FCC moves to ban Lidar-equipped foreign drones from US | Hacker News Reader

FCC moves to ban Lidar-equipped foreign drones from US

tomshardware.com

119 pointsf-serif123 comments

Stop manipulating our markets under the guize of national security or protecting Americans. If we need to be protected from bad behavior we need to be protected by all bad behavior regardless of it's origin. Has back doors? Ban it. Has awful security around sensitive data? Ban it. Makes technology available to the masses that is a national security risk? Ban it(if you most). Why give US companies a pass on this? It's because the US government wants in on using the products with bad behavior while still trying to stop other governments the same power.

Unfortunately, they're half in the bag of running the country like a business. People, the rich ones, the ones who manage this site and who buy things like twitter, CBS, CNN, etc etc, want this.

This isn't anything more than grift for grift sake.

The idea is to provide protection for incubating a local industry in what's deemed a key strategic sector. But that's not the best way to do it. See what the Jones Act did to US shipbuilding.

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.

The idea is more nefarious than it. Domestic firms install tracking and backdoors usable by the US government, whereas foreign firms won't.

It's not even about security.

Likely just a maneuver for a bribe. Like TikTok and so on...

What's the FCC's statutory authority for this? This adds mobile LIDAR units to the FCC's "Covered List". The CFR entry for the Covered List [1] claims this is under the Secure and Trusted Communications Act of 2019, [2] or the FCC's authority to regulate RF emitters. RF is generally considered to end at 3 terahertz, per the ITU. Whether the FCC has jurisdiction over non-communication uses of lasers is not at all clear. Lasers are usually regulated in the US by the Food and Drug Administration.

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...

Okay that's a good question, but before we even get to the issue of authority what is even the point of this? In what way is this specific piece of regulation as written not a massive own goal?

American consumers are stuck with crappier and much more expensive tech. Thanks Mr President! I'm sure that's what your voters were asking for!

Keep in mind people knowingly voted for a Kleptocracy, this market is what everyone expected.

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

The government's response to the security threat of drones has been illogical and negligent at every turn.

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.

National Security Determination Threat Posed by Foreign-Produced Robotic Devices [pdf]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49095714

What about Lidar-equipped (and why not, even cameras) foreign cars that scan every one of the country's roads and everything around them? Cars are increasingly packing this kind of tech and telemetry.

i think its mostly to do with reach .. road only telemtry is much narrower in scope compared to a drones reach and also purpose built for mapping buildings, topography etc

There's a quality to the number, ubiquity, and unassuming nature of cars. They're everywhere all the time, and reach places where a drone would be at least highly suspicious.

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.

Volvo EX90 has a lovely lil bump above the windshield collecting LIDAR stats for some future purpose … Volvo … Li … Geely … PRC … feeling sleepy … can’t stay focused … everything is fine.

Foreign lidar cars are already effectively banned under the same 7 year old (renewed yearly) "emergency powers" Executive Order that led to this drone ban. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/05/17/2019-10...

And more properly there is an introduced bipartisan bill - SAFE LiDAR Act.

What does this accomplish versus directly banning the collection and exfiltration of data by foreign actors via consumer products? Like just make it illegal for products to unilaterally and automatically upload broad swaths of sensor data to foreign clouds (or preferably any clouds) and then prosecute any offenders. What am I missing?

How’s a Lidar is a national risk?! (It’s easy to build a lidar based drones in a weekend project) Also, knowing plenty of US based drone manufacturers, most of their stuff are dependent on Chinese parts, the radio communication is on top of that list. If I were DJI, I would make Lidar and similar components modular, so they can still sell these drones while consumers can buy these modules later or DIY it, like literally most of the drones, which will be great for other consumers in the world for the easy repairability.

> How’s a Lidar is a national risk?!

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.

> And banning the foreign ones means they can order domestic-made drones to have firmware that prevents them from operating in certain (government) areas, among other things.

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.

NFZ was just one example, there's no limit to what they could force other countries' software to do in their domestic versions. That was really the point I was trying to make.

Backdoors and tracking.

I am sure if the US gov asks DJI to do those things they will be happy to comply. They are just here to make money.

Steel manning this argument:

  Electronic warfare resistant loitering munitions. They would transmit sparse point clouds to the enemy for training.

Not saying I support it.

How is this worse than 4k video, in this age of analytical abundance? The steel content of this argument is pretty low; it's essentially 'technology operates normally = national security risk.'

Why not ban pencils? You can draw maps or schematics of secret things, plus they can be used to stab people!

https://m.youtube.com/shorts/U1MigIJXJx8

4k video is worthless compared to LiDAR. You are never going to get sub millisecond dead reckoning from video processing. Previously this required things like extremely expensive, export controlled ring laser gyroscopes (they do not drift and cannot be easily interfered with or jammed like the cheap IMU in your phone)

There are many more reasons LiDAR kicks ass but none of them have anything to do with why they are doing this.

>4k video is worthless compared to LiDAR.

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.

Compare the energy cost of computation for SfM compared to sparse point cloud match

This is pretty marginal compared to the energy cost of keeping the drone and its payload in the air; also the original objection was that the data might get used for training, which can be an offline process. For example, you could fly a drone with 4k cameras around while navigating manually, then subsequently compute an environmental model from the recorded footage.

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.

You're not doing that to 4k60 in microsecond timeframes brother, especially not for driftless navigation

> 4k video is worthless compared to LiDAR. You are never going to get sub millisecond dead reckoning from video processing

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.

If I had to reach for something I would have to guess they're attempting to hinder their use in renewables. Generally speaking they are not too popular in weapons because shooting a bunch of lasers out of your nose is not exactly stealthy

Before we had these, wind farms used to have to poach cell phone tower guys to climb up every single one. Had a neighbor who did this, it pays insanely well but my palms sweat just thinking about it.

> Electronic warfare resistant loitering munitions

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.

I don't think it's LiDAR itself that is the risk. The FCC note read more like the cause is trade and supply-chain protectionism. (https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/robots-nsd.pdf)

The obvious concern would be China building high-res maps of every inch of US cities.

Buy an iPhone, download an app (polycam, scaniverse, strayscanner, etc), build professional grade point clouds/maps. Technology itself is everywhere.

That boat has sailed for all of the countries that have the technological capability and it has gotten even better with the advent of AI because now you can correlate the information at a even higher level faster and that ability is only getting better every day.

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.

They already have that, and us maps of their country as well. Everyone has maps of everything at this point. If it's above ground then literally everyone that matters knows about it.

I don’t think that lidar maps are public knowledge. If they were why would Google be spending so much money creating their own?

This is not the same thing as taking a picture from a satellite.

I realize that. I didn't say "publicly available" but rather that anyone important has access to the information that they want. I expect that any exceptions to that can be trivially remedied on a case by case basis.

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.

Do you have any evidence supporting the claim that CCP has high resolution LiDAR point cloud maps of US cities? Or do you concede the point that they do not, in fact, have those yet?

Satellite does not get you most of the way there, the threat model here is military (drone) warfare where you would like 3d maps at high resolution. To me “Targeted collection” would look a lot like “backdoor some small % of the commercial drones we sell and siphon the data out”. You should check the Snowden files for the implant tech that NSA was putting in Cisco routers bound to China if you think this sounds far fetched.

> Do you have any evidence supporting the claim that CCP has high resolution LiDAR point cloud maps of US cities?

I never claimed that - you aren't engaging with what I actually wrote.

I questioned the usefulness of such data in the general case. I also pointed out that in the rare cases where such data for a small area would prove useful it would be trivial to collect (on account of being a small area).

Just what sort of resolution do you believe is necessary or useful for drone warfare or other military uses? What do you have in mind here? Regardless, if I (a civilian) can afford the equipment and plane ticket to collect a LiDAR point cloud of a monument approximately anywhere in the world then any well funded actor can also send a "tourist" to do the same.

For that matter I don't think you even need LiDAR. Photogrammetry techniques can achieve arbitrarily high spatial resolution proportional to that of the input data. LiDAR just has some advantages if you're considering deploying on a wide scale or for certain realtime or power constrained tasks. Generally none of that applies to state actors.

Another move to remove competition for Don Jr.?

That, or to avoid surrendering yet another technology relevant to the future to China. As if them manufacturing the bulk of world's solar panels, wind turbines and heading for EVs isn't bad enough.

US companies don't even sell consumer drones, so are they going to stay competitive by forcing consumers to buy $4000 enterprise models for their kids to play with?

Hobbyist drones also don't ship with lidar in stock.

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.

That is false. DJI Air 3S, Mini 5 Pro, Mavic 4 Pro, and even the Neo 2 are consumer drones that ship with forward-facing LiDAR for obstacle avoidance.

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.

> Hobbyist drones also don't ship with lidar in stock.

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..

That ship has sailed all of the countries that can get into space know every square inch of every piece of territory in every country of the world, there isn’t any place to hide, the local American drone makers in America for example don’t want to make civilian drones. They want guaranteed contracts from the American government selling high priced military equipment civilians be damned.

That isn't stopping them from developing LIDAR in any way

Moreover they also have 2 market leaders in that techs

I mean, the rest of the world still exists and is generally happy to buy reasonably priced Chinese tech. American isolationists get rather carried away by geography to the point of assuming the rest of world is in a state of cinematic collapse with a few super enemies stalking the ruins. Trump's comments the other day suggesting he's capable of destroying the Swiss economy overnight demonstrate a sort of socioeconomic myopia predicated on the idea that the US is the only consumer market that matters.

If we cared enough to be effective, we would be subsidizing / encouraging local manufacture of all of those at a competitive, non-luxury price.

That would need to start with building the manufacturing infrastructure. But that requires to work on long term goals, something the west hasn’t been doing that well over the last 30+ years

Market bubbles make way more money than making things. That's why making things gets no money, only bans.

No argument here.

China has been leading in drones since a very long time. It’s not something they took from the US

Sure, China started manufacturing the $8 motors at a steep discount which drove amateur $27.50 competition out of business, than initially sold $60 LiPol batteries for $7 to starve other manufacturers out of business for years. Finally, purchased rare earth mines across the planet to secure their economic position long into the future.

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

The upper class management shipped everything overseas, and still claim they can’t do anything on shore in America. If they can’t send it to China they’ll send it to Vietnam, India or Indonesia the excuses will never end.

Not if the magnets cost more than the retail price of the product.

China policy was made by teams of Engineers within The Party, and operate very differently than disconnected US trust-fund kids. =3

> $8 motors at a steep discount

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!)

One doesn't understand the economics of Dumping with a communist fully-subsidized labor force in some situations, or the strategic politics of the PRC party with western-trained engineers making decisions for decades.

>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

> Selling products at a loss relying on government $0 labor cost subsidy for years

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...

>You are going to need proof for this.

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."

>>> Selling products at a loss relying on government $0 labor cost subsidy for years

>> 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.

I was not referring to the recently expanded NDRC programs

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

So basically you made the whole thing up.

Which part of the forced unpaid labor noted in the trade policy notice do you think is imaginary?

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

None of the links you provided talk about what you claimed at all. Instead they talk about forced labor in other industries. That's terrible and all forced labor - including in US prison system - should be stopped.

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.

Not really, but one may read a brief explanation of why there is a long history of anti-dumping mitigation with China exports

https://kingcenter.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj16611/fi...

Sealioning means you no longer had a point to make, bye. =3

Stopping US import of any of these technologies doesn't suddenly make them disappear. They still exist. You can't "ignore them and they'll go away", this is real life.

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 US is a tiny part of the world, however self-absorbed and exceptional it imagines itself. And everyone else is going to continue buying the best options while the US drives it lifted rolls-coal pickups and tells about the olden days.

wrong.

Maybe if half of the US government wasn't trying to discourage solar power, wind power, and EVs there might be more interest in making them domestically.

That seems to be the whole point of USA these days

> Conversely, the notice also details the billions that domestic drone makers like Skydio, which has committed $3.5 billion to US manufacturing, have raised since the original ban

I'm so fucking tired of Adam Bry's fucking bullshit. Show me the consumer drone I can buy from Skydio.

Yet another move to benefit those who hold Elise Stefanik's leash .

FCC's move is fair .. an adjacent view to this is best summed up by Palmer Lucky in this interview (https://www.hoover.org/research/palmer-luckey-wants-america-...?) ...

“Imagine if there had been a novel … like a Tom Clancy novel” where, during the Cold War, the Pentagon’s most secure electronics would be made by the Soviet Union under Kremlin supervision ..

Imagine running an aerial LiDAR/SLAM over gov sites .. mil bases .. ports .. airports .. power plants ... eeven if the system is completely benign .. ur talking about a technology whose output can be an extremely detailed representation of the physical environmen.

This move has nothing to do with national security. It, like everything else this administration has done, is protectionism where some groups that have bribed Trump or have his halfwit children as beneficiaries get to move into the vacuum left by vastly superior options being banned from the market.

> best summed up by Palmer Lucky

Oh gosh, by the guy with the drone company? Surely 100% sincere, honest commentary! No way it's self-serving nonsense.

> Imagine running an aerial LiDAR/SLAM over gov sites .. mil bases .. ports .. airports .. power plants ... eeven if the system is completely benign .. ur talking about a technology whose output can be an extremely detailed representation of the physical environmen.

For most of this they could find any number of commercial providers with extremely precise maps. I mean, you understand that satellites are doing this now, right? I'm sure Palmer just forgot to mention that. China's last gen satellites we know create a 3D map within 10cm accuracy, and they're probably better now.

basically you are saying this is 100% corruption and self serving by the Donald Trump (loser) and his children (half witted ones) and that DJI or other foreign drone manifacturers for that matter are not a threat to US national security. Also that Palmer Lucky is a self serving tosser. Understood.

I was incredibly overt, so what is the point of your ridiculous summary? Yes, this administration is unbelievably corrupt -- the pedo rapist felon literally launched a shitcoin and did a rugpull, and sells early access to his insane tweets or whatever stupid names he gives them overtly to allow insider trading along with his children -- so pretending like you're pointing out my TDS or something is hilarious stuff. Everything this administration does is corruption, and it's so hilariously in the open now that people like you just look foolish trying to run cover.

And yes, when you have to cite a literal drone maker to sell their position... good god man.

Pedo. Rapist. Felon. Shitcoin. Rugpull. Insane. Insider Trading. Corrupt. Foolish … you have certainly changed my mind.

Awesome. Good to hear. Rare that someone in that weird cult, acting as the foundation for a garbage group of people to loot and destroy the country, sees the light.

Other than the personal attacks you added ... yes? That is a reasonable summary of the situation. What point are you trying to make here?

What’s up? you seem rattled. Which part dont you understand ?

> the Pentagon’s most secure electronics would be made by the Soviet Union under Kremlin supervision

What electronics here are among the Pentagon's most secure? Why would the Pentagon have to buy LIDAR from a Chinese company?

Will we ban every import of something the Pentagon might buy?

> Imagine running an aerial LiDAR/SLAM over gov sites

> a technology whose output can be an extremely detailed representation of the physical environmen.

How do you evision those things happening? How are either of those things prevented by this ban?

The goal of such policies is not to act as air tight measures but as deterrent/obstacles .. its not instantaneous in effect or benfit .. but over time it allows other players (inside of that country) to fill that void .. and develop their own home grown solutions ..

That doesn't seem to address the prior comment ?

> over time it allows other players (inside of that country) to fill that void .. and develop their own home grown solutions ..

By eliminating competition, it forces Americans to subsidize second-rate manufacturers, and to pay more to get less. What incentive do local manufacturers have to improve?

Also, the US only has a fraction of world output; they can't replicate everything everyone else does.

That’s why tariffs banning and sanctioning every new product won't work particularly when so many of the American C class are looking to sub-out everything they can overseas for cheap labor you can have it both ways at least not for long.

> forces Americans to subsidize second-rate manufacturers

I think Anduril Industries is not a second rate company (not that you said they are) ... they explicitly focuses on manufacturing cheaper, mass produced drones/weapons to disrupt the traditional defense industry .. and therefore helps gov spend less and gain more .. not that the US needs you or I to second their more than half a century experience in making advanced aerial war fighting machinery ..

> Anduril Industries is not a second rate company

Then they can compete successfully with non-US companies and protectionist tariffs are useless.

national security > free market capitalism

Go back up the thread and explain how it helps national security. So far there is no explanation of it.

> national security > free market capitalism

Also, claiming 'national security' is an old excuse to do anything. The current administration uses it to justify almost anything. These aren't absolutes - everything that possibly touches on national security isn't justifiable. And free markets are critical to national security - that's what gives the US and others a huge advantage in economic output and innovation.

Nah .. you lost the argument and now ur demanding I defend your framing for you ..

always remember .. you own the state .. the state doesn't owe you anything .. its first duty is to protect the country .. at whatever cost is necessary .. China does this overtly (hence it can strong arm anything it needs to strong arm out of its markets) .. Democracies do it through institutions, laws, and policy .. which aparently ur salty about ...

PS: America is in the strongest position it's ever been, and your ideological discomfort doesn't change that mmoaner ;)

You haven't supported your claims at all. That you turn to name-calling and provocation makes it seem more likely that you have nothing to stand on.

> you own the state .. the state doesn't owe you anything .. its first duty is to protect the country .. at whatever cost is necessary

That's the opposite of modern government:

"...We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness--That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it..."

Note that the sole purpose of government is to protect the freedom and rights of each person, to the extent that if government "becomes destructive of these Ends", it is time to abolish it. There is no 'country' to serve, only the people in it.

It's odd that, having this amazing, just political tradition handed to you, so strongly established over centuries and around the world, so extraordinarily successful beyond all others in freedom, prosperity, stability, and security, you would seek to undermine it and serve dictators who oppress, impoverish, and kill you. Why do you prefer a state that 'doesn't owe you anything'?

> America is in the strongest position it's ever been

You'll have to support that claim for it to have any meaning. Like the rest of what you've written on this page, it's just bytes otherwise.

grabbed

They had their chance they decided to serve the American military. They don’t look at the civilian market as being profitable at least to their way of thinking.

It will be interesting because the American drone companies are pretty much be an island of themselves. No one outside is going to bother buying them, particularly the part where this current government doesn’t like you and then tells you that they’re going to cut off your supply because you won’t do what they want. Would you buy under such terms?

Palmer Luckey owns a drone company. He can't have an objective opinion on his competitors being banned.

That’s the crux part, all these local companies are fear mongering the public and gaslighting the dinosaurs in the gov so they can kill competitors and get rewarded millions dollars contracts. These “concerns” are laughable for anyone who knows a bit about drones, you can build diy drones and strap an iPhone on it and you get outcome than any dji drone out there.

you can build diy drones and strap an iPhone on it and you get outcome than any dji drone out there. < true.

Serious question, which drone makers would you say are superior over those that are fear mongering to get million dollar contracts ?

He won’t be so lucky because no one outside the United States is gonna buy his stuff, but he doesn’t really want to sell it to anyone but the American military anyway at a inflated price.

> but he doesn’t really want to sell it to anyone but the American military anyway at a inflated price.

that's a fancy way of saying "grifting the taxpayer"

and what is the US military using their powers for these days anyway?

Even if one accepts this argument as valid, an outright ban on an entire technology is the most freedom restricting, invasive, economically disruptive remedy possible. There are more targeted remedies which can be equally effective for national security purposes but, coincidentally, those remedies aren't as protectionist.

What is there to imagine all the major countries in the world have satellites in space there is no place to hide, the only question is, will you make things within your territory that work well that also sell to the rest of the world, the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans seem to understand. Everything is coming back around full circle for America.

Banning and sanctioning good products from around the world isn’t gonna work long-term. You also have to make things within your country and you have to pay a fair wage in the end… America is going to have to recalibrate and except the fact that if you want good products, you’re gonna have to do it in country more often and you’re gonna have to pay the price or you are going to be isolated from the rest of the world.

Aaaaand this "ban" will be just as incompetently executed as the ban that happened like, what, a couple weeks ago about drones? Literally all the manufacturers did was create some shell companies, change the branding a bit, and boom. So much for banning things, amiright? Not to mention the shear amount of customer confusion because now they have to figure out what differentiates all these new brands nobody has ever heard of.

When the entire system is created with loopholes for the rich, this is what happens. lawlessness, disguised as lawfullness.

Another dumb move how do you expect to keep up to the rest of the world, which will just move on, another thing that’s bad is that most of the local US drone companies are not exactly moving all that fast to make drones for civilian use within America, they all want to cater/make military drones to sell at a high price to the American government at the expense of the American taxpayer.

Is that really any surprise? Consumers are cost sensitive and have you seen the morass of obtuse and pointless regulations surrounding drones in the US? Meanwhile the military can do whatever it likes and has much deeper pockets.

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.

> 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 only thing keeping most of the DJT crowd alive is, basically, because no one has tried to do a ukranian drone assault on the administration.

there are no serious large scale countermeasures that can't be worked around with things like basic HAM radio skills and fiber optic cable. ban them now and make them hard to get, otherwise it's gonna start looking like that youtube video "Slaughterbots" really, really quick

> there are no serious large scale countermeasures

For slow moving objects and an entrenched position there actually are but I have no idea how expensive it is to operate them nor what the practical constraints of deploying them might be.

> ban them now and make them hard to get, otherwise it's gonna start looking like that youtube video "Slaughterbots" really, really quick

I think you're forgetting the part where committing the crime is easy(ish) but covering your trail is nearly impossible. Most people aren't willing to martyr themselves for some abstract team red vs team blue extremist political nonsense that isn't severely impacting their day to day lives or the well being of their families.

It's vaguely similar to the reason that no one sabotages power stations. It's comparatively easy to do but carries severe downsides if caught and approximately no upside for the perpetrator regardless.

We're quickly reaching the point where Lidar isn't needed, pure vision workflows are getting much better.

Well, Elon thought that too and we still haven't seen any robotaxi

Hearing its definitely going to happen by the end of the year

Maybe when he’s back from his visit on Mars?

I heard he'd have it done by the end of the month

You’re both wrong it’s gonna be next week…

Already happened since last month. They are on the road in Texas and Florida now.

Since last month they are operational in multiple states now.

https://preview.redd.it/475jdxno8xfh1.jpg?width=2252&format=...

The current version of FSD drives better than most humans. You literally put in the destination address, press Start Self Drive, and it gets to your destination without you ever touching the steering wheel, and parks for you in the end. IMO it's ready for large scale robotaxi deployment. I only take steering wheel if I want to take a different route or park in a different place vs where Tesla decides to park.

No, it very much depends on the application, what you're trying to do. Different tools for different jobs. Don't conflate.

yeah, who could ever need accurate and immediate depth perception, having to carry a 4090 in my roomba to badly reconstruct it from 4 pictures so it can stop bumping into walls is like the future man

LiDAR in drones is not necessarily the "stereo vision" application you are thinking of, it can also be something as simple as a LiDAR altimeter.

Lidar can be many things, but isn’t the point to continue to iterate on LiDAR and make it better than what it is today?

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