Posted by f-serif 22 hours ago
Likely just a maneuver for a bribe. Like TikTok and so on...
We should make foreign companies manufacture here, just like China did. It also works as a jobs program and builds up and industrial base and skill, as we've seen with the Japanese automotive sector.
This isn't anything more than grift for grift sake.
Expect lawsuits.
[1] https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-A...
[2] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-116publ124/pdf/PLAW...
As investment markets overheat on a perfectly legal 1.6Tn debt-bubble created by the magnificent 7 driven index funds, it is not our job to "fix" policy issues... but merely profit by the situation.
It is naive to blame a single geriatric man for the situation, as royal courts have created kings since the dawn of civilization. =3
For example, the Big Beautiful Bill only appropriated $800M for counter-UAV systems. That's insanely low given the broad threat exposure and the fact that they've literally changed what ground combat looks like. For perspective, we spent $400M on the Qatari 747 retrofit and appropriated $400M on the hope that "naval shipbuilding autonomy and AI" might be a thing.
And more properly there is an introduced bipartisan bill - SAFE LiDAR Act.
This ban makes sense if they suspect the enemy is covertly scanning using unsuspecting users' drones. But if they suspect foreign actors are using the drones to scan, well they won't be stopped or slowed down by the ban. Whoever is interested in targeted mapping of buildings and specific areas won't be put off by Lidar drones not being commercially available. Independently Lidars and drones still are, and combining the two for malicious purposes is a no-brainer.
National Security Determination Threat Posed by Foreign-Produced Robotic Devices [pdf]
The cherry on top is how utterly unenforceable (in a practical non-proliferation sense) the bulk of the regulations are. Strap a microcontroller dev board to anything sufficiently lightweight and it can become a drone. The most expensive part of a DIY heavy lift build that breaks ~all the rules is probably the props.
The concern isn't China dominating the area of $20 toys. The concern is platforms relevant to industry and military.
Whether that, in turn, can be disentangled from "the area of $20 toys" in case of drones is unclear to me.
Is Neo a $20 toy? LIDARs are getting cheap quick, at some point when ToF sensors add $10 to BoM they will be in all drones.. I guess except US only SKUs? Not like you can't get pretty much the same data using just a single camera, GPS+IMU fusion and structure-from-motion..
FCC proposal doesn’t distinguish that safety sensor from mapping-grade or military LiDAR - it covers any drone that “contains or integrates” LiDAR.
If Air and Mini ain't hobbyist grade idk what is.
China party policy was successful, and just a bit better at state-backed monopolistic control of supply & demand than many folks including the US.
Gaslighting policy losers of outsourcing by insisting it never happened just angers people. That is how it happened, and most open-hardware community projects are still sold on China websites within a few weeks. It is just a cultural opinion on IP ownership that differs. =3
China policy was made by teams of Engineers within The Party, and operate very differently than disconnected US trust-fund kids. =3
What does this even mean?
There are tens (hundreds?) of cheap electric motor manufactures in China. You can go and order some custom motor yourself and get a quote, and yes you get a discount if you order more.
That is what free enterprise is!
It seems odd that China seems to need to teach (presumably) US people this?
> than initially sold $60 LiPol batteries for $7 to starve other manufacturers out of business for years
You make it sounds like this was somehow strange or dodgy or something.
Yes, other manufactures couldn't produce them as cheaply. There was no magic Chinese government subsidy or something outside the normal tax reductions the local governments give for setting up factories in their district (the same as in the US!)
>What does this even mean?
Selling products at a loss relying on government $0 labor cost subsidy for years. Ultimately, securing a monopolistic position over raw material supply chains, and retail consumer product value expectations.
Finally, leveraging new found consolidated market positions as political policy, where the prices climb back up to generate record profits after replacing entire market sectors.
To put it bluntly, it is why anyone can walk into a large retail outlet, and see the exact same factory pad-printed house-brand products regardless of the business.
>That is what free enterprise is!
Not really, as going to online sellers like e-bay/Walmart/Amazon just sell the identical nonsense products as Taobao. Thousands of product pages superficially indistinguishable from competitors, always initially cheaper than anywhere else, and more than likely poorer quality counterfeits.
>You make it sounds like this was somehow strange or dodgy or something.
Not really, it was a strategic subsidy that paid off for many China businesses. Now LiPol prices are back at $63/pack with all other potentiality competitive pricing pressures nonexistent for the next few decades.
My point was most North American firms could never compete with subsidized labor policies, lost consumer influence over rare-earth raw material supply chains, and can not make long-term rational policy choices. =3
You are going to need proof for this.
There is zero evidence of anything like this occurring in these fields.
The ILO has a report on Chinese wage subsidies here: https://www.ilo.org/media/421136/download
They do have wage subsidies, but they are pretty standard things like a (fairly small) subsidy for employing a long-term unemployed person. That's nothing that most other counties don't do, eg:
> An employer who recruits a targeted unemployed person is given an annual tax deduction of 4,800 RMB per person recruited, as well as social insurance subsidies.
Regarding batteries, it's true that China had tax rebates for EV purchases (along with most Western countries). In China the subsidy is paid directly to the manufacturer and only domestic production is eligible, which is unique.
But:
> By far the largest recipient of purchase subsidies was Chinese NEV manufacturer BYD, which in 2022 alone received purchase subsidies amounting to €1.6 billion (for about 1.4 million NEV) (Figure 4). The second largest recipient of purchase subsidies was US-headquartered Tesla, which received about €0.4 billion (for about 250,000 BEV produced in its Shanghai Gigafactory). While the ten next highest recipients of purchase subsidies are all Chinese, there are also three Sino-foreign joint ventures (the two VW joint ventures with FAW and SAIC as well as SAIC GM Wuling) among the top 20 purchase subsidy recipients.
https://www.intereconomics.eu/contents/year/2024/number/4/ar...
Are you asking for proof China is not Communist? It is common knowledge Party Service Centers and State-Directed Industrial Policy support have been active for decades. One may talk with US customs about why industries had anti-dumping levies on China exports.
Also, the PRC Party embeds advisors in almost every large successful domestic firm. So businesses couldn't really have 'free enterprise' even if they wanted a free market.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect
>Regarding batteries, it's true that China had tax rebates for EV purchases
That is a different subject, and part of a late stage market exploitation phase post state planning. BYD and DJI make some great products, but that success did not just magically appear out of thin air.
Over 93% of Solar/EV/Battery industries are currently China based. That isn't going to change anytime soon, and wasn't by accident given its massive oil reserves are still finite. The Party wanted independence from global trade politics, and now produces most of the worlds "Green" power products.
Communism is interesting, as such economies must control supply, demand, and public opinion to persist. =3
"In America you can change political parties, but you can't change policies. In China you cannot change the party, but you can change policies."
>> You are going to need proof for this.
> Are you asking for proof China is not Communist?
No, I literally quoted exactly what I'm asking for proof for.
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3317637/c...
Nor was it related to forced and or child labor political taboos
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/reports/child-labor/list-o...
But it was a rather simple multi-year PRC Party labor partnership program for key industries. Very frustrating as I can't remember if it was for foreign owned firms only or not, as "AI" spam is insisting China never existed prior to 6 years ago. I will look into the matter again as time permits in a day or so. =3
I can't immediately recall the program name my boss from Procter & Gamble worked under at the time. But it was similar to the XPCC labor programs cited in the provided links.
One can believe whatever BS a naive LLM tells them, but in this case you were wrong. The import levies/fines/bans will stay until folks can provide proof of reasonable, legal, and humane working conditions for all Chinese people. Best of luck with that. =3
But you made very specific allegations about wage subsidiaries for electric motor manufacturer and is zero evidence for that.
Now you are moving the goal posts to random "China bad" talking points.
Moreover they also have 2 market leaders in that techs
And as an American citizen I am always hearing how bad it is for China to have a leg up on us in X, Y or Z, and yet our government is the one that is regularly saber rattling (and starting wars over!) the shifting economic realities of the US clearly being an empire in decline.
These days we also regularly saber rattle our own "allies" for fuck's sake.
Long past time to ask yourself if maybe we're the baddies.
The anti-flock community believes it's because they can destroy image sensors from a distance. And banning the foreign ones means they can order domestic-made drones to have firmware that prevents them from operating in certain ways or in certain (government) areas, among other things.
The finance community thinks they just don't want competition that might rival or sell better than domestic ones, similar to the ban on Chinese EVs.
The privacy community thinks they only want surveillance to be possible from within, likening it to previous bans on DJI drones and Chinese routers. And the administration is currently working on trying to ban other kinds of networking gear as well as cellular modems from China (which is basically every phone in the country).
Would love to hear other theories. Perspectives are fun.
Yeah because DJI drones are well known for their easy to hack firmware and lacking support for no fly zones..right? And they would openly flaunt any US law making any drones sold or flown the US to obey the NFZs? But wait, that's exactly what DJI drones used to do even without a law on the books, before FCC banned them.
Electronic warfare resistant loitering munitions. They would transmit sparse point clouds to the enemy for training.
Why not ban pencils? You can draw maps or schematics of secret things, plus they can be used to stab people!
There are many more reasons LiDAR kicks ass but none of them have anything to do with why they are doing this.
You should do some more research into structure-from-motion and get back to us. Lidar is nice for real-time data, but these days anyone can process a 4k stream and get excellent geometry data.
If a hypothetical hostile and weaponized drone is later deployed with a pretrained navigational model, it might have 4k and/or LIDAR whose function would be to verify rather than figure out navigation; in a state of hostility we can assume the owners of the drone would be indifferent to local rules.
Will America's foes heinously attack the homeland by offering socialistic self-driving vehicles? What exactly the threat model here, that makes Lidar data dangerous? Space-based remote sensing is superior in almost every way.
Most fpv drones don’t even have GNSS, they fly on acro mode or manual one, so that won’t prevent a “loitering munition”. Now for gnss denied autonomous navigation, Lidar isn’t the corner stone part, for indoor ones other sensors do well if not better like stereo cams, outdoor, you don’t need Lidar that much, but also you can use image based navigation, where it compares prestored images to land marks to navigate accurately. That being said, it’s not like Lidars are completely banned, you can buy one, 2d or 3d lidar, and equip it on your drone that you built, you don’t need dji to have it ready for you, so that ban won’t really mitigate any risk assuming there is one.
> They would transmit sparse point clouds to the enemy for training
Restricted facilities already restrict any kind of drone, other locations you can access these info without the need to transmit any point clouds data anyway.
In short, there are no real secrets geographically at least not for long. What’s more important is that you have the rare earth minerals inventory and even that is not a secret.
This is not the same thing as taking a picture from a satellite.
It's a matter of scale. Satellite imagery gets you most of the way there. I can think of only a very few instances where you'd care about higher resolution and those should be few enough that any well funded actor (ie the ones we care about here) can perform targeted data collection.