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Comment by empath75 | Hacker News Reader

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).

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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.

> 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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

>always justified everything by using the "national security"

Is it any different than China wanting data access from U.S companies that attempted to open their business there? I'm not in favor of this ban. I think they should've at least forced DJI to keep the data local before going for an outright ban.

I completely agree but the difference is that we already know China is a totalitarian one party dictatorship. They don't necessarily try to hide it to. That's not the case in the US, but it always sneaks in through dogwhistles like "national security". I mean who wants to be against that, right?

But yes it's obviously better for the US to at least keep the data from going overseas. But that's not really what we've been seeing with this potential ban and tik Tok. It's just outright banning stuff under the same "national security" boogeyman. Again, yes China does the exact same thing but I don't think we want to imitate China out of all nations. The cold war wasn't won by imitating the Soviet Union.

Those drones will be built for war, how are they competing with DJI who refuses to let their drones be used for war?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

https://www.skydio.com/solutions/defense

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.

Of course DJI drones are used for conflict, however you have to circumvent the measures that DJI has taken to prevent this, DJI is not selling them for use in conflicts.

> 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.

DJI can prevent you from flying near airports, they can try the same thing with conflict zones. I assumes they do this already and this check has to be bypassed.

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