Not allowing _any_ foreign made components, however, is insane, as is not even auditing DJI when they didn't put up a fight. They have to know they're just killing the small drone industry completely.
Checks out. More legislation boosts your business.
The drone thing is a personal opinion. If the US ends up in a war (whether it’s one I agree with or not, likely not), I don’t want millions of drones to be remote controllable by the folks we’re fighting.
How will it even get out of my closet to create such havoc for 26 minutes before it drops out of the sky begging me for a new battery?
Let's put on our fun James Bond villain hats for a bit.
The US has around 1.75MM drones that people have bothered to register. DJI has around 75% of that, so call it 1.25MM. This registration program is relatively new so let's say 750K of those are still operable.
How many of those are in the air at any given time? Keep in mind many of these bigger registered drones are used by businesses.
Let's say it's 1%, so 7,500 drones suddenly open some backdoor and get commanded to do a nose dive for the nearest power line. Now add in the smaller ones that are less likely to do damage, but there are 10x as many. Now combine it with a simultaneous cyber attack on infrastructure, and some pre-planned terror attacks.
Is it going to end the country? Of course not. Is there potential for that to cause huge chaos? I think so.
Is that more absurd than the Hezbollah pager bombings? I don't think so.
So yeah, I'd pay more for my drones, my cars, my cell phone towers, etc etc to avoid them being controlled by a country that we might end up in a stupid war with. I'm not saying you can make everything locally in the modern world, that's absurd. But there are valid strategic and natsec concerns about the US/China trade relationship in 2025.
OMG, get serious. DJI can't blow up the drones. It is in my closet, not my pocket.
Again, this is just silly. Even for James Bond! ;p
It is more "We have to do something!!" that reminds me of cities in California having moratoriums on building new housing -- who would have thought that people would want to build in order to live in a nice climate. But really was about a new kind of neighbor...
At the same time, several businesses have and are trying to compete in this business. The amount of capital required is enormous if anyone is going to compete with DJI and the like. I personally know someone in this situation. They have a great product and some traction, but going from low quantity bespoke solutions to cost competitive large scale manufacturing costs hundreds of millions.
And the problem is, investors don't trust that the ban is going to last forever. The government could reverse the ban at any time, and that puts the US company back in a position where they can't compete with DJI, so the investors lose money. And they know that.
There is no real downsides for the current gov’t here.
I’d pay more for domestic parts, because I think the capability is strategically valuable, and the quality of Chinese stuff is super variable.
There’s basically no industry here because the aliexpress parts are so cheap, so I support some protectionism, understanding that it will make the hobby more expensive.
I think you’re probably right, but I think going for million dollar drones from anduril while wiping the rest of the market is a miscalculation.
I can’t even think of another country that makes 4S Lipo batteries or the motors or the ESC’s or the VTX or the GPS module..
Chinese stuff ranges from cheap to expensive, super reliable and super unreliable, too.