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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!)
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 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
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ..
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?
> 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 ..
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
It's not even about security.
Likely just a maneuver for a bribe. Like TikTok and so on...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Related:
National Security Determination Threat Posed by Foreign-Produced Robotic Devices [pdf]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49095714
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.
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 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.
> 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 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.
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!)
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.
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.
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.
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.
That isn't stopping them from developing LIDAR in any way
Moreover they also have 2 market leaders in that techs
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.
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 .
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.
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)
> 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.
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:
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!
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.
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/U1MigIJXJx8
> 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.
The obvious concern would be China building high-res maps of every inch of US cities.
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.
Buy an iPhone, download an app (polycam, scaniverse, strayscanner, etc), build professional grade point clouds/maps. Technology itself is everywhere.
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.
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.
Palmer Luckey owns a drone company. He can't have an objective opinion on his competitors being banned.
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.
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 ?
> 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 ..
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?
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 ..
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.
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 ?
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.
Enjoy frothing.
We're quickly reaching the point where Lidar isn't needed, pure vision workflows are getting much better.
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?
Well, Elon thought that too and we still haven't seen any robotaxi
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.
Hearing its definitely going to happen by the end of the year
I heard he'd have it done by the end of the month
You’re both wrong it’s gonna be next week…
Maybe when he’s back from his visit on Mars?
Since last month they are operational in multiple states now.
https://preview.redd.it/475jdxno8xfh1.jpg?width=2252&format=...