mexico
| for cheap labor in order to manufacture high volume low
| profit drones.
|
| DJI isn't making drones by hand, they have automated
| factories. But its only worth building an automated factory
| if you're selling at a massive scale. Banning DJI drones in
| the US lets you build a factory in the US that can
| eventually get costs down.
|
| And it's also dumb to fund your opponent's war production
| lines.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| > Banning DJI drones in the US lets you build a factory
| in the US that can eventually get costs down.
|
| I anticipate exactly zero automated drone factories.
| kaibee wrote:
| I don't see why. Drones are pretty simple manufacturing
| wise. The issue at scale is the supply chain of cheap
| motors, cheap control boards, and cheap batteries.
| hooverd wrote:
| Sure, but you won't be allowed to buy one for less than
| the cost of a small car.
| Teever wrote:
| which, the factory that builds drones or the drones
| themselves?
|
| What would stop someone from building their own cargo
| container sized drone factory that takes parts like
| motors, pcbs, batteries in one end and spits out finished
| drones on the other?
| samatman wrote:
| "automated factory" is somewhat redundant, no?
|
| The point is that most people who will buy a $700 Chinese
| drone will buy a $1000 US drone if that's all they can
| get.
|
| I am of the opinion that the US made a very serious
| mistake by opening up tariff-free trade with countries
| which do not have comparable labor and environmental
| safety laws. The Feds should have come up with reasonable
| estimates of what foreign manufacturing was saving by
| cheating that way, and charged them that amount of money
| to sell products in the US. Factories which wanted to
| avoid those tariffs could pay for, and submit to, an
| independent audit of their factories.
|
| Instead we decided that it was fine for US manufacturing
| to compete on an "even" basis with nations who are fine
| with laborers losing fingers and/or getting paid slave
| wages, and manufacturers dumping their waste stream into
| a nearby river. We've paid a severe price for that
| misguided egalitarianism, and it's time to change course.
| mcculley wrote:
| > US made a very serious mistake by
|
| Was it a mistake if the goal was to get cheaper products
| at the expense of foreigners losing fingers?
|
| I agree it is myopic policy for the long term, but
| certainly many voters are happy to push safety problems
| somewhere else.
| luma wrote:
| It is bad policy long term, and this policy has been
| around for a long time. At some point we need to address
| bad policy.
| bbarnett wrote:
| As duties and trade restrictions were dropped in the late
| 70s and 80s, the mantra was that by doing so, the West
| would "uplift" poorer countries such as China. The goals
| to improve quality of life, transform the third world
| from agrarian to mass production, with a hope of
| spreading democratic principles as well.
|
| And yes, over and over this was the desireded goal, I
| remember the election campaigns, the speeches, the white
| papers, the think tanks.
|
| This has mostly been a success, looking at many such
| countries. The standard of living has gone up, for
| example China now has a "middle class" of sorts.
|
| Environmental concerns were not on the radar at the time,
| not 50 years ago, not like today.
|
| The intentions were reasonably positive and well founded.
| Of course, I agree reassessment is necessary, and it
| really should always be.
| logicchains wrote:
| >The point is that most people who will buy a $700
| Chinese drone will buy a $1000 US drone if that's all
| they can get.
|
| In the consumer market, if the $1000 drone has a
| significantly worse user experience then people just
| won't buy it. Before DJI the consumer drone market was
| much smaller; by creating a cheap, high-quality product
| DJI caused more people to purchase drones, growing the
| market. If there's no competitive alternative the market
| will just shrink again; consumer drones aren't a
| necessity.
| samatman wrote:
| By all reports, Skydio drones offer an excellent user
| experience.
|
| The DJI Mini 3 Prop is currently $899, and Skydio can't
| manufacture something like that in the US, and sell it
| for that amount of money. But I bet they could make
| something comparable at a sale price of $1100-1300.
|
| Allowing Communists to dump goods in our market is
| optional. I don't know that I support a ban on DJI
| products, I have a Mini 2: I like drones, but not enough
| to drop a couple grand on a Skydio 2 (and note that they
| exited the consumer market, presumably because of the
| aforementioned price dumping making it infeasible to
| compete). I would be pissed off if it was permanently
| grounded. But at minimum I support tariffs which are
| heavy enough to give domestic industry a chance to
| compete on an even footing.
|
| And given the evident relationship between drone
| technology and national security, I could be persuaded
| that a full ban is in the national interest. Perhaps
| (this is only sort of a joke) the NSA could release a
| full open-source jailbreak of every DJI product, and
| publish an API for the cloud components which any
| American compute provider could then offer.
|
| Then block their servers. Let 'em know that we'll let
| them back in the country when Facebook can operate in
| China, and not before.
| kmlx wrote:
| > The point is that most people who will buy a $700
| Chinese drone will buy a $1000 US drone if that's all
| they can get.
|
| the time when the US could actually decide this sort of
| thing at close to planet scale is long gone. if you ban
| those devices, there will be countless other nations
| (including close friends of the US) where you will be
| able to buy them no problem.
| mc32 wrote:
| Single-use means $20K - $50K, not $2K. What militaries
| are competing against with the Houthis and in Ukraine, is
| 20 - 50K drones and right now taking them down with $2MM
| missiles or a 50K drone taking out a 2MM tank. Dial those
| numbers up and you can see how the imbalance in cost is
| unsustainable. They don't need drones to be 2K.
| kaibee wrote:
| I think the military perspective at this point is that
| they want drones at all price points. Those 20-50k
| drones, I assume you mean like
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZALA_Lancet and
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Shahed_136?
|
| The cost estimates for those are quite wide, but in terms
| of raw materials even those low-cost prices are kind of
| absurd right? $20,000 for a few motors, batteries,
| basically a modern smartphone and 20-40 pounds of
| explosive? The military expects that they will get a lot
| cheaper, which means you need to be able to counter them
| at least as cheaply.
| dtquad wrote:
| I don't understand why every estimate assumes Russian and
| Iranian engineers work for free and only include the raw
| material/components cost of these weapons systems.
|
| R&D costs makes up the vast majority of the cost of
| Western weapons systems.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > I think the military perspective at this point is that
| they want drones at all price points.
|
| I think you're 100% right here.
|
| It may seem absurd, but something that can take out a
| main battle tank would be well worth $20,000. An M1A2
| Abrams costs $24 million. The latest model Russian T-90
| is around $4 million. A Chinese Type 99 is around $2.5
| million. The asymmetry is clear.
|
| Some of that $20,000 is making sure it works reliably
| under any conceivable weather conditions, after it's been
| stuck in a storage container at +50 C/-30C for weeks or
| months, etc.
|
| On the other hand, if you're just doing reconnaissance,
| maybe you'd rather send a swarm of 20 $1,000 drones
| instead (in an attempt to overwhelm the enemy's
| countermeasures).
| luma wrote:
| UA is showing the world what can be done with <$1k
| drones. China has that market locked down right now,
| presumably this legislation is aiming at that market.
| This isn't about Reaper-scale drones.
| delfinom wrote:
| >This is exactly the problem. The military needs single-
| use drones in high volume, and the production
| capacity/scale for that can only exist if it's subsidized
| by the consumer industry.
|
| Single use drones could exist without subsidizing by the
| consumer industry. Ukraine is literally doing it with
| rubberbands. Anything else would simply lead to
| overdesign and basically the same problem we have now
| where the enemy is simply lobbing cheap artillery in
| volume while we simply do not have smart missiles to
| spare for Ukraine, nor for ourselves if we got into such
| a war. Lmao.
|
| The American MIC is largely...maliciously incompetent. I
| work in this sector. Overdesigning, so you can slap a
| 500% profit margin on something with more features than
| ever needed. Then you lobby the generals in charge of
| project funding with dinners, gifts and more.
| kaibee wrote:
| > Ukraine is literally doing it with rubberbands.
|
| I'm under the impression that the supply-chain for
| Ukrainian drones basically leads to China in the same way
| that it does for Russia. For a "small" regional conflict,
| this isn't a problem to Ukraine because there's no way
| China could or would restrict supply of their cheap
| drones. But for a large-scale conflict, it would be a
| problem for the US to not be able to source drone motors
| by the 10,000's.
| adolph wrote:
| > Banning DJI drones in the US lets you build a factory
| in the US that can eventually get costs down.
|
| 1. It is a bad idea to use national defense in this
| manner. There are more honest tools that can be used, see
| two.
|
| 2. Using tariff or other trade tools can blunt the impact
| of DJI's market position and allow for US entrants to
| develop. [0]
|
| A weakness of both nat-sec bans and tariffs is that they
| don't actually do anything to encourage a company like
| Anduril to make the pro/sumer stuff needed for volume
| sales to develop broad acceptance, fast iteration and
| well founded supply chains.
|
| 0. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2024/03/larger-
| lesson...
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| > The military needs single-use drones in high volume,
| and the production capacity/scale
|
| But yet they have no trouble procuring single-use (by
| definition) artillery shells that cost an order of
| magnitude more and require even more production volume?
| exar0815 wrote:
| Except - they have. All Artillery Shell Plants in all
| NATO countries combined (minus Hungary, because f* Orban)
| are unable to produce enough shells just for the War in
| Ukraine. The US has completely gutted their manufacturing
| base, and currently won't be able to compete in a peer
| conflict on a ling term basis. Not enough shell and ammo
| production, not enough logistical capability, not enough
| ships, not enough dock capacity...
| bri3d wrote:
| High volume single-use drones and DJI drones are almost
| completely orthogonal in terms of technology, production,
| and procurement. The only thing they really share is MEMS
| gyroscopes and brushless motor windings. Making a million
| FPV bomb drones and making a million consumer camera
| drones are such dramatically different tasks that there
| is not a chance this theory holds water.
| merpnderp wrote:
| You should look at see what kind of drones are dominating
| Ukraine's skies. You'd see some water being held. And you
| probably should have googled this before making this
| comment.
| bri3d wrote:
| I'm quite familiar with this space, thanks :)
|
| DJI drones are being used in significantly lower
| quantities as "base stations" and long-range
| reconnaissance applications, with the occasional bomb-
| dropping side run.
|
| FPV drones are being used in much, much, much higher
| quantity than DJI drones, owing to their massively lower
| cost to produce due to ... the simpler and mostly
| orthogonal supply chain!
|
| Financing a consumer/enterprise camera drone production
| capability with an end goal of enabling the construction
| of large quantities of one-way FPV drones, as the parent
| post to mine suggested, would not be a good strategy,
| IMO.
|
| Having domestic consumer/enterprise camera drone
| production capability at all is of course a good idea,
| but the quantity needed in war fighting is significantly
| lower, at least with the current tools and techniques
| seen in Ukraine.
| nathancahill wrote:
| I have the last consumer Skydio model, and I'm thinking of
| selling it to buy a DJI. Skydio has way more intelligence,
| but the camera quality just isn't there. Footage is ok for
| social media and that's about it.
| dtquad wrote:
| This is why Western drone startups keep failing against
| DJI. The consumer and prosumer drone market do not want
| AI-driven flying autonomous robots. They want high-
| quality cameras that can fly.
|
| When the Western drone startups fail at that they will
| turn to AI, agriculture, LIDAR/mapping etc. But all the
| money is in the consumer/prosumer market where DJI is
| earning billions every year which also makes them able to
| outspend competitors in the professional drone markets.
| jcpham2 wrote:
| I very much prefer my Skydio2 drone over any DJI product
| I've ever flown. Totally subjective experience. I got tired
| of fixing DJI drones.
| nathancahill wrote:
| Interesting, I have the opposite experience, mostly due
| to the camera/sensor quality.
| FpUser wrote:
| I have 3 DJI drones. Not a single failure on either.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| > If you want to know why the US would have interest in
| limiting the growth of DJI look no further then Ukraine and
| the impact drones have on the war.
|
| How is banning DJI drones in the US going to affect how
| they're being used in the war in Ukraine?
|
| Or do you mean that banning them in the US will somehow stop
| them from being used against the US in the future?
| itsacodething wrote:
| > How is banning DJI drones in the US going to affect how
| they're being used in the war in Ukraine?
|
| It will not.
|
| > Or do you mean that banning them in the US will somehow
| stop them from being used against the US in the future?
|
| No.
|
| This is about planning for the future. In the event of a
| war the US wants a large existing base of domestic drone
| manufacturers. Today, that just does not exist at scale as
| most are made in China. This is similar to efforts to re-
| shore chip manufacturing.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| > This is about planning for the future. In the event of
| a war the US wants a large existing base of domestic
| drone manufacturers. Today, that just does not exist at
| scale as most are made in China. This is similar to
| efforts to re-shore chip manufacturing.
|
| I don't think the US military generally uses off-the-
| shelf consumer products like the Ukraine military does,
| so does this actually affect them? They would be getting
| drones built to order from a military contractor anyway,
| so I don't think it really matters what the leading
| consumer manufacturer of drones is to the US military
| from that perspective.
|
| Chip manufacturing seems like a slightly different
| situation in that if another country restricted US access
| to chips it would affect the entire US economy, so I
| think it has security implications in a broader sense
| where security is interpreted to include the stability of
| the US economy as a whole, rather than military supply
| specifically.
| ethagnawl wrote:
| For whatever it's worth, the original Predator drones
| were mostly based on off-the-shelf parts. Wired had a
| great story on their history in 2016/7.
| jerf wrote:
| "I don't think the US military generally uses off-the-
| shelf consumer products like the Ukraine military does,
| so does this actually affect them?"
|
| Yes, because if you have _no_ drone manufacturing in your
| country, you can 't just spin on a dime and suddenly have
| military-grade drone manufacturing. Technology is a lot
| less about knowing what the atomic weight of cesium is
| and a lot more about employee A knowing that B knows how
| to solve instability problems and their contact at
| company C knows what to do when the blades spin apart.
| You can't build the massive networks of those
| relationship by just passing a law today and expecting to
| have a best-of-class industry tomorrow, no matter how
| much money you throw at it.
| petsfed wrote:
| > _I don 't think the US military generally uses off-the-
| shelf consumer products like the Ukraine military does,
| so does this actually affect them? They would be getting
| drones built to order from a military contractor anyway,
| so I don't think it really matters what the leading
| consumer manufacturer of drones is to the US military
| from that perspective._
|
| They rather famously switched to an Xbox controller for
| their rolling drones, and for their submarine controls,
| because they just work better. For quite a while,
| military-issued camelbaks still had bright blue caps
| because the contract to custom build the systems hadn't
| been settled yet. There are in fact plenty of electronics
| that they use that are not purpose built, that are bought
| more or less off the shelf.
|
| All of that said, I still agree that the US military is
| unlikely to allow off-the-shelf drones _at this time_.
| Parts availability is the driver there. Its better to pay
| a contractor $3k a pop to buy a bunch of a DJI Mavics,
| spray paint them olive drab, and issue them to each
| platoon than it is to give every platoon $3k and say "go
| buy a drone", because then you can buy 6000 of the same
| replacement rotor or whatever.
| ahi wrote:
| Ukraine goes through hundreds if not thousands of drones
| a day. Most are DIY or consumer grade at <$500 including
| warhead. Recent comments from DoD suggest their plan for
| defending Taiwan is hundreds of thousands of drones
| taking out any invasion fleet. At defense contractor
| prices that's a bitter pill to swallow even for the
| Pentagon. The M982 Excalibur (GPS/INS guided artillery
| shell) is ~$100k per boom. I largely agree a domestic
| supply chain for this stuff is important, even if
| Stefanik is ham fisted as always.
|
| FWIW, we might be at peak drone for warfare anyway. At
| least vehicle based countermeasures are pretty obvious
| and will be put in place soon, although that won't be
| cheap either.
| jorts wrote:
| It has to do with spurring US manufacturers as the primary
| outcome. It's not about affecting Ukraine in the short term
| or stopping them from being used against the US.
| asah wrote:
| It will force western r&d and production to ramp.
| delfinom wrote:
| Ah yes, $10k drones made in a different country's sweatshops.
| Not to worry, MURICA BRAND.
| empath75 wrote:
| Drones are national security issues for two reasons -- one is
| that they could be used for surveillance domestically (similar
| problem with tik tok) and secondarily drones are now core
| warfare technology and the US has offshored so much of it's
| manufacturing capacity (not just for drones, but for all
| electronics) that the US is at real risk of losing any conflict
| with china because our supply chains will be absolutely wrecked
| if China cuts us off, so the US is trying to encourage more
| domestic production. I think China cutting off exports to the
| US would be way more devastating to the US economy than the US
| cutting Russia off from the world banking system was to Russia.
| hooverd wrote:
| The consumer market has had it too good for too long.
| FpUser wrote:
| Yeah, they have to suffer and pay through the nose. That'll
| teach them right
| henvic wrote:
| DJI is, by far, the best drone equipment brand for photography,
| industrial usage, etc.
|
| It's disheartening to witness the US embracing protectionism for
| high-tech. If the United States does this, it might as well join
| the European Union's decadence in killing tech startups by
| stifling the competitiveness of their market...
| empath75 wrote:
| It's definitely economic protectionism but it's mostly
| protectionism for national security reasons. I assume the US is
| going to start manufacturing drones for war in large numbers in
| the near term and they need to be made at home (or at least by
| allies).
| svachalek wrote:
| This seems likely. For those that haven't been following the
| war in Ukraine, now that all the Cold War munitions have been
| mostly used up, drones are now the primary weapon of both
| sides due to literal "bang per buck". It seems clear that
| drones are the 21st century weapon of choice.
| surfingdino wrote:
| > It seems clear that drones are the 21st century weapon of
| choice.
|
| Only for targeted attacks. The Russian way of prosecuting
| war is still a shower of shells, rockets, and a mob with
| guns. Drones are retail, Russians do wholesale.
| zamadatix wrote:
| If this were the case I'd expect it to be related to all
| drones from China though. It also doesn't seem needed given
| the contracts can just state the requirement without extra
| hoopla.
| Tepix wrote:
| Those drones will be built for war, how are they competing
| with DJI who refuses to let their drones be used for war?
| klipklop wrote:
| Except you can totally use a DJI drone for war. I saw a
| video the other day of such a drone modified to drop
| airsoft grenades. Does not take much to replace it with the
| real thing.
| redserk wrote:
| Might as well just shut down and ban all RC hobby shops
| because RC Airplanes can carry heavier payloads than all
| of DJI's consumer/prosumer lines -- and are much easier
| to modify.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Ease of piloting is a huge differentiating factor and the
| entire reason why public drone regulation didn't exist
| until every tom, dick, and harry could reasonably keep
| something in the air long enough to bother someone else,
| despite hobby RC airplanes being around decades before
| drones.
|
| Non-FPV drone flyers can drop 40mm grenades from 100ft
| and hit a CEP of like a couple feet, and that's with
| literally four drops of practice and unsophisticated
| munitions. Untrained RC plane pilots can NOT do that.
| surfingdino wrote:
| It's not hard to find videos of DJI drones dropping real
| grenades onto Russians, sometimes straight into the open
| hatch of a Russian tank. It's harder than it looks on
| video, but when it works the end result is quite
| irreversible for the Russians.
| dji4321234 wrote:
| HAHA. DJI drones are amongst the most popular tools of war
| in the Ukraine conflict. Sometimes they drop bombs
| directly, but more commonly they're used as long-ranged
| lookout stations and RF-repeater "hovering motherships" for
| bomb-equipped one-way FPV drone operators (as well as just
| general reconnaissance tasks).
|
| That said, I don't think this law has anything to do with
| war, just simple economic protectionism driven by Skydio
| and other US drone lobbyists. Getting rid of DJI's
| excellent $7,000 enterprise drones lets Skydio sell their
| $15,000 + cloud-subscription enterprise drones instead.
| bx376 wrote:
| https://www.skydio.com/solutions/defense
| dji4321234 wrote:
| Sure, but DJI drones already weren't eligible for
| procurement in US defense anyway, so there's not a major
| net change there (barring weird edge case loopholes with
| third-party modifications). Skydio already got their
| protectionism in the federal space, this is a step
| beyond.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > DJI who refuses to let their drones be used for war?
|
| As others point out, DJI can't control what buyers do (a
| good default).
|
| Perhaps it would be more accurate to say DJI won't
| manufacture drones for offensive war use. This sharply
| limits their usefulness to the US Military.
|
| Either way, using US Mil as an excuse doesn't make sense
| for a ban. They won't be buying gear they have reason to
| mistrust.
|
| As ever, reasons for the ban seem to be evidence-free
| speculation. Articles that omit this key part of the story
| aren't serving their readers.
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| I don't understand your argument: what has DJI - a
| manufacturer of personal use drones - with the US military
| wanting to build weaponized drones in the US?
| kube-system wrote:
| The same reason the US props up any other militarily
| relevant tech, whether or not always used for that purpose.
| Protectionism of local industry.
|
| See: chipmakers, telecom tech, aerospace tech, etc.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Yeah the thing is that the US always, always justified
| everything by using the "national security" excuse/narrative.
| When another country does it to the US and its corporations,
| which has by far the longest modern history of getting
| involved in other nations national security, then it suddenly
| becomes an attack on free trade and pure protectionism.
| lawlessone wrote:
| >If the United States does this, it might as well join the
| European Union's decadence in killing tech startups by stifling
| the competitiveness of their market...
|
| I can still buy a DJI drone here in Europe. What stifling are
| you referring to?
| arcanemachiner wrote:
| Off the top of my head as a non-European: GDPR, 2-year
| warranties and other consumer protection laws
| lawlessone wrote:
| :-)
| nkrisc wrote:
| Oh, those pesky consumers getting in the way of the
| innovation of the free market with their protections. If
| only they could be fully exploited for maximum value
| extraction without interference.
| stavros wrote:
| That's exactly what I think when I read one of these "EU
| stifles innovation" comments. It sounds to me like the
| equivalent of not wanting socialized healthcare because
| "the poors" might get it, not caring about the fact that
| you're the one who will benefit.
|
| This is the "everyone in the US is a temporarily
| embarrassed millionaire" of consumer rights. Everyone in
| the US is a temporarily embarrassed capitalist overlord.
| newfriend wrote:
| This is a strawman.
|
| "Rich" people don't want socialized healthcare because of
| perceived or real disadvantages of that system. Not
| because "the poors might get it".
|
| Also the "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" is another
| strawman, used by those who dislike capitalism. People
| can and do support a variety of causes and policies
| without they themselves benefitting from them.
| stavros wrote:
| > "Rich" people don't want socialized healthcare because
| of perceived or real disadvantages of that system. Not
| because "the poors might get it".
|
| That's fair, I should have said "because the poors might
| benefit". Rich people don't like socialized healthcare
| because they, by definition, will pay for people who
| can't afford it.
|
| The problem is when people who will benefit from this
| identify with people who will lose from it.
|
| > People can and do support a variety of causes and
| policies without they themselves benefitting from them.
|
| They do, but here we're talking about the opposite:
| People being against policies they benefit from, because
| they identify with the group that will not.
|
| P.S. I liked your comment, it was a reasoned reply that
| furthers the debate, thank you.
| EgregiousCube wrote:
| You'll find very few people who don't want poor people to
| have things and it's disingenuous to put it that way.
|
| The two commonly held arguments against socialized
| healthcare in America are: First, a distrust that the
| government will create a system that is good and a belief
| that quality will decrease under such a system, and;
|
| Second, that such a system would be funded by a large tax
| increase and that Americans are in general hard to get
| excited about tax increases. The financial concern is in
| the taking, not in the getting.
| danaris wrote:
| > You'll find very few people who don't want poor people
| to have things and it's disingenuous to put it that way.
|
| I'm afraid your experiences are not universal.
|
| There is a very strong streak of this in the US,
| significantly (though probably not wholly) traceable to
| the Calvinist roots of the Puritans who were a profound
| influence on the early culture of the country. When you
| believe that people's position on Earth is due to their
| level of deserving (Just World Fallacy), it's _very_ easy
| to extend that to "and therefore we shouldn't try to
| help poor people; they're just being punished for being
| bad people."
| EgregiousCube wrote:
| There is a wide gap between not wanting to be responsible
| for helping the poor and actively wanting the poor to
| fail. You're confusing the two.
| danaris wrote:
| You're right about the first part, but I'm not confused
| about anything.
|
| There are _genuinely_ many people who wholeheartedly
| believe that the poor deserve to be poor, and that
| helping them is bad. Some of them aren 't even that well
| off themselves, but have bought into an ideology that's
| detrimental to them.
|
| If you haven't encountered these people, then count
| yourself lucky, but don't try to deny their existence or
| assume your own experiences are universal.
| EgregiousCube wrote:
| Clearly people of every ilk exist, but my claim is that
| people like this are irrelevant to the debate around
| socialized healthcare. Show me an American politician
| who's run on the platform of openly wanting to hurt the
| poor because they deserve to be hurt, their electoral
| victory, and that person's vote against a socialized
| healthcare initiative. It's not a thing.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Regan's "welfare queen" comes to mind. More recent
| examples were those against stimulus checks (but very
| much for PPP "loans"). Any politician who believes in
| means-testing, when the bureaucracy adds an overhead
| greater than the amount saved is arguably out to hurt the
| undeserving.
|
| You can't deny the politics of retribution exists,
| because politicians only give oblique references to it;
| voters certainly believe it, hence one voter who
| complained about Covid shutdowns thusly: "He's not
| hurting the people he needs to be"
| danem wrote:
| The resistance to socialized healthcare in America can be
| easily understood without resorting to bizarre strawmen
| about hating poor people. Healthcare is of course a huge
| part of our economy and lives. Many (most?) people are
| satisfied with the status quo and are hesitant to see
| (what they consider to be) a huge increase in government
| power, spending, and general involvement in their lives.
| It's the same impulse that motivates people to oppose new
| housing -- people are loss averse and hate change.
| stavros wrote:
| Will it be a huge increase in spending? Isn't it
| estimated to reduce costs by a lot?
| antisthenes wrote:
| Yes, the resistance is because the private sector will
| lose a lot of (parasitic) jobs. It's a non-starter to
| attempt to reduce health insurance companies power,
| because it would gut their employee numbers.
|
| It's an unsavory thought, but the US has a significant
| amount of people employed in the business of denying
| healthcare to other people, which amounts to hundreds of
| thousands of jobs.
|
| Any politician attempting to fix this would be committing
| political suicide.
| rockemsockem wrote:
| I think they mean it's an increase in government
| spending, which would of course be true even if overall
| healthcare overhead spending is reduced.
| moduspol wrote:
| We do not have an established history of accurately
| predicting or managing the costs of overwhelmingly
| expensive government programs, at least here in the US.
| marcinzm wrote:
| The US already runs two government healthcare programs.
| There are 65 million people in Medicare and 83 million in
| Medicaid. For less money per patient than private
| insurance.
| wyager wrote:
| This attitude is why EU countries are mostly quite poor
| compared to the US and have relatively unproductive and
| low-tech economies. You bring it upon yourself.
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| People die from inability to afford something as
| fundamental as _healthcare_ in the US. You are poorer
| than any European ever could be.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Billionaires making more money sure helps pay my hospital
| bills.
| sofixa wrote:
| > This attitude is why EU countries are mostly quite poor
| compared to the US and have relatively unproductive and
| low-tech economies.
|
| Source? Are you adjusting for cost of living, per capita,
| and using the median?
| coldtea wrote:
| And the above attitude is why the US is a joke with
| people who can't afford education, healthcare, or a home,
| 70+ yo still working their ass off in McJobs, crumbling
| public infrastructure, homeless and billionaires laughing
| all the way to the bank...
|
| Then you're comparing countries with better distributed
| quality of life based on GDP or the presence of
| billionaires and unicorns, as if between you, Zuck, and
| Musk you have an average wealth of $500B. There are much
| poorer GDP-wise countries where people live better and
| are happier than the US :)
| nkrisc wrote:
| I'm an American. I wish we had these protections.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| GDPR is really sensible legislation that largely only
| applies to companies who should be treating your personal
| data as sensitive data. I built a GDPR complaint system and
| was really happy about the security we put in place that we
| definitely wouldn't have thought to do without these laws.
| Things like having someone you can ask and request personal
| data from at big companies is also an extremely well
| thought through idea. I don't understand the issues people
| have with it to be honest...
| lupusreal wrote:
| Most people have no problem with the GDPR. It only seems
| otherwise on this forum and similar echo chambers /
| bubbles where lots of people made their fortunes with
| adtech.
| ajford wrote:
| I love the intention of the law, but it's so...
| flexible... in implementation that shitty implementers
| ended up making the browsing experience horrible with
| intrusive pop-ups and geo blocking.
|
| On mobile every page load ends up with me spending the
| first minute or so on page dealing with the half-screen
| "don't sell my info" cookie dance, followed with the ad-
| block pop-ups.
| troupo wrote:
| > but it's so... flexible... in implementation
|
| It usually isn't the law's job to dictate an
| implementation.
|
| > shitty implementers ended up making the browsing
| experience horrible with intrusive pop-ups and geo
| blocking.
|
| How is the law that doesn't even talk about browsers or
| cookies responsible for this?
| flaminHotSpeedo wrote:
| My only complaint with GDPR is when I have to do boring
| work in the name of GDPR compliance :)
|
| But it's also driven some pretty interesting projects, so
| I'd probably call it a wash or perhaps a slight positive,
| even if I were to ignore the major benefits as a consumer
| glitchcrab wrote:
| What an utterly ridiculous response. In your eyes,
| businesses should be able to run roughshod over the
| consumer? Yes, maybe the laws could have been more polished
| or have been implemented in a better way, but the
| underlying idea of protecting the consumer is the important
| takeaway from these laws.
| lawlessone wrote:
| >What an utterly ridiculous response.
|
| To be fair to them, i think it was sarcasm.
| glitchcrab wrote:
| You may well be right, or at least I hope you are anyway.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Poe's Law applies
| ok_dad wrote:
| On HN, you can be sure there are several people who
| literally believe the world would be better without any
| regulations or laws forcing businesses to do anything.
| This place is the pinnacle of anarcho-capitalism.
| permo-w wrote:
| at least here there's a spectrum of views that largely
| get by peacefully, and the entire place isn't focused on
| that conflict, a la twitter. yes there are lot of right-
| wing headcases entirely taken up by their own bottom-
| line, and yes the place itself is broadly funded and
| owned by people who think like, or at the very least, act
| like anarcho-capitalists, but they only really float to
| the surface when a post about regulation comes up, and
| even then, the discussion stays mostly civil. it could be
| a lot worse
| blantonl wrote:
| to also be fair, I just recently returned from Europe and
| I was shocked at how maddeningly frustrating it was to
| simply use the Web. Between shockingly obtrusive GDPR
| consent forms and outright blocks on Websites from EU
| consumers, it was a wild look at what Europeans have to
| go through under the guise of consumer protections.
|
| Like, the pendulum swung WAY too far in the other
| direction.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _Between shockingly obtrusive GDPR consent forms and
| outright blocks on Websites from EU consumers,_
|
| None of which are required by GDPR. In fact, those
| obtrusive "consent" forms are usually _violations_ of
| GDPR.
| glitchcrab wrote:
| As much as the idea of GDPR (and specifically cookie
| consent) is well intentioned, the actual laws themselves
| aren't great. Cookie consent is especially frustrating
| because it encourages the creators of the consent popups
| to use dark patterns to try and trick people into just
| accepting them.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Cookie consent only apply to non-necessary cookies.
|
| The laws are great because every cookie consent form is
| essentially saying, "we as a company want you to accept a
| cookie that is unnecessary."
|
| If you don't install unnecessary cookies, you don't need
| to have a consent form.
| doublepg23 wrote:
| Do you think the official EU site uses unnecessary
| cookies? https://european-union.europa.eu/
| troupo wrote:
| 1. Yes it does
|
| 2. It clearly explains which cookies it uses in the
| linked policy page
|
| 3. It has an opt-out that is as easy as the opt-in (as
| required by law)
| glitchcrab wrote:
| Correct, but unfortunately that applies to the vast
| majority of websites. It wouldn't be so bad if the
| consent dialogs had an option to reject all optional
| cookies but unfortunately too many of them still try and
| trick or force you into accepting all cookies.
| troupo wrote:
| > It wouldn't be so bad if the consent dialogs had an
| option to reject all optional cookies
|
| As is _explicitly required by law_
| glitchcrab wrote:
| Yep, but there are still plenty out there which do not.
| The likelihood of them being forced to correct this is
| essentially nil though.
| troupo wrote:
| Yeah, that's the main issue I have: the enforcement of
| the law is lagging/lacking
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| > Cookie consent only apply to non-necessary cookies.
|
| There's a different issue here: lawyers and companies are
| often concerned that what they deem necessary will be
| deemed unnecessary when challenged. So, they require
| cookie consent preemptively to avoid liability in case
| they get it wrong.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Hell, a lot of the 3rd party companies who are contracted
| to build the cookie consent forms are even following the
| spirit of the law (barely) by including a one click
| "reject all" button or link in the pop ups. They are
| often somewhat downplayed, like being in a smaller font
| or slightly hidden, because fuck you, but are you really
| so damn lazy that clicking "reject all" once every hour
| is such an objectionable activity that you'd rather just
| dump any and all consumer protections of data?
| caseyy wrote:
| Not under the guise. They are consumer protections. As a
| European, I like them very much.
|
| It surfaces which websites use stronger tactics to track
| you, and which allow consumer friendly opt-outs. There
| are even many websites that don't need the notices as
| they don't use cookies for tracking a natural person
| (their cookies are not associated with personally
| identifiable information).
|
| So we can choose what we use because we are informed.
| blantonl wrote:
| _It surfaces which websites use stronger tactics to track
| you, and which allow consumer friendly opt-outs._
|
| The problem is I didn't see a single web site that I
| visited where this was apparent. It was a mess of opt-in
| pop-ups and settings and whatnot that completely
| overwhelmed me with actionable things I had to do before
| I could interact with a site, and often many companies
| clearly just said F it and blocked anyone from Europe.
| troupo wrote:
| > Between shockingly obtrusive GDPR consent forms
|
| Imagine if companies didn't collect copious amounts of
| user data and didn't try to use every trick in the book
| and all known dark patterns to make you give up that
| data.
|
| "We care about privacy by selling your data to 2765
| 'partners' and are blaming GDPR for this"
| surfingdino wrote:
| How about not allowing "1579 partners" to track every
| click on your website?
| chme wrote:
| AFAIK many cookie consent banners are actually against
| the law. IIUC denying any non-essential cookies should
| always be as easy as accepting all cookies. This is
| something many cookie banners have not managed.
|
| So to me this seems more like the tech-companies and
| websites being annoying at implementing an easy solution,
| in order to rebel against the laws and make people angry
| at it for the inconvenience, then the law itself being
| bad.
|
| (https://measuredcollective.com/why-your-cookie-banner-
| is-pro...)
| atif089 wrote:
| Lol, as a European, thank god that people like you don't
| make our laws here
| henvic wrote:
| I'm not talking about drone legislation here in Europe, but
| state overreach in tech in general + bad scene for startups
| compared to the US (for now...) due to politics.
| chme wrote:
| Any concrete examples you are referring to?
| SSLy wrote:
| The bi annual push for chat control (key ,,escrow")
| chme wrote:
| Granted the chat control issue, is unfortunate on the
| privacy front, however I wouldn't call it a hindrance on
| innovation.
|
| IMO, often innovation happens because it is motivated to
| work around rules and regulations. So in many cases
| regulation and rules are what drives innovation. People
| want to hack the system and thus have to innovate. A
| completely hacked and open system doesn't really inspire
| new ideas, because the old ones just work fine already.
| arjvik wrote:
| You're talking about innovations in "working around the
| system." These are often orthogonal to innovations in
| actual tech.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The US had an entire decade of war on cryptography that
| was literally required to safely transact on the
| internet, and yet the 90s had plenty of online store
| startups.
| lukeramsden wrote:
| Can start with the number of unicorns in USA vs Europe,
| especially when you take population in to account
| https://www.failory.com/unicorns
| chme wrote:
| That isn't a concrete example of a regulations that
| hinder innovation.
| wyager wrote:
| What do you think the cause is? Unwashed eggs?
| permo-w wrote:
| any number of reasons: language barriers, existing
| American firms anti-competing, smaller domestic markets,
| less centralisation, and, yes, in some cases, regulation,
| but, when it comes down to it, it's better to have
| smaller firms that don't (or less frequently) damage
| society than larger firms than do, even just from the
| perspective of wealth distribution.
| sofixa wrote:
| So Estonia is better than the US?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Any concrete examples you are referring to?_
|
| Entity formation time; time and capital required to hire
| the first N employees; number, cost and time of licensing
| required before first sale can be made. Each are higher
| in Europe. Combine that with the multiple languages and
| regulators which inhibits scale and you get the present
| situation.
|
| Which, I will note, is fine. It's optimised for
| stability, not wealth. On the other hand, it naturally
| means having to choose between American and Chinese tech
| giants.
| sofixa wrote:
| > Entity formation time; time and capital required to
| hire the first N employees; number, cost and time of
| licensing required before first sale can be made. Each
| are higher in Europe.
|
| Which Europe? All of those can be done online with
| minimal effort or upfront investment in many EU
| countries. Do you mean Belarus?
|
| > Combine that with the multiple languages and regulators
| which inhibits scale and you get the present situation.
|
| This is true, because the EU is composed of 20+ different
| countries, each with different languages, cultures,
| histories, priorities. It's impossible to remove that
| boundary.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _All of those can be done online with minimal effort or
| upfront investment in many EU countries. Do you mean
| Belarus?_
|
| Each of them can be done online in most countries. All,
| very few. I think only Estonia comes to mind. (At least
| one form in that process requires visiting a notary in
| most of Western Europe.)
|
| The cost of terminating an employee is also a unique risk
| that European firms have to capitalise for which American
| start-ups do not. Again, I understand why one would
| choose this stability. But it comes with a cost.
|
| > _It 's impossible to remove that boundary_
|
| It's absolutely possible by mandating a _lingua franca_.
| But it would cause irreparable damage to those cultures,
| which is why the EU--sensibly, in my opinoin--has chosen
| to preserve them. But this is a choice and it comes with
| costs.
| gus_massa wrote:
| Spain still has not succededed after triying for
| centuries. Italy has "dialects" [1]. I'm not sure about
| the local detaild of the other countries.
|
| [1] A dialect is a language without a flag or a float.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I've heard offhand here that the ease of starting a business
| in general is easier in the US and that funding for tech
| startups is more available in the US due to policy.
|
| Totally hearsay from me.
| kuschku wrote:
| Regulation isn't going to stop innovation that much, or the
| tech industry wouldn't be in california. The primary
| difference is that the US is one homogenous, huge market.
|
| If I build something in California, to California's laws,
| and it becomes a success, I can immediately sell it across
| the entire rest of the US, and I can expand across the US,
| using the same employment contracts as in california, same
| lawyers as in california, etc.
|
| Sure, later on I can save money by making the Delaware
| version of my product with more cancerous chemicals, or
| have stricter NDAs in my Florida contracts.
|
| But if I start with California regulations, I can expand to
| the entire US with a small team of employees.
|
| There's nothing like that in Europe. If my product works in
| Germany, I'll need a french, spanish, italian translation
| to sell it in these countries. I can't just hire people
| from these countries either -- they've got different
| holidays, different work hours, different unions I'll have
| to deal with. Different tax codes and agencies. And often
| these are conflicting with one another.
|
| In the US, I need one or two support shifts in one or two
| languages. In the EU I need 27. In the US, I need one
| version of the product, with one plug. In the EU, unless
| I'm okay with 10A and a plastic chassis, I need a dozen
| different versions.
|
| And even if the product can be used universally, European
| culture is significantly more diverse than US culture.
|
| Is a phone call at 7am or 8pm more appropriate? Depends on
| whether you're in Germany or Spain. When a job applicant
| includes a photo of themselves and lists their parents'
| degrees and jobs on their own CV, is that appropriate or
| not? In Germany, that's often expected, in many other
| regions, a huge no-go.
|
| To be successful in the US, I need to build one company. To
| be successful in the EU, I need to build a multinational
| corporation with 27 local branches.
| drra wrote:
| Also since national markets in Europe are relatively big
| by themselves a lot of companies tend to be satisfied
| with comfort of a single market success.
| kuschku wrote:
| And once you've got control of one EU country, expanding
| to another EU country is just as complicated as expanding
| to the US is.
|
| So if you're spending the same effort anyway, expanding
| to the US with 300 million people is much more profitable
| than expanding to Germany with 80 million people, or the
| Netherlands with 20 million people.
|
| Which is why Spotify became available in Sweden, the US,
| and the rest of the EU in that order.
| nostrademons wrote:
| California's tech industry works because there is a long-
| established tradition of lawbreaking in California. We
| pass all these regulations, and then ignore them.
| Sometimes the more enlightened legislators put in
| explicit carve-outs for businesses of less than 50
| employees or a $B in revenue, so that startups don't have
| to actually break the law, they can just ignore it. But
| they're going to ignore it anyway, so the carve outs
| really serve the law's benefit rather than the startup.
|
| In practice, the way California tech startups work is
| 1) Break *all* the laws. 2) Get customers 3)
| Raise capital 4) Profit! 5) Hire lawyers to
| bring the company into compliance with the laws. 6)
| Hire lobbyists to bring the laws into compliance with the
| company. 7) Try to prevent your employees from
| doing the same thing you did.
|
| Steps #5-6 aren't limited to a particular state. At that
| point, you have buckets of money anyway, so you contort
| your company structure and product into a configuration
| that is legal in as many jurisdictions as possible,
| including internationally.
| kuschku wrote:
| Sure, but that's not any different in EU. Lobbyism exists
| here, too.
|
| But the social differences of the two markets remain.
| stephen_g wrote:
| You're discounting the fact that there's plenty of
| internal movement in Europe - I worked with a French firm
| that had a bunch of Italians, some Swiss, an Englishman,
| two Spaniards and a bunch of Russians working there along
| with the French people, all living around and working in
| their Paris office.
|
| It wouldn't be that hard to find people to translate your
| app and provide support in the major languages in most
| large European cities.
| mrtksn wrote:
| It's a meme on Twitter, essentially libertarians are pushing
| the idea that EU killed its tech industry through heavy
| reagulation and by tech they mean online advertisement.
|
| They keep posting graphs of market capitalisation claiming
| that Europe must be failing because doesn't have speculative
| public trading stocks. There's also the top-list theme,
| making list of top-10 companies by market cap, claiming that
| if your country doesn't have monopolistic speculative giant
| public companies you must be failing.
|
| It's very annoying because its very repetitive, I guess they
| are trying the Goebbles' propaganda technique of keep
| repeating something until people believe in it.
|
| Someone really really wants to turn the European economy into
| this short term high growth long term who cares casino that
| the US has become.
| influx wrote:
| What's the counter examples to highlight Europe's tech
| successes? Skype? Nokia? Soundcloud? Spotify?
| mrtksn wrote:
| Define success. If it's high stock market cap calculated
| by multiplying the number of shares with the last trade
| price Europe doesn't have many of those.
| simplyluke wrote:
| I'd flip the question and ask you by what metrics Europes
| tech sector is performing comparatively well. Employment?
| Average salary? ARR? I struggle to think of a metric
| that's a positive outlier.
| kube-system wrote:
| Vacation time.
| RestlessMind wrote:
| Pfft. Iran, Burkina Faso, Cambodia and Bahrain beat
| "Europe" handily on that metric https://en.wikipedia.org/
| wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_b...
|
| Let's have those countries as our role model then? /s
| mrtksn wrote:
| The full phrase is "vacation time _in Europe_ ".
| satvikpendem wrote:
| If we are talking about tech companies, as stated in the
| great-grandparent comment, tech employees in the US have
| as much or more vacation time as Europeans. I can easily
| take multi-month vacations if I so choose (with some
| prior planning and assent of course), and that is a
| similar story for other tech employees too. The
| difference is that we just get paid much more for the
| same work.
| kube-system wrote:
| They are allocated a good number of PTO hours, but
| Americans are really bad at taking them. I also could
| take that long of a vacation too, technically, but I
| never have and realistically never would.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| I guess, that's on them then. One could say the same of
| those types of Europeans who don't take vacation either.
| Personally I'm taking everything I'm allocated.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Longevity, happiness, health, leisure, life satisfaction.
| Companies are there to make these possible, not to
| maximise the stock trading price. Some achieve that by
| making EUV lithography machines, others do chemicals or
| pharmaceuticals.
|
| Are you aware that you can use the developer tools in
| your browser to set the price of the stock or your bank
| account balance to anything you like? You don't have to
| crumble your infrastructure, run from the mentally ill
| homeless people or bankrupt sick people to see those
| numbers.
|
| If you insist on extra steps, you can sell a stock to
| your friend at ridiculous price and say that that this
| company is now bigger than the worlds' economy combined.
| RestlessMind wrote:
| > Longevity, happiness, health, leisure, life
| satisfaction
|
| Apart from longevity[1], everything else is subjective so
| do you have any evidence? From what I see based on a
| quick search, happiness level seems same in US/Canada vs
| Germany/France. eg. Rankings by this[2] measure:
| Canada(15), USA(23), Germany(24), France(27). Or scores
| by this[3] measure: Canada (6.9), USA(6.7), Germany(6.7),
| France(6.6)
|
| [1] Even longevity is full of caveats and nuances. When
| you look at life expectancy by ethnicity, a given
| ethnicity has similar life expectancy across different
| advanced countries (eg. Japanese-Americans vs Japanese in
| Japan). It doesn't even seem to be correlated by income
| in the US, because latinos have a higher life expectancy
| than whites[4] even though later group is richer than the
| former.
|
| [2] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-
| rankings/happiest-...
|
| [3] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/a-map-of-global-
| happiness-b...
|
| [4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9256789/
| mrtksn wrote:
| I'm sure Americans are dying healthy and happy at young
| age. Crunching the numbers until the fit the narrative
| aside, the chocolates are horrible too.
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| This is called handwaving away an inconvenient truth.
|
| The highest HDI in the world is possessed by dozens of
| counties in the US. The lowest in the US is on par
| with... Poland.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| > Longevity, happiness, health, leisure, life
| satisfaction. Companies are there to make these possible,
| not to maximise the stock trading price.
|
| No? This is exactly the opposite of why companies exist,
| they are specifically there to increase the stock price
| via development of their products. That we get better
| happiness via rising wealth standards is just a
| coincidence, albeit a very useful and historically true
| coincidence. And even then, companies can last quite a
| while trudging along but it will stop at some point if
| new innovation is not kept up in the form of new
| companies (as older companies are usually at capacity for
| hiring). Look at the youth unemployment rate in many
| European countries compared to the US.
|
| > Are you aware that you can use the developer tools in
| your browser to set the price of the stock or your bank
| account balance to anything you like? You don't have to
| crumble your infrastructure, run from the mentally ill
| homeless people or bankrupt sick people to see those
| numbers.
|
| Changing a measure does not change the underlying thing
| it's measuring, no more than I can time travel by
| changing a clock. Obviously people are talking about what
| those numbers represent, not the numbers themselves. GDP
| is a useful enough concept as I mentioned above, one that
| correlates well to overall citizen wealth. Europeans are
| generally quite a bit poorer than Americans, even with
| the addition of the value of free (or rather, "free")
| healthcare. Tech employees are even more so advantaged,
| as their health insurance is excellent while they make
| multiples of their European counterparts. It is not
| "libertarian" to acknowledge this fact, and it's one of
| the main reasons you see many European tech people moving
| to the US and Silicon Valley.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Right, that's why at the heart of the tech innovation
| peple are running from mentally ill homeless people the
| insulating themselves in gated communities to pretend
| like living in a german village. Huge success.
|
| I wouldn't obsess too much with the GDP too, its not as
| good as a proxy to the important stuff as people are
| trying to make it. An appendicitis surgery generates much
| more economic activity in USA than in Europe and
| Americans don't end with better appendixes.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| The homeless people is a regulation failure, other cities
| have much better ways of dealing with them, California
| simply doesn't want to.
|
| GDP is a good measure in general, because again, economic
| activity is correlated with higher outcomes. See China
| now versus 100 years ago.
| quentindemetz wrote:
| Adyen
|
| Revolut
|
| GoCardless
|
| Shift
|
| Vinted
|
| ...
| gruez wrote:
| >Adyen
|
| >Revolut
|
| Those have 1% of the revenue compared to the top American
| tech companies (individual, not combined). The rest are
| private and I suspect have even less revenue. If those
| are the best examples of "tech successes" you can think
| of, you're proving the parent commenter's point.
| bmurphy1976 wrote:
| I don't know why the parent is calling out those
| companies, strange list.
|
| Europe has plenty of very successful, influential, and
| tech heavy organizations. ARM and AirBus come immediately
| to mind. Car manufacturers such as VW or BMW. Software
| companies such as SAP. Some of the largest banks and
| fossil fuel companies in the world.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| I bet the hardware you're running on wants to have a
| word.
|
| Wether if it's from Samsung, Apple, Google, Microsoft,
| NVIDIA or AMD. And lately, Intel too.
|
| ASML
| freedomben wrote:
| Aren't those American companies (other than Samsung)? I
| mean, they're all global/multi-national like most big
| corps, so it's not as clean as that. But it seems like
| you're actually agreeing with the parent...
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| Except Intel, all the hardware is produced in Taiwan or
| abroad at TSMC.
|
| Samsung and Intel ( + all others) buy their fabs at ASML.
|
| Cars: my preference is still German ( and Toyota). Tesla
| is really low build quality and it's claims for FSD ( as
| it's "technological innovation") is a joke. But, Waymo is
| ahead though.
|
| Planes: Well, Airbus, duh.
| freedomben wrote:
| If you zoom in on the just the hardware production market
| then yes sure, although that seems more an artifact of a
| small number of highly specialized manufacturers than
| evidence of startup friendliness, otherwise I'd expect to
| see a bunch of competing manufacturers rather than a
| handful of huge ones.
|
| In the context of this conversation also, when we say
| "tech" we're usually talking about much more than just
| hardware production (especially software). A huge chunk
| of the value-add is from the software and other use cases
| that the tech company adds to the hardware. But even just
| looking at hardware, a ton of that hardware is _designed_
| in the US and just sent out for manufacturing. The
| physical manufacturing is just a piece of the whole.
|
| But even all that aside, none of those major
| manufacturers seem to be in Europe, so I don't see how
| even zooming in on the hardware makes a point about
| Europe not having barriers and/or friction.
|
| As an aside, to be clear, I'm not making any value
| judgments here by saying just because things _are_ done
| somewhere means that is better. There 's a lot more to
| the equation than just that, which is easily illustrated
| with a hypothetical example. If you enslaved a population
| you could get a lot of business by doing things cheaply,
| but it obviously wouldn't be a "better" place just
| because it's the easiest/cheapest place to get business
| is done.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| Well. It's not about the cheapest place where to get
| business done. I doubt it's the US fyi...
|
| It's where the money is there in large numbers for the
| bang per buck.
|
| Additionally: Natural resources ( middle east) or
| continents that are not land locked with bad actors (
| almost everywhere outside of the US / Canada).
|
| Additionally, 1 language/culture to rule them all has an
| incredible benefit compared to Europe.
|
| Just my POV fyi. Coming from Belgium, 10 million people
| and 3 official languages. An European tax number is
| relatively new too.
| gruez wrote:
| >They keep posting graphs of market capitalisation claiming
| that Europe must be failing because doesn't have
| speculative public trading stocks.
|
| Say all you want about "speculative public trading stocks",
| but I trust public markets' pricing more than private
| markets[1] or the government[2].
|
| [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-02-26/w
| hat-h...
|
| [2] https://www.economist.com/finance-and-
| economics/2023/05/25/c...
| mrtksn wrote:
| Obsession with pricing the stock is not healthy.
|
| According to western reports, China is at least 15 years
| ahead of US in Nuclear for example:
| https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-many-15-years-
| beh...
|
| Or public infrastructure, or transportation, or electric
| cars etc.
|
| US is stil ahead in some stuff but the list is getting
| smaller as the market caps getting bigger and people
| "richer".
| gruez wrote:
| >Obsession with pricing the stock is not healthy.
|
| I'm not claiming it is, just that it's far more objective
| and far less fudgeable than the alternatives.
|
| >According to western reports, China is at least 15 years
| ahead of US in Nuclear for example:
| https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-many-15-years-
| beh...
|
| >Or public infrastructure, or transportation, or electric
| cars etc.
|
| Arguably all of those is more due to government
| intervention than the companies themselves. Nuclear is
| impossible to build in the US due to overburdensome
| regulations, infrastructure/transportation is impossible
| to build due to NIMBY-friendly planning rules, electric
| cars are massively subsidized by the Chinese government.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Right, China achieve all this thanks to its libertarian
| low touch low regulation small government and only if the
| stock prices of the American companies go a bit higher
| and the government is a tad less regulated they will do
| even better than the Chinese.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Not all regulation is bad, but also, not all regulation
| is good. Regulation is meaningless in a vacuum. I support
| more consumer protection regulation, but also, I support
| YIMBYism [0] which is a deregulatory model that wants to
| remove restrictions on housing, which were largely made
| by corporations and NIMBYs who don't want their property
| values to go down if new housing is built. YIMBYism is
| actually very similar to how Europe builds their housing,
| via mixed zone development.
|
| It is the same with your comment, saying that it's only
| libertarians or those who want low regulation is a
| strawman, it depends on exactly which type of regulation.
| China can achieve some things with its big government
| ways, but it can't achieve everything. [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YIMBY_movement
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| The economic case for nuclear is mostly what keeps it
| from being built in the USA. The USA built a lot of
| nuclear power plants in the 70s/80s, and they didn't
| really pay off even with the government providing free
| insurance coverage. Likewise, today it is even harder to
| make the case for a new nuclear power plant since
| renewables are much cheaper on a kW basis.
|
| Chinese regulation is neither too high nor too low. It
| would be impossible to build a nuclear plant if the
| government didn't firmly back it, otherwise there are no
| barriers that it can't ignore.
| grumpyprole wrote:
| I had always assumed that the UK killed it's tech industry
| by selling it all off for short term gain. That needs
| regulation to prevent.
| mrtksn wrote:
| IMHO it has nothing to do with the governments, in Europe
| there's no that kind of money and the investor mentality
| is very different than the Americans and the European
| culture is much less accommodating to failure.
|
| It's the European way to roll, the Brits are trying to be
| a bit more like the Americans but its worlds apart. The
| American spirit is something else, I wish we had it in
| Europe but maybe its not compatible at all with the
| European way of life. So, if you feel adventurous,
| motivated and ambitious you go to USA to make it big.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| There's no speculative stocks in Europe? Seriously? I guess
| if you ignore all the stock markets in Europe, sure?
|
| Also, it's funny that you mention Goebels. It's ironic even
| when you repeat the same tropes about the US and how it's
| supposedly beholden to the capital markets and speculators.
|
| Europe has its giants. Europe usually does not attack its
| giants. That's why you get megacorps like Maersk or Airbus
| or Volkswagen. The entire point is that it only attacks
| other giants (ie, not homegrown giants), hence the focus on
| legislation that mostly affects them but leaves European
| corporations mostly unscathed. Or why green legislation
| curiously doesn't affect German coal extraction (what a
| coincidence!) that much. Or all the other double standards
| Europe and some Europeans love so much.
|
| The delusion here is this weird narrative of good, noble
| Europeans who are somehow only guilty of not being greedy.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Europe is far from noble, just different mentality and
| expectations from life. VW keep saying that next year VW
| Golf robotaxis are coming and not delivering wouldn't
| fly, therefore we don't have crazy stock prices.
|
| Airbus keeps making good quality planes that don't fall
| from the skies, selling those then flying around. It's
| alright, I don't know why the government should attack
| Airbus but maybe the US government should have kept
| Boeing in check.
|
| Europeans have their ways and Americans have theirs.
| Let's keep it like that and not put all the eggs in the
| same basket, as it appears that Chinese came up with
| another hugely successful economy model.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Sure but that wasn't the main thrust of what I was
| replying to. Also, I guess it only has its own Wireguards
| or (if we want to talk about inflated promises instead of
| outright fraud) hundreds of start up like Qwant that
| promised to challenge the big American man in (2) more
| weeks or just a few more subsidies.
|
| The only difference is that we hear a lot more about
| American success and failures as they are sadly utterly
| dominant in media presence way beyond their own borders.
| And Europe seems much more likely to just keep its
| skeletons hidden in its closet, and tries to talk about
| them as little as possible.
|
| (For example,see how the German regulators dealt with
| Wireguard by going after the journalists that sounded the
| alarm for years. Or how Europeans love to discuss
| American issues like racism while ignoring how much worse
| the issue can be in their own backyard. Or the commenters
| here that recoil at any criticism of the EU and invent
| some conspiracy where said criticism _obviously_ comes
| from. I never see any American accuse Europeans of being
| behind sentiment that is critical of the US.)
|
| Americans love to be very loud about their issues, for
| better or for worse.
| asenna wrote:
| I recently moved to Spain, after having lived in the US for
| a decade. It's only been a month for me and I definitely
| see the over-reaching over-regulation of EVERYTHING in the
| EU.
|
| It's so much that it literally pushes young people to have
| a non-risk taking mindset. I have a friend who has some
| knife sharpening and tooling skills and she's been figuring
| how to do something with this (some kind of a business). I
| suggested why not get a garage and get the machinery you
| want and get started. She listed down all the regulations
| and how even thinking about it is not allowed.
|
| Starting a business/startups is hard. The EU just adds
| 10-20 more hurdles to cross to get even with the US startup
| ecosystem. At least that's been my observation in the few
| weeks.
| mrtksn wrote:
| That's probably not an EU thing, you should consider an
| EU country more suitable to your line of business. Or you
| know, just do your thing don't bother with the
| regulations and pay a fine if it becomes a problem some
| time in the future?
|
| Apparently Spaniards like it this way, they live long
| healthy lives in the system they set up for themselves.
| rallyforthesun wrote:
| That someone can buy new DJI drones in europe is right, but
| only the latest releases. You cannot use any of the drones
| you might have purchased over the last years anymore in
| europe because of the new regulations.
| coldtea wrote:
| I don't think that's true. You just need some new firmware
| or something, no?
| freedomben wrote:
| I think the situation is far more nuanced than what will be
| debateable here, but I've had friends that tried to do tech
| startups in Europe and ended up moving to the US and doing it
| here. This is surely not a representative sample so take with
| a grain of salt, but generally speaking this is their
| (paraphrased) analysis:
|
| In Europe it just takes a lot more capital investment to get
| started. You can't do it as a side-gig with a hope/dream
| working nights and weekends like you can in the US. The
| process to MVP is just way more complicated because there's a
| ton of compliance/legal stuff that has to be there at launch.
| The actual product might take 60 hours of work to build, but
| then there's another 200 hours of compliance to do which
| doesn't add any product value at all. You also typically have
| to hire an expert to help at least consult, because trying to
| do it all yourself just requires you to have a ton of
| expertise that no single person ever has. Hiring is also a
| mixed bag. Market salaries in Europe are a lot less which
| helps, but firing a bad fit is also way harder so there's big
| risk. You also can't offer stock-based comp as much in Europe
| as you can in the US, which all serves to make it harder to
| get launched.
|
| Once you reach a certain scale, Europe can be just as
| friendly or more-so than the US, but that scale acts as a
| great filter for people that don't already have the deep
| pockets to fund things on their own to get to that point, and
| most investors won't take that kind of risk without
| validating product-market fit. The European culture of more
| longevity also makes it easier in some ways to keep a young
| company stable because people aren't constantly leaving and
| you aren't constantly in bidding wars for talent. Overall
| it's just a mixed bag, but that early filter is why you don't
| see as many working-class people doing a tech startup in
| Europe and making it big. On the flip side, when companies
| make it through that filter, they tend to be a lot healthier
| and more viable, and quality tends to be higher. Again these
| are generalities.
| permo-w wrote:
| I suspect you're over-egging the amount of compliance that
| needs to be done and under-egging the filter of the
| existing big players mostly being American, who buy up
| competitors in order to maintain market dominance
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| Okay, but what will happen if US goes to war with China?
|
| This can happen much quicker and easier than you think. Some
| Chinese delusional leader is going to attack Taiwan and voila,
| all the import from China will immediately stop at that exact
| moment.
| balls187 wrote:
| > Okay, but what will happen if US goes to war with China?
|
| Actual armed conflict? Total annihilation. Neither side wants
| this. Its why China will not invade Taiwan, and why the US
| won't put its boot on the neck of the China.
| cyrillite wrote:
| I've just been considering getting into drone photography. Do
| you have any opinions or resources to share?
| Velofellow wrote:
| Other than waiting to see where things shake out with the
| Senate, perhaps Sony? I can't speak to manufacturer support,
| and not sure Sony will stay in the drone game in the long
| term where it would feel like a sound investment.
|
| I've been looking at other commercial-esque options (mainly
| photogrammetry) and came across Sony's"bring your own DSLR"
| drone.
|
| https://pro.sony/ue_US/products/professional-drones/ars-s1
| petesergeant wrote:
| > It's disheartening to witness the US embracing protectionism
| for high-tech
|
| Is it? I suspect China has zero regrets in embracing
| protectionism for social media. The American drone consumer
| will get squeezed for a few years, until the US develops decent
| home-grown suppliers in a strategic industry. Hard to think of
| a better limited use of protectionism tbh.
| rayiner wrote:
| Exactly! The Chinese leadership is smarter than America's
| leadership: just look at what they do. They embrace
| protectionism when it makes sense.
| beloch wrote:
| Speaking as a Canadian, U.S. trade protectionism is nothing
| new. It happens all the time and frequently targets allies like
| Canada rather than rivals like China. What U.S. citizens should
| watch out for is when U.S. protectionism winds up hurting the
| U.S.'s own economy. e.g. Tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber
| may have helped out a few U.S. softwood lumber producers with
| good lobbyists (and Jimmy Carter), but the increase in lumber
| prices had a much larger negative impact on the U.S. economy as
| a whole due to higher costs of building materials impacting
| pretty much everyone.
| nostrademons wrote:
| That's a large part of the issue, though. The narrative 10
| years ago was that we were preventing Chinese from dumping
| low-cost crap on the U.S. market. Okay, fair enough, keep the
| crap out. But recent U.S. protectionism has been targeting
| very high-quality, best-in-class Chinese manufacturers that
| honestly outcompete anything their U.S. competitors bring to
| market. Without that competition, there's no incentive for
| U.S. makers to raise their technological game, and the sector
| just stagnates and falls behind the rest of the world.
|
| North America has the benefit of two oceans for national
| defense, but the risk associated with that is one of
| insularity and stagnation. Ask an indigenous person (if you
| can find one) how well being a couple hundred years behind
| European technological development worked out once hostile
| colonists are on your shores.
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| I don't think they were just
|
| > a couple hundred years behind
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| They were, 16th century muskets aren't much better than
| bows and arrows.
| jltsiren wrote:
| They were at least 2000 years behind Europe in weapons
| and armor technology. Some cultures had bronze weapons,
| but no iron smelting or steel.
|
| Even before muskets started becoming common, European
| professional infantry had largely abandoned shields. Mass
| produced plate armor provided sufficient protection from
| arrows, and two-handed pikes were better than a pike and
| a shield.
|
| On the other hand, bows became more effective again as
| muskets improved. When a musket could penetrate any
| reasonable armor, personal protection became less
| important.
| freedomben wrote:
| Indeed, and we never seem to learn. Lumber prices in the US
| during Covid were eye-watering and wreaked havoc through the
| whole economy that is still being felt today, and it was
| almost entirely due to US protectionism of lumber.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Yes, Trump's tariffs were exceptionally bad, stupid, poorly
| thought out, and poorly implemented, like the vast majority
| of the things he did.
|
| But the fact that goofus fails at doing X doesn't make
| doing X always the wrong choice.
| bityard wrote:
| I'm not a fan of protectionism either, but that particular
| example is not true at all.
|
| Lumber prices rose because at the start of the pandemic,
| the industry predicted a housing crash and took drastic
| steps to downsize and then the exact opposite happened. And
| we were left with a garden-variety supply vs demand
| situation.
|
| If it was just protectionism, prices in Canada would not
| have had sharply increased lumber prices at the exact same
| time: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/lumber-prices-
| covid-19-cost...
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Protectionism, like industry subsidies, is a double-edged
| sword.
|
| - On the one hand, as SE Asia is intimately familiar with, it
| can create space to create globally competitive industries.
|
| - On the other hand, it can also remove the incentive for
| local industries to invest and become technically
| competitive.
|
| IMHO, what I'd like to see would be a stricter link between
| protection measures and R&D investment.
|
| If an industry is protected, then it is required to prove
| it's improving itself + limit returns to shareholders.
|
| E.g. steadily increasing CAFE fuel efficiency standards,
| requirements to demonstrate decreasing costs of production
| (lumber and/or steel), etc.
|
| Too often, protection measures are implemented, the excess
| benefits are skimmed and go directly to shareholders, and the
| company doesn't increase its global competitiveness (e.g. US
| Steel).
| acchow wrote:
| A la "chicken tax" (A 25% tariff on light trucks)
| WheatMillington wrote:
| The US is the most protected "free trade" economy in the
| world, by far.
| questhimay wrote:
| Why is this happening to China?
|
| 1.) China is supporting Russia militarily and financially on
| its invasion of Ukraine and attack on Europe
|
| 2.) China is lead by a dictator that has threatened time and
| time again to unify with Taiwan militarily if needed. And has
| boosted military presence threats on Taiwan, case in point,
| recent missile "drills". Taiwan right now is the most important
| technology driver of all things AI related
|
| 3.) China is attacking US in many sectors via state sponsorship
| of an industry to undercut and destroy an entire foreign sector
| companies, and IP theft. Happened before with solar.
| darby_nine wrote:
| none of this insight will help america compete with china. at
| first blush it seems like instead we're cutting ourselves off
| at the ankle.
| hatsix wrote:
| So... what WILL help america compete with China? (without
| playing the same game) How could the US build out a
| competitive drone industry with chinese manufacturers able
| to cut price because the Chinese government will cover the
| gap?
|
| Drones are not yet an "essential" piece of technology for
| the country as a whole. We're currently at "cutting
| ourselves off at the toe" territory... in a few years we'd
| be even more dependent and legislation like this would be
| catastrophic. Better now than in the 2026.
| odiroot wrote:
| Repeat of Harley Davidson situation?
| simianparrot wrote:
| I disagree with the EU on a lot of things, but when it comes to
| tech and privacy in particular, they're the gold standard in
| putting individual people first. As someone deeply involved in
| my company's compliance with GDPR, it can't be overstated how
| important it is.
| Lisdexamfeta wrote:
| All Xi has to do is stop barreling towards an invasion of
| Taiwan.
|
| The U.S., Europe, and Japan need to create and enhance a drone
| industrial base _before_ China invades Taiwan. By the time it
| has invaded, creating the industrial base will be too late.
|
| Also, China has created DJI through government-sponsored
| industrial policy, not via open markets.
| sbarre wrote:
| > China has created DJI through government-sponsored
| industrial policy, not via open markets.
|
| So like Boeing, Intel, Lockheed-Martin, GE, IBM, etc..
|
| That's nothing new, just 50-100 years behind the west...
| Lisdexamfeta wrote:
| As you well know the scale and effort to dominate external
| consumer markets is nothing similar.
| sbarre wrote:
| Are you saying these US industries and companies have not
| dominated external markets?
| nullifidian wrote:
| the roots of silicon valley are in the decades of military
| contracts, initially, i.e. in the "government-sponsored
| industrial policy" https://youtu.be/ZTC_RxWN_xo?t=3546
| chme wrote:
| Most hardware has no reason to require direct internet access
| or an account with the manufacturer to work. If some device
| requires internet access, then it cannot be trusted to not
| transmit personal data, therefore it should be possible to
| replace the software on that device, so that something that is
| trusted by the consumer can be installed.
|
| While DJI here might create good hardware, their internet and
| account requirement makes it uncontrollable by the consumer, so
| I do understand that some consumers or, the possible more
| security aware US, will not trust it. But for the same reason
| China and other countries might not trust Apple or similar.
|
| Trust is something that needs to be earned and which has to go
| both ways, if a company doesn't trust their users, and prevents
| people using their bought products however they like, then why
| should their users trust the company and let their
| uncontrollable software record their private lives and possible
| report back to them?
| segasaturn wrote:
| While I agree with you, I doubt banning Chinese tech will
| remedy this problem. My experience is that American brands
| are much, much more aggressive about making you connect to
| the internet, install our apps, create an account, subscribe
| to our newsletter etc.
|
| Look at the difference between iRobot and Chinese robot
| vacuums on Amazon - the difference is night and day.
| chme wrote:
| True.
|
| I was just talking about my experience with DJI. Where you
| buy a product, can use it for a bit, and then it stops
| working, because you haven't connected it to the internet
| or created an account.
|
| It is often the 'market leaders' that are so afraid to
| loose customers and their market position to implement
| customer hostile processes into their products.
| mike_d wrote:
| > American brands are much, much more aggressive about
| making you connect to the internet, install our apps,
| create an account
|
| This whataboutism ignores one very important point.
|
| When you connect a device to an American company they might
| do things that we consider privacy violations, while still
| staying generally within the bounds of the law. We like to
| joke about data going to the NSA or something, but in the
| _extremely limited_ cases where it does protections exist
| with oversight.
|
| Contrast this to Chinese companies where by law every
| company is part-owned by the government itself. The
| Ministry of State Security literally has employees who show
| up to these companies every day like normal workers, but
| their job is to find and exploit intelligence on foreign
| individuals and businesses.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > This whataboutism ignores one very important point.
|
| Reverse whataboutism is still whataboutism.
|
| For example this predicate
|
| > while still staying generally within the bounds of the
| law.
|
| Completely ignores the fact that US companies have been
| found lying and deceiving to circumvent the barriers
| posed by the law.
|
| But not only US companies, remember the diesel gate?
|
| This other predicate
|
| > (In China) by law every company is part-owned by the
| government itself
|
| It's completely false, while this one
|
| > The Ministry of State Security literally has employees
| who show up to these companies every day like normal
| workers
|
| It's pure intellectual dishonesty . Every sufficiently
| advanced intelligence agency has spies. With the USA
| agencies being the largest employers for spies on the
| entire Planet.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| The idea of running any internet-connected software with
| a push-update mechanism, built and controlled by a
| company in a country without a strong independent rule of
| law, should terrify far more people than it apparently
| does.
|
| This is one of those 'It's not a problem until it is a
| problem, and then it's a big fucking problem' scenarios.
| FactKnower69 wrote:
| >a country without a strong independent rule of law
|
| I'd really like you to try and define this term in a way
| that doesn't exclude the US
| ethbr1 wrote:
| If anyone wants to point to US FISA laws and use that to
| equate the US justice system with China's, I'm all
| ears...
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I'm not sure what you are getting at, but judicial
| independence is one thing that the USA has (in some
| quantity) that China has none of. There is no such thing
| as judicial review in China, if the official class
| decides to ignore China's constitutional freedoms of
| speech, religion, and press, then there is no recourse
| for a court to come in and say, "no, that's not right."
| Vs. the USA, where the Supreme court comes in all the
| time and tells presidents and congress what they can't
| do.
|
| The Chinese government has said multiple times that it
| believes rule of law is a western imperialistic concept,
| so it isn't like this is even a goal for them.
| ziddoap wrote:
| I agree with most of your point but.
|
| > _data going to the NSA or something, but in the
| extremely limited cases where it does protections exist
| with oversight._
|
| They didn't build the Utah Data Center because of their
| extremely limited amount of data.
|
| We all like to joke about our data going to the NSA
| because our data has been repeatedly been caught going to
| the NSA.
| monkpit wrote:
| Yeah, it's not a joke...
| hatsix wrote:
| Depends on what you consider the "problem". As Congress
| sees it, the problem is two-fold... You have no control
| over your data. The company that does have control over
| your data is beholden to a foreign country not currently
| considered "a close ally".
| khazhoux wrote:
| > While I agree with you, I doubt banning Chinese tech will
| remedy this problem.
|
| I don't mean this as a political issue, but in your comment
| I see one of the reasons Trump appeals to people. He
| promotes a mindset of "stop handwringing and just fix the
| damn problem."
|
| Here we know the following:
|
| 1) DJI devices have an always-on connection
|
| 2) Chinese government is unfriendly to US and exerts strong
| control over Chinese companies
|
| 3) China regularly blocks US companies for whatever reason
| they decide.
|
| So yeah, we can say "but banning DJI won't solve the
| general problem of bad companies; we shouldn't just focus
| on China; is a ban really fair? etc etc. Or, we can just
| say "screw it -- China treats US companies like shit and
| we're not gonna just hand over all our drone info"
| segasaturn wrote:
| I'm not sure how that would actually "fix the damn
| problem"? My point is that American tech companies are
| just as data-hungry as DJI, probably more, and Chinese
| tech products are more likely to let users control their
| devices off-line than American brands. You're right
| though that creating a boogeyman and attacking it while
| ignoring the much larger and more complicated problems is
| great politics (and always has been)
| tw04 wrote:
| And yet the US government isn't worried about a US company
| leaking photos of sensitive information to the US
| government.
|
| The same cannot be said of the Chinese government who may
| be happy to get extensive drone footage of everyday US
| infrastructure which can be used in a future war.
|
| Meanwhile, China won't even let Google provide a valid map
| of the country... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps
| #Google_Maps_in_Chi...
|
| But tell us all more about how we should be more concerned
| about a US company requiring an internet login.
| jpgvm wrote:
| > direct internet access or an account with the manufacturer
| to work
|
| Unfortunately this is required by regulators in many
| countries. In Thailand you can't fly a drone without a
| license. You need to obtain the license before activating the
| drone and provide your information and the license number at
| time of activation (which is tied to drone serial number).
|
| It sucks but it's the law here.
| kragen wrote:
| shitty laws in thailand are no excuse for human rights
| infringements in the other 99% of the world
| cruffle_duffle wrote:
| Requiring an account to use a DJI drone is a human rights
| violation?
| euroderf wrote:
| I would like to see a requirement that any drone sold in (or
| imported to) the US (or EU) has to be flashable - without
| having to desolder components, or any other such nonsense.
| Press some buttons and load new software.
|
| An accompanying requirement would be to document interfaces
| to hardware subsystems (chip spec sheets would suffice).
|
| With drones, the potential for mischief is too great to let
| malware be smuggled in.
|
| Is this a politically and technically realistic goal ? Or am
| I talkin' thru my hat ?
| AdamJacobMuller wrote:
| Impossible, especially for drones, because it would allow
| people to trivially flash firmware to drones which can
| bypass restrictions like no-fly zones and reporting
| requirements which allow the FAA or other LE to answer
| questions like "who was flying a drone playing chicken with
| a low-flying Cessna"
| chipt4 wrote:
| Err, while it takes a _little_ more technical know-how
| and some electronics experience, this already exists and
| is still extremely easy to do..
|
| https://betaflight.com/
|
| or
|
| https://github.com/iNavFlight/inav
|
| or
|
| https://ardupilot.org/
|
| among others
| kragen wrote:
| i agree, but we shouldn't require all firmware to be open-
| source and user-replaceable on only chinese devices; we
| should require it for everything, perhaps with narrow
| exceptions for things like pos terminals and certain kinds of
| industrial equipment
| greenavocado wrote:
| Back before the war it was possible to obtain hacked DJI ROMs
| from the Russians that disabled all of these connections and
| restrictions including no-fly zones.
| hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
| Yep. That's basically what's happening. It's China success envy
| syndrome. And instead of competing in healthy ways, political
| concerns roll out crushing policies that harm both investing
| opportunities and the ability of consumers to choose freely.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| How can it be protectionism when the US has no consumer drone
| industry to protect?
| cm2012 wrote:
| The risk of relying on China for anything military related is
| too high. They have an aggressive, expansionary mindset and
| threaten war over Taiwan all the time.
| 83 wrote:
| You use protectionism like it's a bad thing, but I'm sure the
| folks in the military industrial complex see what's going on in
| Ukraine and realise it wouldn't be a bad thing if the US had
| some domestic small drone manufacturing capabilities. Banning
| DJI could both encourage some of that manufacturing, while also
| stemming the flow of data to China.
|
| We used to spend ludicrous amounts of money to fly spy planes
| to map hostile countries - now a hostile country has a access
| to a huge number of drones providing live camera data. These
| drones are hard to track so the government doesn't always know
| if they've been flown near sensitive areas. It would be
| negligent of the government to not try to do something about
| it.
| hintymad wrote:
| > It's disheartening to witness the US embracing protectionism
| for high-tech
|
| The US is embracing protectionism because we lost the
| manufacturing advantage. We lost the advantage because we
| outsourced our manufacturing to China with the pipe dream that
| we could keep the "higher end" of the value chain. It's as if
| we can magically have senior engineers without training junior
| ones in factories. It's as if the equally ambitious and
| talented Chinese fellows wouldn't want to climb up the value
| chain. As a result, we have lost talent. We have lost know-how.
| We have lost the supply chain. We have lost the intuition of
| how to optimize or scale manufacturing.
|
| What a shame.
| deciplex wrote:
| > It's disheartening to witness the US embracing protectionism
| for high-tech.
|
| Worth noting that this is a different kind of protectionism
| than that sometimes practiced by developing nations to build up
| their local infrastructure and industry. In both cases you end
| up with higher domestic prices and lower quality of goods (at
| least at first) but at least in the case of the developing
| nation you do actually build up some domestic infrastructure
| and industry in the meantime. (Or, at least, you have the
| opportunity to do so.)
|
| That's not what's happening here as there is no build-up for us
| to do. This is just the US government acting on behalf of US
| companies to shield them from competition so they can soak the
| domestic market for every cent without interference. There's no
| way any of this is going to reverse or even slow down the trend
| of enshittification - in fact, it's going to accelerate it.
| mrandish wrote:
| This is so misguided it's breathtaking. Even if one buys into the
| supposed "harm" it's apparently trying to address, by targeting a
| specific corporate entity the proposed legislation won't do
| anything meaningful toward those ends. But it will confuse the
| market and hurt U.S. hobbyist consumers while being largely
| unenforceable anyway.
|
| It's one of those things that's just so dumb you assume it's only
| congressional election year virtue signaling designed to get some
| headlines and then be quietly negotiated away during
| 'reconciliation', yet congressional processes are so
| dysfunctional there's always a risk it accidentally becomes law.
| bluescrn wrote:
| Be thankful that consumer/hobbyist drones haven't been banned
| entirely already (banning other model aircraft along with them
| as collateral damage).
|
| Especially after all the footage of essentially-hobby-grade
| drones with familiar open-source flight controller software
| being turned into very effective weapons of war in Ukraine.
| Teever wrote:
| We'll what happens after the first public vigilante action
| against a corrupt cop who got a paid vacation instead of a
| jail sentence.
|
| But I think that the cat is out of the bag and that DRM will
| be the attempted solution to this kind stuff. It's going to
| go poorly though.
|
| What part can you regulate and control? Not the batteries or
| the motors, or the off the shelf microcontrollers.
| lupusreal wrote:
| They could put anybody who assembles those parts into a
| drone into prison. Of course it would still be technically
| feasible to make one anyway, just as it's technically
| feasible to make an autosear, or for that matter a whole
| gun. Doesn't mean it can't be banned.
| Teever wrote:
| If they weren't able to stop people from growing and
| distributing marijuana then I doubt they'll be able to
| stop this.
| vkou wrote:
| They can't stop them all, but they definitely stopped
| anyone they caught.
| Retric wrote:
| It takes minimal skills or effort to grow pot.
|
| This is closer to banning moonshine which was arguably
| fairly effective.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Whoa there big fella. Let's not denigrate weed growers
| with your broad brush trying to a make a point. Anyone
| that believes growing pot takes minimal effort clearly
| does not know what they are talking about. Maybe you can
| just drop some seeds in the ground somewhere, and maybe a
| pot plant will grow, but good weed will not be a plant of
| any value what so ever.
| 6510 wrote:
| My joke was to ask who is in charge, the pot grower or
| the plants? You get people who don't know personal
| hygiene, cant cook, cant run an agenda, cant read a book,
| cant pay their bills in time, cant keep a cactus alive.
| They cant do any of those things if their life depended
| on it. Then all of a sudden they are busy every waking
| hour doing all of those things to perfection and they
| talk like professors. Not to mention the possible
| consequences. If the plants had legs, arms, a brain and
| access to the internet they would be doing and thinking
| precisely the same things. Who do you think has the pants
| on?
| Retric wrote:
| Low effort doesn't mean zero effort. 19 states legalized
| home cultivation and many people are perfectly happy with
| what they get with minimal effort. Even in states where
| they can legally buy a higher quality product.
|
| > not be a plant of any value what so ever
|
| It's long been a perfectly viable strategy to plant pot
| on public lands and then come back for harvest. That
| doesn't mean people are tossing seeds randomly, but lower
| rewards are balanced by lower risks. Some customers are
| always interested in savings cash even for a terrible
| product.
| 6510 wrote:
| True but some efforts are way beyond what is done in
| agriculture. They for example have been mutation
| breeding[0] since it was discovered on much larger scale
| than public efforts. The mutants check all possible boxes
| except taste. Grow faster, drinks more, more THC,
| resistant to heat and diseases, likes light 24/7 even
| while flowering, all the same size, no branches, few
| leafs, easier to clone.
|
| [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_breeding
| lupusreal wrote:
| Doesn't stop them from making marijuana illegal and
| putting people in prison, does it?
|
| That said, I think enforcement would be more effective
| for drones. Marijuana can be effectively enjoyed in the
| privacy of your own home, but that's only true for a
| limited extent of drones. They're noisy and usually flown
| out in the open where annoyed neighbors can narc on you.
| Furthermore, just my subjective guess, I think people
| will be more willing to break the rules to enjoy
| marijuana than to enjoy drones. Marijuana is very
| effective at making a shit life tolerable, so people are
| more willing to break the law for it (and alcohol, etc).
| hooverd wrote:
| Or 3D printers! You can print scary "ghost guns" with them.
| And they're mostly made in China. Although maybe Stratasys
| will push for that next now that they're lost their
| stranglehold on the market.
| kuschku wrote:
| While the cheaper 3D printers are mostly chinese, Prusa is
| still a non-chinese option :)
| 91bananas wrote:
| While this is true and I own a Prusa MK4, they're so
| behind it's not even funny.
| stavros wrote:
| This is true, they'd gotten too complacent and now Bambu
| is eating their lunch.
| jononor wrote:
| While Bamboo etc are one head in front of Prusa now, they
| are still very close in the context of printing weapons.
| I mean, neither are particularly suited compared to a CNC
| mill or lathe. And both have come quite a long way since
| what we had 10-15 years ago, when FDM for non-industrial
| users got started.
| kuschku wrote:
| That depends entirely on your definition of "behind".
|
| The MK4 delivers pretty much the same quality at the same
| speed as the P1P.
|
| Paying 30% more to get an open-source, fully modular,
| fully repairable and customizable product that's made
| sustainably with fair wages is not a huge markup.
|
| I'd gladly pay 30% more to get an Android phone that's
| fully modular, open-source, repairable, upgradable and
| made in the EU.
| somehnguy wrote:
| The speed of the MK4 for the same quality isn't even
| close to the P1P due to it being a bedslinger vs CoreXY
| gemoetry.
| kuschku wrote:
| That's... quite misleading? The MK4 with input shaping is
| limited by extrusion speed, not the motion system.
|
| The printers are both pretty identical in performance
| today. And while CoreXY has significantly more headroom
| in case you'd like to upgrade the current bottlenecks,
| that's not an option with the Bambu printers anyway.
| bluescrn wrote:
| Speed isn't everything, especially when more speed means
| more noise
| lupusreal wrote:
| The bans are inevitable. It's only a matter of time before
| somebody tries to drop a pipe bomb on a politician.
| haroldp wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Caracas_drone_attack
| bluescrn wrote:
| They wouldn't want to use a firearm for that. Might get
| guns banned...
| chasd00 wrote:
| I hope not, i'm pretty involved in the high power rocketry
| hobby and the materials/electronics and knowledge exist in
| the hobby to make something like a guided surface-to-
| surface rocket with a range in 10s of miles but no one does
| because it would instantly ruin the hobby for everyone. A
| friend of mine in heavy into r/c planes and is an embedded
| engineer so he has a bunch of autopilot stuff going on. I'm
| sure he can scale as high as he wants (he's also a private
| pilot) and fly a heavy payload to a point on a map
| autonomously. Again, no one does it because it would ruin
| the hobby for everyone.
|
| Lots of people want to do this but the place for it is like
| a DARPA challenge not in the general hobby. If the
| authorities got wind of it then down come the regulations
| and no more hobby.
| mrandish wrote:
| Yes, as a long-time fixed-wing RC hobbyist, it's
| generally the newbie idiots who do stupid things that
| threaten the entire hobby. Despite all the new rules
| (which I don't even bother to keep up with anymore), I
| still fly my planes like I always have. And just like
| always, I don't bother anyone and no one bothers me.
| lupusreal wrote:
| The problem for drones is easily weaponizable models
| exist off the shelf for people with malicious intentions
| and no interest in preserving the hobby. To weaponized a
| rocket requires more intellectual investment.
| logicchains wrote:
| Hey at least if the drones are turned into weapons there's
| a chance the Supreme Court might overturn the bans.
| ribosometronome wrote:
| Would turning drones into arms not make them more, rather
| than less, protected in the US?
| stavros wrote:
| I like the way you think.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Explosive drones would be a destructive device. I don't
| know about drone mounted firearms though.
| lagniappe wrote:
| No
| neuronexmachina wrote:
| "Shall not be infringed!"
| 123yawaworht456 wrote:
| grenades are sold separately though.
| _joel wrote:
| "Batteries not included" just won't have the same ring
| again.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Just need to attach a trigger to the drone and then it can
| kill as many people as it wants without being regulated.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Whatever else you may think of the move ( I dislike it, because
| I dislike adding equivalent of riders to big bills like these
| ), it is surprisingly consistent with current wave of
| government actions ( recent placement of DeepCool on US
| sanctions list ). Things are happening and reading the
| political tea leaves makes one recognize current unmistakable
| trend as a the drums of war.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Since corporations are people (in the minds of US jurists)
| wouldn't that make it an unconstitutional Bill of Attainder?
| questhimay wrote:
| Why would ou think it's "dumb", when we've already had TikTok
| ban, tariff on Chinese EV, and chip ban on China?
|
| It's very clear that China is an enemy that has to be dealt
| with by US
| 6510 wrote:
| It's not practical, one should always assume or even pretend
| to be the cause of problems yourself.
|
| Maybe it was not a good idea to kill RND in favor of greed?
|
| Do you remember the parable of the ground breaking
| publication with its findings never finding a way into
| industry?
|
| Musk often moaned about how hard it is to make things. It's
| our culture/society/economy a lot of the mechanisms are
| things we've made up sometimes going against reality. If we
| want to make something easier we would have to apply
| ourselves?
|
| In 1950 the Chinese had 83% working in agriculture, the USA
| had 7%. (Today it is 22% and 1.6%)
|
| You could argue they had access to abundant cheap labor but
| it is more practical to say we don't have access because
| everything is insanely expensive. Everything we do primarily
| benefits people who are useless to the process.
|
| If you cant afford babies there is no need to have a family,
| no need to build houses for them. If one does accidentally a
| baby training and educating it should benefit everyone except
| the baby and the future?
|
| We did all that and then boo hoo, China this China that?
| mrandish wrote:
| I already said why it's dumb
|
| > "the proposed legislation won't do anything meaningful
| toward those ends."
| bluescrn wrote:
| "Within that bill is a small section that bans DJI from using the
| FCC frequencies"
|
| So DJI drones as a whole aren't banned, just the parts that
| transmit?
| judge2020 wrote:
| I imagine it prevents any remote control from working if it
| prohibits "FCC frequencies".
| bluescrn wrote:
| But if you could control the DJI drone with some other
| transmitter, perhaps running OpenTX, and also replaced the
| video downlink, then there'd be no DJI hardware using those
| frequencies.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I'm surprised there's no language saying that they must be
| tethered
| adolph wrote:
| So the amendment/act [0] makes a change to "47 U.S. Code SS 1601
| - Determination of communications equipment or services posing
| national security risks" [1] to add DJI. Although the direct
| inclusion of an entity in US code is odd, it does follow from the
| 2019 NDAA (Sec. 889. Prohibition on certain telecommunications
| and video surveillance services or equipment. "...Huawei
| Technologies Company or ZTE Corporation...") which included based
| on that bill's text.
|
| 0. https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/118/hr2864/text
|
| 1. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/1601
| ganeshkrishnan wrote:
| US is spiralling down and I feel like I am in a Truman Show with
| egregious presidential behaviours, dragging the world into wars
| which it doesn't need, banning chips, even sanctioning open
| source (RISC) software.
|
| And this is further making the rest of the world enraged, china
| more so. Today they released Open source Deep Seek which beats
| GPT 4o in coding problems.
|
| The train has left the station and the US is stuck. On the wrong
| platform. With no ticket.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Haha sure.
|
| Let me guess, the train is to a third tier Chinese city no one
| is interesting in going to, on tracks that the local government
| can't afford to pay the construction financing on, let alone
| future maintenance.
| tredre3 wrote:
| I'm sure you're right that third tier Chinese cities are
| awful.
|
| But major Chinese cities are very far ahead of America in
| terms of infrastructure. Similarly DJI is very far ahead of
| any of its competitors.
|
| Banning Chinese things because of politics is one thing. But
| pretending it's because they're inferior is just ridiculous.
| danielspace23 wrote:
| Which is an ironic comment to make, considering the
| difference in high-speed rail development in China vs in the
| US.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
| speed_rail_in_the_United_... (TL;DR: China's high speed rail
| network is the longest and most used in the world, as well as
| cheaper than the US's)
| hooverd wrote:
| We should ban Creality and Bambu Lab too. Imagine if we also
| strangled consumer 3D printing for dumb reasons. You should only
| be allowed to print on $100k+ Stratasys for natsec reasons, of
| course.
| Ccecil wrote:
| Creality/Bambu killed more small companies (and Reprap) than it
| bothered Stratasys IMHO.
|
| But yes...there very well may be a security concern there too.
| Bambu sends/receives info from the companies servers. At least
| once this has allowed a supposed firmware update to cause a
| large number of printers to start printing uncommanded. This is
| a major safety and security risk and it was largely ignored by
| the consumer community due to Bambu "making things easier".
|
| So yeah...perhaps we should start looking into these
| companies...and exactly where their subsidies do/may come from.
| ralusek wrote:
| A few things to note here.
|
| 1.) DJI offers many drones related to infrastructure mapping and
| maintenance, as well as agricultural tasks. From a national
| security perspective, it _is_ a non-trivial threat vector for a
| Chinese company to not only have intimate knowledge of US
| infrastructure by being their drone supplier, but also by
| becoming a dependency of US infrastructure. In the event of a
| war, all of the drones could be grounded or used for nefarious
| purposes.
|
| 2.) When it comes to protectionism, I'm generally against it, but
| I have different thoughts when it comes to China. They have
| banned Uber, Google, YouTube, Facebook, Amazon, etc, and just
| make their own versions of it. Then they have absolutely no
| respect for international laws when it comes to IP. They don't
| compete economically according to the same rules as everyone
| else, and don't deserve to be treated the same way.
|
| 3.) I have 2 DJI drones. The fact that there is no mention of
| compensation in this legislature is absurd. Fortunately, I don't
| rely on these for my business, but imagine if you were a
| filmmaker, tree trimmer, real estate agent, etc, who had bought
| many drones for your business. Not only are you grounding the
| tools that they've already come to depend on, but there isn't an
| existing viable alternative on the market for many of these
| tasks.
| beacon294 wrote:
| All good points, and it's painful to see you flagged likely by
| some political operation.
| cesarb wrote:
| > In the event of a war, all of the drones could be grounded or
| used for nefarious purposes.
|
| That's only an issue if the drone somehow depends on an
| external Internet-based server, instead of just a plain radio
| link between the drone and its controller. The law should
| target that unnecessary dependency, if it exists, instead of
| banning even standalone drones.
| nindalf wrote:
| Kudos to you for being able to make the first 2 points fairly
| despite being personally affected by this. Rare that you'd see
| that. Most people would start with the 3rd point and try to
| minimise anything that contradicts.
| moduspol wrote:
| > imagine if you were a filmmaker, tree trimmer, real estate
| agent, etc, who had bought many drones for your business.
|
| Unfortunately I suspect this group is already quite small due
| to the existing heavy-handed regulation of drones for anything
| other than recreational use. Or they're at least "under the
| table."
|
| You need a drone pilot's license to legally fly a drone for
| anything other than recreational use. This has already
| decimated a lot of the most direct and interesting use cases
| for us.
| dangoor wrote:
| For people wonder how this got there, the blame goes to Rep.
| Elise Stefanik:
|
| https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/2864
|
| That bill was tacked onto a big "must pass" defense authorization
| and may not have survived on its own.
|
| Here's an article with some speculation on why Stefanik
| introduced this bill: https://dronexl.co/2024/06/06/drone-
| industry-outrage-stefani...
| TylerE wrote:
| What a shocker. One of the most worthless partisan blowhards in
| congressional history.
|
| She's Dick Cheney to MTG/Boeberts Dubya Bush.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| The sicker thing to me is how she (like many) was actually
| relatively moderate until she completely hitched her wagon
| onto the Trump train. Another Profile in Cowardice. An
| overview: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/women-
| rule/2023/01/06/t...
|
| All of these politicians who have these completely
| transactional relationships, I just find utterly gross. I
| mean, do they have any actual friends? For example, Trump
| completely disparaged Ted Cruz's wife and father in 2016,
| Cruz called Trump a "pathological liar" back then, only to do
| a total 180 and turn into another boot licker.
| rayiner wrote:
| Politicians have put aside their personal beefs with Trump
| in response to _their constituents_. The republican base
| doesn't want foreign wars and tax cuts, they want to kick
| the illegal immigrants out of the country and curtail
| foreign trade. Remember when Joe Biden told black voters
| Romney "wants to put them back in chains?" The Republican
| base wants their version of that guy, and that's Trump. For
| Stefanik, Cruz, etc., _their job_ is to put aside their
| personal preferences and get on board with what their
| constituents want.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I understand that, and I think it's a fair point, but
| there is also the issue of _leadership_.
|
| E.g. there are tons of Republican "elites" who know that
| the whole "stop the steal" stuff and falsehoods around
| Trump winning in 2020 are complete, total, and utter
| bullshit. We know this because they've said it! My
| favorite example is when Liz Cheney wrote in her book
| that Republican Rep Mark Green said, as he was signing
| electoral vote objection sheets on Jan 6, "The things we
| do for The Orange Jesus." (In transparency, Green later
| denied this).
|
| My point is its one thing to do what your constituents
| desire. Its another thing to propagate lies and bullshit
| because you think that will help you gain power, even if
| your constituents do love those lies and bullshit. I'd
| also point out that there have been a number of
| conservative and Republican leaders (not many, but some)
| who actually have some honor and have called out these
| lies, which has usually forced them to retire or leave
| the party.
| rayiner wrote:
| I agree in the abstract, but I think that's encompassed
| by my point that the Republican base wants to fight fire
| with fire:
| https://youtu.be/iRYB6N8fBKQ?si=-bSwtvosf-o4PE0z.
|
| I think "principled Republicans" don't know what time it
| is. Trump's only mistake was not saying "I formally
| concede" before spending years saying the election was
| stolen. That's the new normal and has been since 2000.
| debacle wrote:
| Not sure why you are being downmodded. Stefanik touts
| herself as a MAGA princess, but she's nothing but a
| grifter.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| She's a New York Republican, don't assign anything to her
| with strong conviction.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| And if you need a backgrounder on Stefanik, she got elected
| before Trump, decided she preferred staying in DC to her
| hometown, sold out her previously-stated principles almost
| immediately when she saw a chance to gain power, and is now
| doing as much damage to civil liberties as Nixon and McCarthy
| ever managed:
|
| https://theracket.news/p/stop-going-stefanik-committee-fools
|
| She doesn't care about whether the bill does something valid or
| even whether it survives legal challenges, as long she can use
| it to score political points. It's a real shame. Congresspeople
| are supposed to be servants beholden to the public good, not
| power-hungry sycophants who can't be bothered with the details
| of governance.
| kotaKat wrote:
| I'll add more as a NY21 local:
|
| I've never seen her. I've never heard from her locally. You
| can't fucking _find_ Elise. It 's all events in the past.
| There's never been a townhall up in this portion of her
| region.
|
| Bonus: Her husband is a lobbyist for a leading gun industry
| trade group.
| https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Stefanik-s-
| husband-K...
| acdha wrote:
| I'll contrast that with people like Jamie Raskin. I've met
| him personally (briefly, but multiple times) because he
| shows up at random music festivals and civic events. It's
| really not hard to tell when a politician is interested in
| public feedback.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Her husband has lobbied for NSSF... Why is that bad?
| mauvehaus wrote:
| The complaint is typically about access. If you have a
| policy you'd like your rep to advance, you're stuck going
| through the same channels nearly everyone is: call, write
| a letter, etc.
|
| If Alice Armalite or Bob Browning[0] wants something
| advanced, they call their guy who knows not just
| Stefanik, but probably a bunch of other reps socially
| through her.
|
| Who's more likely to actually get the ear of a
| politician: you, or Alice Armalite?
|
| To be clear, I don't think it's a good look for a
| politician to have personal ties that close with any
| lobbyist, even ones for the American Foundation for
| Fluffy and Adorable Kittens.
|
| [0] Not real people, one suspects.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| I'd rather blame everyone who voted on this, actually. Every
| one in Congress is an adult and were free to decide how to vote
| on this, afaik.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Who decided it is a good idea to pass brands / companies specific
| bills?
|
| If DJI is doing nasty things, prohibit the nasty things DJI doing
| in the law, not the brand. Then condemn DJI if needed. How do
| this law protect from any DJi competitor doing the same stuff (or
| even a spinoff company through a complex scheme)?
| croes wrote:
| If they ban nasty things as such they can't do them themselves
| anymore without breaking the law.
|
| Not that they care.
| cratermoon wrote:
| I wonder, though, could this be considered an unconstitutional
| bill of attainder? That's an act of a legislature declaring a
| person, or a group of people, guilty of some crime, and
| punishing them, without a trial. Article I, Section 9, iii: "No
| Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed".
| tdhoot wrote:
| That's one of the arguments being made by TikTok in their
| challenge against the "TikTok ban" bill.
| markemer wrote:
| That's been my thought since the TikTok ban as well. It was
| meant for people, but this for sure seems to meet the spirit
| of the prohibition. Does it actually violate it? We'll have
| to see once the cases work their way through.
| ethagnawl wrote:
| Maybe Elise Stefanik was just really upset that she had to
| side-load the sketchy DJI APK on her Android device?
| vkou wrote:
| > Who decided it is a good idea to pass brands / companies
| specific bills?
|
| People who want to move this country even further in the
| direction of Rule By Law, as opposed to Rule Of Law.
|
| This sort of thing works out well for the already-connected and
| corrupt, and it's not like anyone in 2024 is deluded that we
| make _principled_ decisions on anything.
| honeybadger1 wrote:
| Bad governing, and it only continues to get worse here. My
| decision to retire in a 2nd or 3rd world country is becoming
| clearer every election cycle.
| twelve40 wrote:
| This is the best present ever to everyone else in the world who
| is buying DJI drones by the thousands right now.
| ridgitdigit wrote:
| Nothing is going to save the failing empire and this is just
| another signpost on the road to it's demise.
| lacoolj wrote:
| So, anyone know what DJI is without googling first? Cuz this
| article doesn't say.
| neuronerdgirl wrote:
| God I'm glad I'm not the only one. I'm working on getting a
| newsletter up and running and I'm so focused on best writing
| practices and these guys can't even remember to define their
| acronyms first?
| cesarb wrote:
| > and these guys can't even remember to define their acronyms
| first?
|
| DJI is not an acronym, it's the name of a company. And DJI is
| the most famous drone company; asking to "define DJI", on an
| article for a site about drones like that one, would be like
| asking to "define Boeing" on an article for a site about
| airplanes.
| neuronerdgirl wrote:
| Boeing is a word that looks like a proper noun and, more
| importantly, is a much more well-known company than DJI.
| Moreover, for those of us who don't know it's a company,
| DJI _looks_ like an acronym, so the writer should have
| clarified, aka defined it.
| bnchrch wrote:
| It's the worlds premier consumer drone manufactor.
|
| Founded in 2006, worth over $15 billion.
|
| It's not quite as widely known as say Apple, Google, or Disney.
|
| But it has more brand awareness than most other modern brands.
|
| I'd recon it beats Alibaba, Figma, Webflow, etc...
| Muromec wrote:
| Ever seen the videos of ... thing being dropped on people from
| a drone in the last two something years? That drone is usually
| DJI Mavic
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| These types of comments confuse me, because it would be faster
| to Google it and get an answer in 10 seconds than to post a
| comment and wait for a response.
|
| Besides, from reading the article, context alone should tell
| you that DJI is a Chinese drone brand.
| system2 wrote:
| "The bill as it stands does not provide any compensation to those
| that could be affected by this ban, if it is retroactive."
|
| This is frustrating.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _DJI Seems to Believe That It Is Possible Its Drones Will Be
| Banned_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40609973 - June
| 2024 (1 comment)
|
| _DJI might get banned next in the US_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40171565 - April 2024 (81
| comments)
|
| _In a first, FAA rescinds DJI drone 's Remote ID compliance
| status_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36732256 - July
| 2023 (6 comments)
|
| _Pentagon Puts DJI on Blacklist_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33150567 - Oct 2022 (188
| comments)
|
| _US will ban investment in 8 Chinese companies, including DJI_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29566125 - Dec 2021 (10
| comments)
|
| _GOP's top FCC official calls for ban on DJI drone sales in US_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28951488 - Oct 2021 (1
| comment)
|
| _FCC Official calls for ban on DJI drones_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28939517 - Oct 2021 (4
| comments)
|
| _US Government adds DJI to commerce blacklist over ties to
| Chinese government_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25468406 - Dec 2020 (1
| comment)
|
| _Drone firm DJI promises 'local data mode' to fend off US
| government's mooted ban_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24444443 - Sept 2020 (102
| comments)
|
| _Drone Maker D.J.I. May Be Sending Data to China, U.S. Officials
| Say_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15820987 - Dec 2017
| (72 comments)
|
| ---
|
| Side note on the current post: usually we downweight "bill goes
| through intermediate state change" stories because they tend to
| be follow-ups [1] rather than significant new information [2].
| That is, the discussion tends to be substantively the same at
| each step. I've made an exception in this case because there
| (maybe) hasn't been too much discussion of this one so far.
|
| [1]
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
|
| [2]
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I've put off picking up a drone. Should I hurry up and get one
| now?
| saos wrote:
| Wait what lol
| btreecat wrote:
| Interesting knock-on effect to RID of this goes through.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Everyone in the comments seems to be against this: why? Let's
| build up a great domestic drone company here in the US.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Surely this is possible without just banning competitors, no?
| Invictus0 wrote:
| The competition is literally an arm of the state of China,
| which is able to subsidize the business and send prices
| through the floor. Why would any entrepreneur choose to
| compete with a state-backed enterprise? And by the way, have
| you heard of tariffs? We literally "ban" all kinds of
| products with very high tariffs.
| logicchains wrote:
| Banning foreign drones just gives domestic drone companies even
| less incentive to compete on quality. If the foreign drone
| company is benefiting unfairly from subsidies, then the way to
| beat them is to subsidise US drone companies, creating fair
| competition.
| ninininino wrote:
| In this thread, people not understanding that we've literally
| watched in the past year as consumer drones with IEDs attached to
| them have made the $10 million M1 Abrams tanks obsolete and what
| that means for war and its downstream implications for
| manufacturing bases.
| consumer451 wrote:
| Although it should be noted that it's not DJI drones doing that
| damage. They seem to be used for spotting, while more DIY-style
| FPV drones are the ones blowing up tanks.
|
| Of course, those parts likely also come from sources in China.
| However, the software is more along the lines of FOSS like
| ArduPilot or PX4.
| ninininino wrote:
| Addendum: for anyone who thinks I'm exaggerating:
|
| https://www.npr.org/2024/04/26/1247403968/ukraine-pulls-abra...
|
| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/04/26/ukraine-wi...
|
| https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-russia-war-abrams-tanks-1...
| ulfw wrote:
| So what's America's plan to survive?
|
| Ban almost everything they used to buy? (i.e. goods manufactured
| in China)
|
| Which Made in the Good Ol' US of A consumer drones are people
| supposed to purchase instead of a DJI Mini?
| markemer wrote:
| We make so much in China, I don't get what the deal is, here.
| Just that a US billionaire isn't making the money?
| redserk wrote:
| Once DJI gets banned, a new consumer company will come around
| and will happily import all the parts from China then slap on
| a substantial markup. I'm placing bets that DJI will somehow
| whitelabel the drones.
|
| It's funny the lengths the US public and political machine
| will go to avoid blaming the business sector that outsourced
| all of everything to China over the last few decades. Chinese
| manufacturing got the tools and know-how to build these
| devices and have done a great job iterating on that knowledge
| across many different sectors and product categories.
| hangonhn wrote:
| Didn't we discover this recently? Like some domestic drone
| company was supplying drones to the law enforcement but
| most of the parts and software came from DJI.
|
| Yep: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/24/business/china-
| drones-anz...
| MaxHoppersGhost wrote:
| Banning tiktok and a drone manufacturer isn't banning "almost
| everything".
|
| Hope you're putting the $0.50 from this post to good use!
| danielspace23 wrote:
| It's interesting to see how the reactions differ between here and
| the articles on the ban on TikTok. And some even thought that the
| users who wrote to their government representatives were bots!
| Whenever the US bans or sanctions something, that impacts people,
| whether it's drone nerds or teens looking at silly videos. It
| just so happens that most people here seem to be outside of the
| TikTok target demographic, so we can't sympathize with a group
| that will be forcefully deprived of a perfectly functional
| product, but we can with the other.
| dotBen wrote:
| I worry that this all removes the ability to have a sensible and
| legitimate conversation about DJI.
|
| Elise Stefanik can go fuck herself for all the reasons listed
| elsewhere, lets get that on the table.
|
| BUT we should be thoughtful, if not worried, about DJI. Here's a
| couple of reasons:
|
| 1) When the original Mavic Pro was released I showed mine to
| someone who had worked in US intelligence. His jaw dropped and
| said that based on other stuff he'd heard in his circles and now
| marrying it up with the product in his hands, it was clear IP
| that had been stolen from US DOD contractors and the government
| itself was in this device.
|
| 2) We know that the CCP has influence over all Chinese companies.
| I worked for Uber when we were operating in China and saw first
| hand the influence and access Chinese government had over
| operations and data. ANYONE who claims otherwise hasn't had first
| hand experience or is a shill (there's a lot of those around -
| there's more Chinese intelligence activity in Silicon Valley than
| in DC. I encountered that at Uber too.)
|
| 3) The amount of tracking that DJI can do and send home to China
| is concerning. Sensors, GPS and of course camera footage. When we
| worry about companies like Huawei intruding into our
| infrastructure, it's still at the data layer. DJI represents
| exposure into the kinetic layer which opens up all kinds of
| further vectors of concern.
|
| 4) These are being used for war, for now for the most part "on
| our side" (Ukraine) but DJI is already trying to disable some of
| that and is picking sides. Next time it might not be our side
| that wins the advantage.
|
| 5) You can't legislate "for the bad stuff" that could happen,
| which a few other commenters have suggested. The "bad stuff"
| would be happening on Chinese servers in China. It's out of
| jurisdiction. You buy a Chinese product like this, you're
| agreeing to the terms of engagement occurring outside of your
| friendly US/European jurisdictions. When this happens the only
| thing a country can do is ban the import, and here we are...
|
| I have not bought the more recent versions of the DJI drones as
| I'm very conflicted on using DJI products based on what I know
| and what I can see up the road. I would love to pay 20-50% more
| for similar products from a US/Western company. I'm fine with
| them being manufactured in China but I want the company and the
| servers and the software operated in friendly countries (just
| like Apple).
|
| _(also, the voting on this comment is fascinating - lots of
| upvote and then suddenly a ton of downvotes. There 's either lot
| of pro-Chinese brigading here or something else going on. If you
| disagree with my points please reply instead)_
| FeistySkink wrote:
| So Skydio?
| dotBen wrote:
| Great for pro-use but they don't have hobby level products to
| compete with the DJI Mavic and Mini
| sschueller wrote:
| So I guess the new viable business strategy in the US is:
| 1. Find a sector which a foreign companies dominates 2.
| Enter this sector even with a bad product 3. Go to congress
| and get the other ones banned because they are "insert reason
| here".
| mandibles wrote:
| The mercantilist impulse will live forever.
| surfingdino wrote:
| Every country does it from time to time. We are going to see
| the end of globalisation as we have known it for the last 30+
| years. The Russians and the Chinese made everyone realise that
| it is better to make stuff at home.
| nashadelic wrote:
| The effect is that the US loses its competitive edge in
| international markets. Is another country going to buy Tesla or
| BYD? Are they going to buy a DJI or an overpriced US drone? It
| might protect companies locally but for how long?
| echelon wrote:
| And what happens when you taking dumping to the logical
| extreme? You wind up with nobody domestically that can do any
| advanced work at all, because everyone gets put out of
| business. Then we have nothing to export and no skill or
| capability gradient to climb.
|
| BYD exists _because_ of Chinese economic protectionism. China
| carved out a space for its domestic products to grow. We
| should do the same.
| 83 wrote:
| Has there been any evidence this was pushed by lobbyists? If
| you look at what's happening in Ukraine It's pretty much a
| given that the US defense sector is looking at ways to improve
| the US small drone manufacturing capabilites, and have less
| potentially hostile drones flying over their own territory.
| sschueller wrote:
| There are a lot of coincidences[1] and since congress can
| legally insider trade it would not surprise me if some
| involved have stock in some of these companies.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Cb-Zv783yQ
| palata wrote:
| > Has there been any evidence this was pushed by lobbyists?
|
| I work in the drone industry, and this is so very obvious
| that I don't know where I would start describing it.
|
| Yes, it was pushed by lobbyists. Every single US drone
| company has been pushing for a DJI ban for years.
| Fauntleroy wrote:
| Welcome to the real world
| bprater wrote:
| DJI isn't just a drone company. They've been actively moving into
| audio/video production very rapidly. If this ban sticks, they
| will lose their FCC license, and your Pocket 3 camera (or any DJI
| device) will no longer be able to connect to your phone.
| neuronexmachina wrote:
| I'm curious if Anzu Robotics would be permitted under the ban.
| For those unfamiliar, they use DJI Mavic 3 hardware manufactured
| in Malaysia with US-written software:
| https://www.therobotreport.com/anzu-robotics-launches-u-s-ba...
| dji4321234 wrote:
| They shouldn't be; they use DJI basebands, so banning DJI and
| their affiliates using the FCC Covered List should also prevent
| Anzu from getting new FCC equipment approvals. It's unclear
| whether the FCC would revoke existing approvals, although it
| certainly seems like what Congress wants. And if they do, it's
| unclear if they'd go to the effort to hunt down Anzu and
| Cogito, but on paper, they certainly should.
|
| By the way, there's no US-written software on Anzu drones.
| They're just green Mavic 3 Enterprises with a phone app that
| integrates the DJI SDK. Flying a DJI Mavic 3 Enterprise and an
| Anzu Raptor using Aloft Air Control will produce exactly
| identical results in terms of American-ness and data transfer.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| I tried to find a non-Chinese router last week.
|
| They don't exist.
| jhdias wrote:
| Draytek.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Their line of thinking maybe that firmware updates can basically
| do anything
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Does this just ban importing DJI products (bad enough) or does it
| also ban owning and/or flying a DJI drone you already own?
| (really bad if that's the case, but also would be difficult to
| enforce)
| dji4321234 wrote:
| It adds DJI to the FCC Covered List, meaning they can't get new
| FCC approvals. The FCC could choose whether or not to revoke
| existing FCC Equipment Authorizations for existing DJI drones.
|
| If they do revoke the existing Equipment Authorizations, then
| the drones become illegal RF transmitters and wouldn't be legal
| to fly, although enforcement would border on impossible.
| aeyes wrote:
| The text specifically calls out that software and "services"
| are to be banned: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-
| congress/house-bill/2864...
|
| Since the software phones home it most likely won't work
| anymore once the ban is in effect.
| kristianpaul wrote:
| Is this going eventually impact TV companies like LG , Samsung
| and such? I bet there are more Chinese made devices already
| spread worldwide because of reasons....
| nacs wrote:
| LG & Samsung are South Korean companies, not Chinese, so they
| aren't a target (yet).
| gandalfgeek wrote:
| Keep seeing DJI drones at local police dept open houses. They
| even have a "drone unit" that specializes in SAR, hazardous recon
| type scenarios. Given extensive existing use throughout US local
| law enforcement, fire depts etc, not sure if this will actually
| happen.
|
| Or maybe they all mass-migrate to Anduril solutions?
| dji4321234 wrote:
| It's going to be a disaster for SAR, policing, firefighting,
| and all kinds of public good. The whole thing is an incredibly
| shortsighted move that will literally cost lives.
|
| The goal, I think, is that these organizations will migrate to
| Skydio or BRINC (as they have the only reasonably viable drones
| for most of these use cases IMHO).
|
| The reality is that they'll buy Autel (just as Chinese as DJI)
| or just keep using DJI and hoping the FCC Radio Police don't
| show up, which is probably a safe bet. Anduril don't really
| sell into this space.
| MaxHoppersGhost wrote:
| In five years the US will have a prolific consumer drone
| industry and will have hardly skipped a beat. This is a good
| move for the US from a long-term security and economic
| standpoint. There are some short term pains but long-term
| this is good.
|
| Did you get paid 50 cents to write all these posts?
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I know a state police drone pilot. There are 6 people on the
| team.
|
| They use Mavic 2A and 3 drones for thermal. Mostly
| surveillance.
|
| They use DJI Avata for whipping through a house faster than
| people can. They use this for hostage and other possibly
| dangerous scenarios.
|
| I know for a fact they are often breaking the FAA laws on
| lights and line of sight. They don't care because they're "good
| guys".
| surfingdino wrote:
| DJI owns Hasselblad. It will be interesting to see if Hasselblad
| get hit by this as well. Not that I want to see it, just curious
| if there may be collateral damage.
| arjvik wrote:
| Fingers crossed it doesn't, would hate to see it go down.
| michael_vo wrote:
| I wish there was a way for the public to vote on all of these
| bills! We need to be able to give feedback to these senators
| about what the public wants. And to me the public wants DJI.
| nsvd wrote:
| Yes, if only there was some kind of democratic process in this
| country, where citizens could influence the laws that are
| passed...
| aeyes wrote:
| Is this some kind of sarcastic joke? Anti-China legislation
| is popular with both parties. So who do you vote for in a
| two-party system?
| asadotzler wrote:
| You vote for the side that's most favorable to reform and
| then vote for the people within that party most likely to
| bend things toward your goals, ideally slowly shifting one
| side's stance toward yours until there is a difference
| between the parties. You and everyone you can convince go
| do that work, and it is work, for 5-10 cycles and you might
| effect meaningful change.
|
| There was never a "one election will fix everything" in the
| US and people who pretend that's the only path and use that
| to discount the possibility of change were never serious
| about change to begin with. Had they been serious, they'd
| have studied history enough to see you rarely get what you
| want with one election cycle.
|
| It's the quitters that got us into this uniparty situation
| on so many issues. Don't be a quitter, get active and stay
| active until you see the change you want.
| balls187 wrote:
| I cannot see how this will pass legal challenge. Banning a Drone
| Manufacturer simply because the manufacturer is Chinese?
|
| There aren't ties to the Chinese military, are there?
| kube-system wrote:
| > There aren't ties to the Chinese military, are there?
|
| From a practical perspective, it could be at any time. China
| hasn't embraced the free market the same way the west does, and
| doesn't give private companies the same degree of autonomy
| you're used to seeing elsewhere. Broadly speaking, if the
| Chinese government needs a company within their jurisdiction to
| cooperate with them, they can enforce cooperation.
|
| As an example, even with publicly held companies, the Chinese
| government will take out "special management shares" that give
| the government positions on the board with unique power to
| direct management within a company and direct management
| decisions. It's not like the West where companies have theit
| own management that might disagree with the government and
| battle in court. In China, the government can simply _become_
| the management of a company.
| balls187 wrote:
| That would be an after the fact justification, which could be
| used to justify banning any company that operates in China.
| kube-system wrote:
| Not every company, just the ones with military relevance.
| But for the purposes of a national security discussion, the
| situation that is being planned for is not the current-
| state peacetime -- it _is_ the after the fact contingency.
| ddxv wrote:
| Sad to see the US fall further into nationalism and protectionism
| when it comes to better Chinese products rather than promoting
| competition in the US markets.
| sheepscreek wrote:
| "It's complicated".
| ysofunny wrote:
| so usa congress admits chinese drones are better ?
|
| but maybe (or now)
|
| usa senate must admit that they can keep up with china in drone
| manufacturing speed !?
|
| this is in adition to tiktok, but then I wonder how much of what
| amazon sales is made in china
| Kye wrote:
| Maybe I never got to the part of an economics education that
| covers exceptions having stopped at intro econ, but don't trade
| wars almost always lead to bad times?
| FredPret wrote:
| The theory is that it leads to worse outcomes for the weaker
| partner and less-bad outcomes for the stronger one.
|
| - People used to think Japan was going to overtake the USA,
| until a short trade war in the 80's sent Japan on a downward
| spiral.
|
| - The trade war against Russia hurt the West a lot with higher
| energy and food prices, but it whacked the Russian economy very
| much harder.
|
| - The same thing can be said for the West vs USSR - it hurt the
| West, but bankrupted the USSR
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Isn't the US the weaker partner here?
| FredPret wrote:
| Struggling to understand in which context the US is the
| weaker partner.
|
| - GDP [0]
|
| - Total wealth [1]
|
| - Military
|
| - Demographics (US - growing, China - aging and shrinking)
|
| - Soft power
|
| [0] https://tradingeconomics.com/
|
| [1] [https://www.ubs.com/global/en/family-office-
| uhnw/reports/glo...]
| kredd wrote:
| Manufacturing capability and infrastructure would be my
| guess. I guess if the trend continues and factories keep
| moving to India and Mexico, it might be a different game
| in 10 years.
| FredPret wrote:
| Also automation might have a huge effect on this. It's
| expensive and slow to ship things all over the place.
|
| We're not seeing that trend take off in a major way yet,
| but I think a lot of the raw ingredients are there.
|
| https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2014/12/manufacturing-is-
| gro...
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| GDP and wealth are hard to compare because China does so
| much stuff for cheaper. They can build massive
| infrastructure projects like high speed trains, huge
| bridges and dams all for way cheaper than we do, so their
| money actually goes farther. That means even for the same
| GDP they have more productive capability.
|
| Military is not the only way to exercise power - look at
| the Belt and Road initiative.
|
| Demographics - how many PhDs are coming out of each
| country.
|
| And obviously we're banning DJI because they are the
| dominant player - we couldn't compete economically so
| we're using legal power instead. If the US was just
| better at building consumer drones this never would have
| happened.
| FredPret wrote:
| Your first point about things being cheaper over there is
| true but that's not all there is to it. They're still in
| the basic infrastructure phase of growth. So they can
| build that much cheaper because people there get paid
| peanuts, and land is cheap. As soon as they reach a
| saturation point of prosperity close to where the US is
| now, they'll see prices spike to equal US levels. If this
| ever happens.
|
| > Military is not the only way to exercise power - look
| at the Belt and Road initiative.
|
| The military is the only thing that matters when the
| chips are _really_ down. China can try to buy
| international favour with it 's dodgy infrastructure
| deals, but that's not the same as deep, long-term
| alliances, and a competent military-industrial complex.
| The US has troops and advanced weapons stationed all over
| the place, including right next to China. I'd be amazed
| if the opposite ever becomes true.
|
| > Demographics - how many PhDs are coming out of each
| country.
|
| There's a fair bit more to demographics than the number
| of PhDs - not sure why you think this even matters.
|
| > And obviously we're banning DJI because they are the
| dominant player - we couldn't compete economically so
| we're using legal power instead. If the US was just
| better at building consumer drones this never would have
| happened.
|
| Now it's true that DJI is the best, but this is not yet
| part of a broader trend where China is outcompeting the
| US on quality. And keep in mind that China is using its
| internal legal power to spend public money pushing
| companies such as Huawei, DJI, and Bytedance.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| There's no reason for the US to allow any business with a nation
| that not only has named the US as an enemy state multiple times,
| but also regularly breaks international law against friendly
| countries, for example, in the south China sea. The US and
| European Union should formally sanction China.
| deepGem wrote:
| DJI's response (a bit dated)
|
| https://dronedj.com/2024/03/02/dji-response-drone-ban-us/
|
| The allegations are so subjective that they sound like some
| middle schooler complaining to their mom.
|
| "DJI drones are collecting vast amounts of sensitive data -
| everything from high-resolution images of critical U.S.
| infrastructure to facial recognition technology and remote
| sensors that can measure an individual's body temperature and
| heart rate."
|
| DJI's response Technically, DJI suggests using drones for body
| temperature checks is unfeasible.
|
| https://www.thedronegirl.com/2020/05/06/dji-coronavirus-dron...
|
| US politicians have totally lost their minds to even propose
| something like this.
| datahack wrote:
| Allowing a company that repeatedly violates basic app store
| rules and exports data to a country with adversarial interests
| unrestricted access to our infrastructure via drones is highly
| problematic.
|
| This problematic situation extends in many ways to critical
| sectors of our economy, including agriculture, energy, defense,
| etc.
|
| The data collected by these drones is extensive and sensitive.
| Crop data alone is crucial, and if this information cannot be
| controlled, it should not be exported.
|
| This stance is not anti-China, but no country should permit
| unrestricted access to its airspace for surveillance.
|
| Data is the new oil as well, especially with AI. These drone
| derived datasets are becoming critical path information.
|
| How else can you control the information besides a ban? I LOVE
| DJI and have several of these drones. But I don't know how I
| feel about this because of the problematic data issues. It's
| complex and the situation is very difficult.
| downrightmike wrote:
| Its funny because app store rules aren't laws. If we were
| really concerned about privacy, we'd have our own strong GDPR
| that mandated privacy and control measures and controls.
| Banning things doesn't work because the base foundational
| protections aren't there.
| datahack wrote:
| The ability to abide by all store rules are not only
| legally enforceable contracts between companies -- they are
| legal agreements after all -- but a strong indicator of
| whether companies will abide by the normalized standards
| required to do business in an ecosystem.
|
| Privacy protection is _not_ the issue at the heart of these
| concerns: it's national security.
| aeternum wrote:
| Unconvincing tbh. Research papers have shown that heartrate can
| be tracked from cameras with well under 4k resolution. Doing it
| with DJI's excellent camera tech should be quite easy.
|
| As far as US infrastructure, google street view and bing maps
| seem to be a bigger information disclosure threat but I guess
| they do blur out faces.
| 83 wrote:
| Google street view isn't going to be driving around sensitive
| government facilites or electrical infrastructure though -
| and you really can't guarantee no curious citizens will try
| to fly their dji drone over said facilities. So all DJI needs
| to do is put in an if(location == government_facility) and
| sit back and wait for the camera feed from some idiot
| american.
| aeternum wrote:
| Agreed, but IMO the greater threat is smartphone apps.
| There are all kinds of AI photo and video manipulation apps
| and they have multiple ways to get precise location via
| gps, wifi, and photo metadata with the added advantage that
| many photos are taken both indoor and outdoors.
|
| Seems like a ban on all those apps (not just tiktok) is
| more appropriate or at least required in addition. From a
| security POV, the restriction really needs to be at the iOS
| or AndroidOS level.
| rubytubido wrote:
| typical USA's playbook: can't compete - ban
| 34679 wrote:
| "Thermal imaging from the air has never been as easy as it is
| with the DJI Zenmuse XT."
|
| https://www.dji.com/zenmuse-xt
| TheChaplain wrote:
| I don't trust DJI.
|
| I was looking to replace my GoPro with the DJI Action, but their
| app was not on the Play-store. It can only be side-loaded on
| Android, because their app breaks a number of policies on privacy
| and data gathering.
|
| I believe I saw a site that decompiled their app and found a
| number of worrisome things.
| clutchdude wrote:
| For those looking for more info:
|
| https://blog.grimm-co.com/2020/07/dji-privacy-analysis-valid...
|
| https://www.synacktiv.com/en/publications/dji-pilot-android-...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/us/politics/dji-drones-se...
| consumer451 wrote:
| And also:
|
| https://blog.quarkslab.com/dji-the-art-of-obfuscation.html
|
| Discussed at length here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39438842
| freedomben wrote:
| Do we know the official reasons they can't be on Play? All I
| can find are people speculating, but it would be really nice to
| know exactly what Google rejected them for.
|
| Edit: Thank you sibling comment posted at same time:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40709374
| dji4321234 wrote:
| > It can only be side-loaded on Android, because their app
| breaks a number of policies on privacy and data gathering.
|
| I don't think this is the reason, I think it's more that
| they're just too lazy to jump through the approval and
| maintenance hoops that come with an app store, especially
| because their home market (China) doesn't even use the Play
| Store.
|
| The iOS version of their app is Apple-approved and present in
| the App Store.
|
| I do research in this space.
|
| Their consumer apps are loaded to the gills with product-
| manager telemetry (tap/action tracing, etc., think
| Firebase/Flurry/whatever), and until recently they had a "sync
| flight logs" feature that would do what it said: give your
| detailed flight logs to DJI. It was opt-in, but it was easy to
| do by accident and many years ago there were bugs in the opt-in
| toggle.
|
| They just removed this feature from US apps this week (too
| little too late, and too attached to reality and not attached
| enough to political pandering).
|
| DJI also have a terrible track record with data security, with
| their entire AWS account getting ripped in 2017.
|
| I don't think they're explicitly a CCP data-collection front,
| but sufficient product telemetry is indistinguishable from
| surveillance malware (this applies to US-based companies and US
| intelligence, too, of course).
|
| However, their apps run on their own controllers are generally
| alright, and their enterprise apps run on their enterprise
| controllers in Local Data Mode are legitimately clean, barring
| a few versions with small bugs.
|
| I fly DJI drones all the time using DJI RCs with network
| credentials forgotten, and I wouldn't hesitate to use one of
| these for consumer use. For the truly paranoid, use a burner
| email and a VPN to activate the drone.
|
| I also wouldn't worry about using DJI Enterprise drones with
| the pro controllers in Local Data Mode for even moderately
| sensitive applications (infrastructure, law enforcement, etc.).
|
| Of course I wouldn't use one for US military applications,
| insofar as it would be foolish to use any non-allied electronic
| device in this way.
|
| ps - note that the analysis in the sibling comments are of
| older apps, DJI Go 4 and Pilot 1, not the newer flagship apps
| DJI Fly and DJI Pilot 2. The general theme (tons of dirty
| analytics platforms) remains the same, but the newer apps use
| more American platforms (Firebase, AWS-hosted proprietary
| stuff) rather than Chinese, and the "disable telemetry" and
| "disable data sync" options generally have fewer bugs now.
| consumer451 wrote:
| > I don't think this is the reason, I think it's more that
| they're just too lazy to jump through the approval and
| maintenance hoops that come with an app store
|
| If that was the case, then why jump through all the hoops of
| extensive code obfuscation for the Android app? [0]
|
| > DJI also have a terrible track record with data security,
| with their entire AWS account getting ripped in 2017.
|
| Leaving the door propped open for everyone is also plausible
| deniability for doing bad things.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39438842
| dji4321234 wrote:
| Anti-reversing. Obfuscation and packers are dominant in
| Chinese applications. If something isn't obfuscated, it's
| free reign for competitors.
|
| > Leaving the door propped open for everyone is also
| plausible deniability for doing bad things.
|
| We completely agree here, see "sufficient product telemetry
| is indistinguishable from surveillance malware." I
| personally don't think this justifies a blanket ban on a
| technology; if it did, the world would need to be a very
| different place.
| hackernewds wrote:
| > sufficient product telemetry is indistinguishable from
| surveillance malware
|
| Isn't this mandatory given the restrictions required of them
| to disallow flying in banned areas?
| gumby wrote:
| You don't need to phone home in order to implement no-fly
| zones. All you need to do is download the latest flight
| restrictions, which could most easily be done anonymously.
| andrepd wrote:
| So many things don't need pervasive surveillance and
| privacy violations... yet it seems everything does it
| regardless, from the largest social media down to the
| most insignificant bank or government app you need to
| conduct your life.
| dji4321234 wrote:
| No; this functionality is actually accomplished in a
| reasonable way, with a local database stored on the drone
| and checked by the drone's flight control software, and
| exemptions granted by uploading a signed payload to the
| drone detailing an unlock region and timeframe.
|
| It's also worth noting that these restrictions aren't
| government imposed in countries besides China, and aren't
| government-linked besides a request-based "please make this
| location a no fly zone" process - DJI basically just
| exported a Chinese concept with hope of building goodwill
| internationally, and the no-fly zones were invented by DJI
| from public land use data. That's why other drones don't
| have no-fly zones but are still allowed for sale, there are
| frequent mismatches between DJI no-fly zones and real no-
| fly zones (both false positive and false negative), and why
| DJI disabled their own no-fly zone feature in much of
| Europe earlier this year (European mandated no-fly rules
| passed the responsibility to the consumer instead).
| theshrike79 wrote:
| What I heard (third hand knowledge) is that the DJI Android
| software stack can't handle AABs and for some reason it's
| easier for them to just get people to sideload instead of
| fixing their toolchain.
| lima wrote:
| What about consumer apps in Local Data Mode?
| dji4321234 wrote:
| Overall what I'd say about DJI is that they seem to be
| earnestly trying to make their features work at face value.
|
| That is, if you opt out of data collection, they seem to be
| earnestly _trying_ to disable data collection.
| Unfortunately their apps are a spaghetti monster disaster
| and it's very difficult for them to get things right, so
| DJI frequently introduce new features or libraries which
| contain telemetry they've forgotten to disable. In my
| experience they do this more often in consumer apps than
| enterprise apps. I think they might actually have some kind
| of automated testing or audit applied to their enterprise
| apps.
|
| Whether this is a conspiracy to introduce subtle
| surveillance bugs or simple hardware-company-making-
| software incompetence is of course an exercise left to the
| reader's paranoia level.
|
| Anyway, I just use DJI RCs and forget network credentials.
| This limits the DJI bug/malice blast radius surface area to
| an acceptable range to me, and that's the advice I'd give
| others, too.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| >I don't think they're explicitly a CCP data-collection front
|
| In China you cannot _not_ be explicitly a CCP data-collection
| front.
|
| China doesn't bring evidence to a judge in order to get a
| subpoena for data. They just go to DJI an get it. DJI has
| zero legal recourse if the CCP wants access to all DJI's
| stored data. Doesn't matter where that data is stored. Same
| thing for tiktok and why legislators are killing that too.
| You're a Chinese company? You ultimately work for the state.
| No discussion.
|
| China is not the US. People need to stop fitting the way
| things work in the US to the way things work in China.
|
| Edit: For the whataboutists: Yes, everyone is aware that
| american three letter agencies have backdoor access to every
| computer, broken RSA and AES, and control the USA's puppet
| government. Thanks.
| kanbara wrote:
| do you think that national security warrants and subpoenas
| actually stand up to evidentiary claims? it's not like the
| US actually cares and does the right thing-- it's just
| force hidden behind "process"
| sofixa wrote:
| > China doesn't bring evidence to a judge in order to get a
| subpoena for data
|
| Do you think that e.g. FISA courts or the CIA kidnapping
| random civilians based on their name/watch type have a high
| threshold of evidence?
| andrepd wrote:
| Ahaha, as opposed to the US where... 3-letter agencies
| don't bring evidence to a judge, they just go to
| google/meta to get it.
| FactKnower69 wrote:
| Pointing out obvious bad-faith hypocrisy is actually
| called "whataboutism", you're doing a hecking fallacy!!
| BlobberSnobber wrote:
| > China is not the US
|
| Not a very good comparison in terms of the state forcing
| companies to give out their customers' data...
|
| Also love how, in your opinion, anyone pointing this out
| must of course be a conspiracy nut.
| redserk wrote:
| To start: I do not trust the CCP, but my trust in the
| American legal system has been waning.
|
| What's the legal recourse for a US Citizen served with a
| dodgy FISA-related subpoena/warrant?
|
| Or if a government agency wants to purchase tracking data
| that includes my phone from a data collection agency? Say
| the state of Texas purchases geotracking data for app users
| who cross state lines.
| rainsford wrote:
| Apple famously told the FBI to go pound sand when asked
| to help access an iPhone in an actual terrorism case
| (i.e. it wasn't about going after dissidents or
| journalists or anything), even though such help was
| definitely within Apple's technical power.
|
| Now, while admitting that I am no way claiming the US is
| perfect, does anyone actually think something even
| remotely similar would _ever_ happen between a Chinese
| company and the Chinese government?
| janalsncm wrote:
| There is a good book on the American surveillance
| apparatus _Means of Control_ by Byron Tau. People are a
| lot more watched than they think.
|
| The Apple example is well-known because it is an
| exception. Much more common is not only compliance but
| making an entire business out of selling private data to
| the government.
|
| https://theintercept.com/2022/04/22/anomaly-six-phone-
| tracki...
|
| It really doesn't matter that China is worse. It's not a
| competition. The fact that people in other places have
| even less privacy doesn't make me feel better.
| lmm wrote:
| > Now, while admitting that I am no way claiming the US
| is perfect, does anyone actually think something even
| remotely similar would ever happen between a Chinese
| company and the Chinese government?
|
| Yes. We've seen the back and forth with e.g. Jack Ma. It
| doesn't happen as publicly because it's not such good
| marketing in China, but of course it happens.
| deciplex wrote:
| > For the whataboutists: Yes, everyone is aware that
| american three letter agencies have backdoor access to
| every computer, broken RSA and AES, and control the USA's
| puppet government. Thanks.
|
| You're deliberately overstating the issue, to the point of
| absurdity, to avoid legitimate criticism. Three-letter
| agencies do have a high level of access to this data, and
| in many cases that's because the companies involved just
| voluntarily hand it over (no need to get the courts
| involved). Even when the courts do get involved, these are
| secret courts where the decisions are classified, and in
| any case from what we do know they act as a rubber stamp
| anyway.
|
| So, this is a matter of the US wanting access to that data
| in addition to, or possibly exclusive from, the CCP.
| Frankly, as I'm not currently under the jurisdiction of the
| Communist Party of China, I'd prefer they have unlimited
| access to that data as opposed to the US government, if I
| have to choose one or the other.
| fouc wrote:
| I remember reading somewhere that all large companies in
| China are effectively state-owned, they basically always
| have a CCP member of the party on their board, which even
| the CEO is beholden to.
| montag wrote:
| > In China you cannot not be explicitly a CCP data-
| collection front
|
| Unintelligible.
|
| Rewrite as "in China it's very hard to avoid turning over
| data to the CCP."
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Aw yes, a $15B company that is "lazy"
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| It is amazing how much leeway enormous companies can get by
| claiming ignorance or laziness.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| > there were bugs in the opt-in toggle.
|
| > clean, barring a few versions with small bugs.
|
| Juniper also had a "small bug" in their implementation of the
| NSA-mandated Dual Elliptic Curve Deterministic Random Bit
| Generator algorithm that _just so happened_ to leak the exact
| number of state bits onto the wire required to hack any VPN
| connection.
|
| I don't know if you're an optimist or just a kind soul, but
| the rest of us are jaded for good reasons.
|
| A drone company has ZERO business collecting flight log
| information, in the same way my car manufacturer has no
| business knowing where I drive.
|
| That their "finger slipped" and they "accidentally" made
| opting out harder should tell you something.
| kelnos wrote:
| Your post convinced me of the opposite of what you were going
| for; after reading it, I get even more of a feeling that DJI
| does shady things.
| derefr wrote:
| I feel like you're underestimating the average large state
| actor's ability to employ subtlety when they really care
| about a long-term foreign intelligence operation.
|
| For example, it doesn't have to be the case that DJI has ever
| been _told_ to collect data for the CCP. That would be a big
| OPSEC violation -- as soon as anyone in the foreign media
| learned of it, DJI would be as dead as Huawei or Tiktok.
|
| Instead, it could just as well be that the CCP have left DJI
| _themselves_ untouched, but have instead manipulated market
| conditions _around them_ : arranging it so that DJI "just
| seems to never be able to" hire any security experts; and so
| that DJI (and everyone else) hire product managers from a
| pool trained on CCP-sponsored university programs and
| industry media sources, that have those product managers
| parroting "useful" beliefs like "more analytics is always
| better."
| forloni wrote:
| This whole thing is about the trade war with China.
|
| Attacking successful Chinese companies with pretenses.
| coldtea wrote:
| Well, their app is on the iOS app store, so unless you imply
| they do something special for their Android app...
| dheera wrote:
| I don't think "being in the Play store" means something is
| trustable, it just means you trust Google Play Services and
| Google with all of your data, and by extension, the US
| government.
|
| Being located in the US, I am arguably far more concerned about
| the US government tracking me than the Chinese government. The
| US government has jurisdiction over me, the Chinese government
| does not.
| MaxHoppersGhost wrote:
| This is an incredibly naive view.
| greenavocado wrote:
| > I believe I saw a site that decompiled their app and found a
| number of worrisome things.
|
| Every Android in America is sold with a rootkit called Google
| Play Services and it can do absolutely anything on your phone.
| There is no limit to what Google Play Services can do on your
| phone unattended or clandestinely.
| m463 wrote:
| Long ago I bought a DJI mavic. I generally don't use apps for
| any stuff.
|
| I couldn't fly it with the joystick controller that came with
| it. It said "see app" or something on the controller. It was
| really annoying but I sent it back. A cursory web search said
| it was sending all kinds of location/flight information/etc
| back to dji continuously.
|
| I thought there would be outrage, but not much.
|
| I think it is sort of annoying that they are going after DJI
| specifically.
|
| I think congress should be going after device/app privacy
| itself for all devices/apps in a more fundamental way.
| team_gold wrote:
| As someone who has a DJI Mini what are the options for a consumer
| drone made by a US company? Everything on
| https://www.diu.mil/blue-uas-cleared-list is either widely
| different, 15x as expensive, not purchasable by civilians at all,
| or all of the above. Parret appears to have stopped selling their
| consumer model entirely. Skydio 2+ seems like the closest thing
| but it also no longer appears to be for sale either. All their
| links to the starter kit are dead and only options is to contact
| sales for enterprise deals.
| Arrath wrote:
| I was on a project that was subject to the cleared UAS list you
| linked, and I cannot recommend either Parrot (incredibly long
| boot times, underpowered motors meant it was slow and had poor
| station keeping in high winds) or Skydio (bad heat
| management/low thermal cutoffs to the point that during the
| California high desert summer our unit wouldn't even start due
| to reporting that it was overheated) at all. So maybe its not
| too bad that they're no longer for sale.
| dji4321234 wrote:
| There's nothing.
|
| Skydio exited the consumer market. Their drones had good
| autonomy and flight characteristics. However, they struggled
| with wireless link quality due to the use of consumer WiFi, and
| had much older, inferior camera sensors compared to even
| contemporary DJI drones. They were also ridiculously loud and
| inefficient. Their enterprise drones are comically expensive
| and loaded with nickel-and-dime cloud features.
|
| Parrot drones struggle with the same issues as Skydio (Skydio
| actually used a Parrot remote controller for their consumer
| drones), plus their autonomy isn't nearly as good as even
| Skydio's, the overall drone behavior is "clunky" (slow boot
| times, slow connection times, non-responsive flight controls),
| and even basic flight is more challenging.
|
| The main issues plaguing US consumer drones are imaging sensors
| and wireless link. LTE and other well-suited long range
| wireless technologies capable of handling speed differential
| between the station and access point are locked in a vault of
| patents. Imaging sensors are legendarily impossible to acquire
| in low to moderate quantities and image sensor parameters are
| carefully locked behind a billion levels of NDA (thus why even
| the Raspberry Pi camera is full of DRM).
| dchristian wrote:
| Autel Nano or Lite+.
|
| Some Autel drone are made in the USA, but not all.
|
| Edit: added the Lite and fixed formatting
| astromaniak wrote:
| > Some Autel drone are made in the USA
|
| You mean are assembled in USA. Most soft and hardware is
| still made in China.
| geepytee wrote:
| I'll build a drone for you with open source components if you
| are shopping for one, it will cost more than a DJI but less
| than these other options.
| astromaniak wrote:
| Will it be as good. I mean control, video recording and
| signal. Compatible with some HD goggles? I really doubt, but
| if you can explain...
| janalsncm wrote:
| If you can do that at scale, it sounds like you have a viable
| business. There is clearly a demand for it.
| cm2012 wrote:
| The market will open up for new companies after the China ban
| takes effect. Right now they can't compete.
| sofixa wrote:
| > Right now they can't compete.
|
| Why? Because they aren't good enough, and if they have no
| competition they'll have to actually do something?
| palata wrote:
| That's just an excuse, after 10 years failing to compete.
| Western drone companies have received _billions_ in
| investments to make competing drones, but repeatedly fail,
| for some reason.
|
| Western company can't compete, but that's on them. Banning
| DJI won't change anything, Western companies have to get
| their act together.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| This isn't really true. Western drone companies haven't
| bothered competing in the consumer space, but they have
| made lots of advancement in the non-consumer space, where,
| arguably, the profits are better. Why try to compete with
| DJI for mail order drones going to kids when you can get a
| multi-million dollar contract with the Pentagon?
| janalsncm wrote:
| Frankly, the DoD likely spent something like 5-8 trillion
| dollars over the last 10 years.
|
| If we establish that drone manufacturing is a matter of
| national security, it seems critically important to
| understand why domestic production keeps failing and fix
| those problems rather than just giving up.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| I assume one of the goals of this is to change that by making
| it feasible for US companies to compete at least on the
| domestic market.
|
| Ukraine has shown that having domestic at-scale consumer drone
| production is a critical military capability. I bet part of the
| motivation behind this is protectionism to make sure this
| capability can be built up. Otherwise any war against China
| starts with China being able to make many thousands of recon
| aircraft / precision guided projectiles per day, likely with
| mostly or entirely domestic supply chains, without even going
| to a war economy, while the US cannot manufacture the same
| class of weapon at any comparable scale.
| plandis wrote:
| Once again the US government dances around the broader issue of
| data privacy.
|
| I understand it's easier to get people to vote against Chinese
| products in the US on data privacy concerns but it's irritating
| that Congress isn't working on legislating rules for products
| that are not Chinese as well.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| The reason the US doesn't have a real domestic drone industry is
| partly due to the FAA cracking down hard on the drone community.
| segmondy wrote:
| I have no need for a drone right now, but looks like I'm now in
| the market for DJI drones, one or two.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| That's how banned book sales work in China: the books don't
| sell well until the government bans them, and then everyone
| wants them after that (and can easily get them since China's
| black market is pretty open).
| crooked-v wrote:
| So what recourse would the public have to get compensation from
| the government for their now-useless consumer drones?
| hintymad wrote:
| We can ban DJI all we want, but our military or the US itself is
| declining nonetheless if we don't solve our manufacturing problem
| like we still produce those lame suicidal drones rogue1 that has
| inferior spec to DJI Mavic 3 yet charges fucking $94K a pop, like
| the cost of making a canon shell is 10X more than Russian even
| though Russia is known to be one of the most corrupted country in
| the world, like we don't have a prosperous manufacturing industry
| to rely on so the cost of a specialized screw could be hundreds
| times more than what what China produces.
|
| I mean, we can have the best service industry in the world, but
| eventually we have to produce good things, no? Or in the worst
| case, if there's war, what do we depend on? Traders and
| programmers and lawyers and waiters? Are we sure we could out
| produce the Axis 20:1, like building a warship every 3 days (or a
| week?)?
|
| It pains me to see the US decline just like the Roman Empire did.
| vsuperpower2020 wrote:
| I'm not going to miss drones. Too many drone operators abused
| them to violate peoples expectation of quiet or privacy, or to
| harass animals, and were ignored or outright supported by other
| users. Laws restricting specific areas or behavior are extremely
| hard to enforce compared to an outright ban.
|
| The most common defense was violating your privacy wasn't
| technically illegal. Well, now that it is going to become
| illegal, don't expect my support. This should serve as a reminder
| to people with niche hobbies not to make everyone hate you.
| benoliver999 wrote:
| I just had some drone photos taken of damage on the roof of my
| house, and it's way easier than trying to get up 4 storeys with
| a ladder
| vsuperpower2020 wrote:
| No doubt.
| huggingmouth wrote:
| Dji is like samsung; great hardware ruined by owner-hostile
| software. I will never buy either unless I can load standard open
| source software on them.
|
| I can't wait for right to repair and similar laws force these
| delusional companies to actually hand over control of products to
| their rightful owners.
| fvdessen wrote:
| This is an interesting experiment in economic protectionism.
| Depending how far is the US drone industry in a few year we'll
| see this measure repeated
| casey2 wrote:
| This protectionism is just getting ridiculous now. You can't ship
| most manufacturing jobs overseas and expect china not to out
| compete eventually. Yes they are stealing ip, who cares, japan
| did the same thing. Trying to stop in now is just going to cause
| another depression.
| ugh123 wrote:
| GoPro should enter the drone market.
| crvdgc wrote:
| Slightly off-topic, but it reminds me of the Tesla restriction
| around governmental buildings in China last year, citing the same
| set of reasons (data collection, national security, etc.). It
| seems that the restriction was lifted recently [1].
|
| [1]: https://www.pcmag.com/news/china-lifts-tesla-restrictions-
| pa...
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