The US Used to Demand the Best Tech. Now We Ban It
pcmag.com
pcmag.com
Solar panels: [1]
Cars: [2]
More devices are being hit by US digital sovereignty rules. Most US talk about this revolves around the EU not allowing processing of data about EU citizens outside the EU. It's now a big issue for US customers, too. The US is applying it to many classes of devices. For cars, there's the “Connected Vehicles Rule”.[3] Cars can't phone home to China or some other countries. New models of DJI drones are not allowed to be imported into the US, as mentioned in the article.[4] WiFi-equipped routers have even tighter restrictions.[5]
Will this be extended to phones? "Smart" TVs? That's going to be interesting.
[1] https://www.peacocktariffconsulting.com/solar-panel-imports/
[2] https://motorwatt.com/ev-blog/howtos/importing-a-chinese-ele...
[3] https://www.hoganlovells.com/en/publications/us-bis-final-ru...
[4] https://uavcoach.com/dji-ban/
[5] https://www.fcc.gov/faqs-recent-updates-fcc-covered-list-reg...
In general, if you wanted...
Reliability: Japanese. Value: Korean, French, Japanese. Performance: German, Italian, maybe every now and then British. Luxury: German, Italian, British, and depending on marque, Japanese.
And today, Chinese marques are eating everyone's lunch on every metric in the EV sector because they have seen how everyone else builds cars, lorries, and buses for a while, learnt how to do it themselves, got rid of the ICE, popped a battery in them, and have been massively undercutting the market for a while now.
* I should qualify this properly to pre-emptively stave off the ooh-rah crowd: every now and then there has been a decent A-to-B car out of the US, like the Fiesta. Additionally there are models sold purely in Europe like the Ford Mondeo.
China goes beyond protectionism and even threatens other countries from doing their own strategy.
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/renewables/chi...
https://sccei.fsi.stanford.edu/china-briefs/chinas-use-unoff...
> The authors conclude that non-tariff barriers were a primary instrument used by China in the U.S.-China trade war, with implications for China’s trade conflicts with other countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_ma...
So does the EU
https://ahdb.org.uk/europe-market-access-and-barriers-to-tra...
Interestingly, champions of free trade come out only when the US puts in any place the tiniest of restrictions.
It will be interesting to see if Slate's little electric pickup truck really ships at the promised price point. They're advertising and taking pre-orders. Delivery dates are vague. "Q4 2026" probably means "a few demo units". Maybe in 2027.
Incidentally, the Donut Labs solid-state battery appears to have been a scam.[1] They were supposed to ship electric motorcycles with it in Q1 2026, and we're almost into Q3. "$25 million raised from 1,300+ small investors", says Electrek. Their "solid state" battery seems to be an ordinary pouch type lithium-ion battery, no better than a good lithium-ion battery.
CATL's CEO says that they're at level 4 (Component/breadboard validation in lab) of 9 in terms of technology maturity. That's worse than expected at this point. There are lots of announcements of "breakthroughs", and at least two test vehicles on the road (Mercedes and Ducati), but nobody has volume manufacturing working yet.
[1] https://electrek.co/2026/06/08/donut-lab-solid-state-battery...
[2] https://electrek.co/2026/06/25/catl-solid-state-battery-leve...
Tesla also helped shape the Chinese EV industry the same way how the first iPhone shaped all the other smartphone platforms.
For example in the 2010s in Shenzhen they increasingly switched to electric two-wheelers (in part due to historical bans on petrol powered motorbikes).
the industry is running at a loss, and dumping below cost products on the global markets.
The US could be using these models to fix bugs and defend out systems.. but instead, we're all waiting for open source models to exceed the best unbanned model available in the US(0), and then we can all watch while attackers -- who can use any available open source model, including banned models -- to attack every US company on the internet.
US bans are a choice: a choice to lose to China; a choice to leave US companies defenseless; a choice to reduce competitiveness of the US in software. Every time a US person or company watches someone use models they are prohibited from using to achieve something US models can't, they create opposition to this ban. I can't imagine this is a sustainable policy.
0. Currently open source models are included in consideration for the "best model in the US" -- but if they're willing to ban the best from Anthropic/OpenAI, I wouldn't necessarily assume that all open source models will always be available within the US.
And your point on "Every time a US person or company watches someone use models they are prohibited from using to achieve something US models can't" makes no sense at all. What SOTA models are others able to use that US companies are not? Zero.
Private industry will essentially get ITAR access to better models, and other countries will get 5.5 with maybe some select partners getting access.
Its totally sensible that the US will keep strong AI to itself to boost its own industry.
(ITAR is a very low bar, but you need to be a citizen and your employer must fill out some forms.)
Im so sick of winning. Im so happy for the future of the US and humanity. Yey tech bros.
No, it isn't. What in the world would lead you to think that will be an option?
Anything we develop can and will be duplicated elsewhere and distributed widely.
So what could possibly lead you to think power will be distributed widely?
In fact, what the US is doing now incentivizes every other country on Earth to do just that.
I don't see how that is the case with the US and leading edge AI. The US has a lot of use for that, and on balance, I cannot think of anything that is more valuable than super intelligent AI. It's basically the end game power for the human race.
Countries could try what essentially amounts to unilateral sanctions on the US to try and force sharing, but it's unlikely it would go well.
By the way, China will lock it's super smart AI in house too.
This isn't a new idea either, both the US and China have technology already that they keep to themselves.
Many unlikely things happened the past 18 months in geopolitical terms, it was unlikely that Denmark would have to ready troops to send to Greenland to fend off American aggression but here we are.
Whatever was unlikely on the previous world order is up in the air now, no one knows how the USA breaking its alliances will shape the future world in 10-20 years. It turned out that it's also unlikely things will go well with the previous status quo, realignments are bound to happen.
You then use the power of AGI to keep everyone else down, economically and militarily. Billions of AGI-controlled drones patrolling the Earth and enforcing your supremacy. Yes, the future is grim and dystopian.
If one thinks this is farfetched, they aren't paying attention to geopolitics.
If we wanted cheap cars, there needs to be demand to justify building giga factories of EVs.
There just wasnt sufficient consumer demand to justify the giga factory investments
China CAN generate demand for EVs because they have the political ability to
1) force gas restricted cars to only drive on certain days of the week
2) create a brutal lottery to get a license plate to legally drive a gas car
3) provide a bunch of subsidies
The US has only done option 3.
Out govt system literally doesnt have the political will to do these brutal but effective policy changes
4) europeans are environemtally conscious
Americans however like their gas guzzling F150s.
The reason I did the original comment was I know for a time the major car companies did a huge push into EVs.
Like the ford 150 lightning, chevy bolt and mustang mach E. But they stopped manufacturing them due to weakened sales and profitability.
Its a vicious feedback loop of consumer adoption, high car prices, and capital investment which makes us feel stuck
*edit this is based on what I heard from a GM exec during a lecture visit while at UofM
Pickup trucks have always made up between 10% and 20% of vehicles on the road in America; it's the SUV that has picked up from next to nothing in 1980 to almost half of all new vehicles now, while the sedan has plunged from 80% to about 25% of new vehicles today.
A big part of that transition to larger SUVs (which are not F150s) was the CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) Standards, which sought to make cars more fuel efficient. They regulated based on the size of the vehicle, so larger vehicles (including both the SUV and the F150) became cheaper to manufacture, while smaller cars were squeezed out of the market as meeting CAFE became too expensive. Larger cars also perform better on safety tests and have an easier time passing onerous safety regulations. Had environmental and safety regulations been handled differently, or if there weren't any, Americans might well be driving more fuel-efficient smaller coupes and sedans.
That said, the Chevy Bolt and Mustang Mach-E are, in fact, being manufactured—the Bolt was recently brought back, and the Mustang Mach-E was never discontinued. The Ford F150 Lightning has been discontinued. Tesla outsells all of them by far.
That's only true if we're limiting the discussion to the safety of the people inside said car. Quoting one of the first sources I could find: https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2024/06/big-cars-feel-...
a study found a 500 kilogram increase in vehicle weight, which could mean the difference between an SUV and a sedan, correlated with a 70% higher fatality risk
[after the 2003 bumper height-matching standard] The likelihood of SUVs causing fatalities to drivers in other cars reduced from being 132% more likely for a collision with an SUV in the early 90s, to 28% more likely by 2016
A mere 10 centimetre increase in front-end height can elevate the risk of pedestrian death by 22%, with impacts more likely occurring at critical injury points like the chest or head
Children are eight times more likely to die when struck by an SUV compared to lighter and smaller cars
This is false. It's true today that sales are in that range. It is not remotely true that actual ownership is 10%-20% today nor that it was in the past
The jump in EV sales this year are primarily driven by seeing what a psycho in the US whitehouse can immediately do to gasoline prices.
Gasoline only comes from one source., and is largely delivered around the world by shipping.
Electricity is able to be generated by many means, and is available everywhere.
I know several people in modest suburban homes, who generate all of their own electricity, including driving two EVs.
The supply chain can be very short.
There is no other form of energy that can deliver the individual and national energy independence that can be delivered by electricity.
Gasoline and petroleum in general can never, ever, ever, deliver this degree of autonomy.
This article was just pubished:
https://www.npr.org/2026/07/09/nx-s1-5872786/iran-war-evs-so...
"China exported more than 2 million electric passenger vehicles between January and May"
Now, with the awesome deal with Iran of a "Big, Beautiful, not-a-nuclear-nonproliferation Treaty" blown out the window, along with the rest of the hot air emitted from our idiot in the oval office, oil prices are going through the roof again.
I am very glad to hear that affordable electric cars are available in England. This is a giant step forward.
I'm not glad for the reason, but I'm also glad that countries around the world are accelerating a transition away from petro based energy.
Here in the US, GM is announcing a new coal powered car, with the slogan: "Bring back the Stanely Steamer".
While all Chinese EVs are banned.
Housing is another complication that’s related to the charging situation. It’s only worthwhile to own an EV if you can charge at home. There are people who make it work with only public chargers, but it’s a major PITA. That usually means owning a home where you can install a charger. That requirement excludes a lot of people.
It’s not that everyone wants a gas guzzler. There are real challenges here.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/dmmgl5/78_of_the_c...
Edit: that link is awful. So my 99% claim is also likely off a bit too. But I bet it's not off by a lot.
Nobody bombed us, all our problems are self-inflicted. Reducing America's oil and energy consumption was a priority for both parties until fracking was discovered and the Republicans fully committed to setting the world on fire.
If I still lived in the US, I'd be hesitant to buy an EV because the infrastructure state to state to support charging wasn't great when I was last there. In Europe, you can road trip with your EV no problem.
Let's not entirely blame consumers for not being incentivised enough. Let's face it the US has been actively against EVs. You mention subsidies, haven't those even seen regressions in EV and solar panel subsidies? It's ridiculous.
They would jump on EVs in heartbeat if Trump told them to.
But instead, here in this reality...
I agree our country needs to really have some sort of revolution for the good of all humanity to force this change and overcome the entrenched interests of these greedy corporations.
Maybe we come up with a plan to drastically solve our energy and industry problems, overcome all obstacles and bring about a wonderful utopia, I bet we could do it inside of 5 years if we just gave enough power to the right people.
We could call it a 5 year plan, and listen we need broad sweeping powers to do it, otherwise malicious actors would try and subvert it. Some people wouldn't like it but that's because they aren't brave enough to do what needs to be done for the good of the workers and the proletariat. Rise up comrade let us implement the glorious 5 year plan that will free us forever from the capitalist shackles.
Unsurprisingly, the resulting economy in aggregate is non-competitive, as it relies entirely on supply chains from competitive marketplaces.
Aptera has built a working, production-intent solar EV. Recent tests showed it charging up to 46 miles per day from the sun alone.
Reservation referral link with discount: https://frequal.com/aptera/reserve.html
Spot on
An EV really shouldn't be needing to send telemetry at all. It's not a self-driving car. It would be better if the user could reliably and permanently disable it even when one's phone is connected.
The vehicle would also have to be tested to ensure that no covert or p2p radio signals can be sent to it that can signal it to shutdown or malfunction. This is very difficult to assert. There would have to exist domestic personnel who take responsibility for it.
Frankly though, Israel scares me more than China, as Israel is known to actually add remotely detonated explosives to exported consumer products.
Seems fair? What about manufacturing as well, I'm sure the US can hold these Chinese car design and manufacturing techniques with the same copyright and IP protection that China gives the US's stuff.
Banning isn't a good solution, we should create healthy competition.
It's not like there are satellites that can get high-res pictures of most of the US every few hours. Or millions of phones running all kinds of software.
Even the US-made cars have dozens of computers that run very crude C-based code, full of bugs and overflows. Security was never a priority for this code. There are so many routes of ingress that it's not even funny.
I'll admit it's more subtle than usual and the writer put some real work in (it wasn't just a one-shot prompt to "write tech article"). I don't even mind LLM-assisted writing if it has real content (like this article). It is a bit hypocritical though given the typical anti-AI tone.
Some sample "LLMisms", although the "AI-ness" is really at a more abstract stylistic level (eventually strong enough LLMs will eliminate all simple "LLMisms" so that only the more abstract identifiers will remain)
"a potent visual reminder of the imbalance shaping the modern EV economy."
"Xiaomi did not simply impress him. It appeared to unsettle him."
"Simultaneously, people like me have a “Neo plugged into the Matrix like a battery” sense that they and their credit cards are exactly where US industry icons, notably Elon Musk, prefer them to be."
"It’s a strange inversion: China increasingly resembles the competitive capitalist system Americans were taught to admire, while the US appears to embrace the controlled “kickback” economy we were told to fear. "
Also, I'm not sure how long CCP will keep on bankrolling their car companies. They are now competing with each other pushing the profits lower. Over the last year BYD stock is down 40%. Take a look at their auto manufacturers index. It peaked in November 2021 losing about 47% since then (https://www.solactive.com/index/DE000SLA0CA9/)
If the USA government showed up at Apple and Google with guns and said "Shut down all the iOS and Android devices in France, Germany, and Japan or else", Apple and Google, AFAICT, can do that today. They could brick every iOS device and nearly every Android device. I'm actually a little surprised that more countries haven't noticed.
Similary, cars are going in the same direction. A few companies can brick every connected car they make, by region, if they want / are forced to.
I don't have a solution. I'd buy a BYD if I could as my next car and just cross my fingers it never came to that.
Also: This is a tenant of fascism. They're restricting imports to protect their own members.
- The Polestar vehicles most recently banned are made in Charleston SC
- Fossil fuel industries in the US receive huge subsidies
- Non-Chinese brands (Hyundai/ Kia) produce models with similar pricing
Always funny to read the tirades against subsidies here on HN, sometimes even the same users praising how much more capital exist in SV/USA for risky ventures (compared to the EU and other markets) will also complain about how China is undercutting competition with subsidies, without ever batting an eye to the fact the exuberant privilege the USA holds in capital markets is exactly what makes it possible for private investors to subsidise loss-making ventures for years to decades in the USA until the company becomes profitable.
https://archive.ph/9vUNF "Donald Trump is kicking out Chinese firms and keeping their tech"