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Comment by paulgerhardt | Hacker News Reader

Unlike sending engines for cryptographic cyphers across nation state lines, night vision is absolutely one of those things ITAR cares about. And the number of loops holes and exemptions Audi had to apply for made the project financially unprofitable to the point of moving to always on high beam DLP style headlights.

Retrofitting one system in my car which had the option code was a yak shave.

Most automotive systems get by this by limiting night vision to 8fps(!). Similar to how GPS was limited to 100m accuracy in the first civilian models.

What blows my mind is one can get Chinese models off Taobao with 60fps for 1/10th the price of US products like FLIR.

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https://youtu.be/UAeJHAFjwPM

There are three types of night vision, and the consumer grade active illumination stuff using infrared light is covered by EAR (Department of Commerce’s Export Administration Regulations) instead of ITAR (which is still significant, but less strict). Which doesn't detract from your point, which is that night vision is hamstrung by regulations. With all the advances in technology, the consumer grade stuff should really be more accessible because it would save lives if drivers could see better in the dark.

That last part would indicate that the restrictions are utterly moronic if one were to reason. At the very least they need to be relaxed so technology that's readily available to end consumers worldwide isn't restricted.

Yes and no.

A benefit of those same restrictions means TSMC is building foundries in the US for a change.

GaAs sensors are awesome. Combine those chips with ML optimized compute on a silicon interposer and drone warfare gets a hockey stick in adoption.

As civilians we get functional self driving cars via trickle down.

ITAR isn't, or shouldn't be about economic protectionism; it's for restricting the flow of weapons of war.

If the US government wants to encourage domestic chip production, it has other ways to incentivize that.

ITAR blocks export, not import. It has nothing to do with TSMC building fabs here. $50B in incentives might have something to do with that.

And like sister comment says, ITAR is not about industrial or economic policy. It’s about maintaining a qualitative edge in weaponry. How is there a qualitative edge when you can buy the restricted components freely from China?

Just noticed the other comment on GP saying they’re restricted through a different list (EAR). It serves the same purpose so I’m leaving my response as is.

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