DJI drone ban passes in U.S. House — 'Countering CCP Drones Act' would ban all DJI sales in U.S. if passed in Senate

Its like we've adopted the economic policies we forced on third world nations, and found ourselves with a third world economy

Foucault's boomerang at work, just like US counter insurgency tactics now being employed by US police.

Tech espionage is a pretty big problem though, not something anyone should hand-wave away as irrelevant.

China has a bunch of the world by the balls thanks to the world using Chinese manufacturing for everything from chips to medication. That alone is a national security problem. Sure, it maintains some stability due to economic ties, but the flip side is that we can only exert so much pressure on China before it will bite us in the ass, and we’re fucked if all-out war started and we got cut off.

Without a foundation, you have no foundation.

Effectively, China has been acquiring a monopoly on manufacturing, which is an absolute necessity for modern life. We have been acquiring the higher-paid, but less numerous and less critical industries.

Not wrong, but the issue is complex. Drones are very obviously one of the bullets in any upcoming conflict. It's not really about spying and phoning home, it's that it would be insane to try to tell China "hey, don't invade other countries mkay?" And then say "oh also we need ammo to stop you but we don't have the ability to make brass cases or gunpowder anymore, can you send us some".

Now, while we "can", to some extent, manufacture components and complete systems, the thing about a war is that it's basically a wizard duel but with money hoses. You can't win if the Chinese are producing slaughter bots for $500 ea and the US equivalent is $100,000 (literally). Congress is praying that this will light a fire under US and more friendly foreign manufacturing supply chains to invest more because they might have a chance of breaking into a lucrative market. That said, it probably just paves the way for a two tiered market where China makes their slaughter bots for $500 and the US makes them for $50,000 but all the civil use cases get caught in the cross fire for the short to mid term...so everyone still loses, just harder.

Good point. Unfortunate that US consumers keep getting screwed by these bans

I have pulled mine apart too. I have an old one from before the tracking law and I didn't find anything nefarious. The one I have from after the tracking law went into effect is transmitting its location and ID but I didn't find much else even on a network intercept.

Maybe there is some way to open a stream to China buried deep in the firmware, but I don't see what use China would have for that. They have other methods of surveillance

I can assure you that we won't. There has not been a time in the history of this country that lower competition has resulted in improved products or prices.

There is zero US based competition in the hobbyist and consumer spaces unless you DIY. US companies mostly do products for emergency services, large commerical operations like spraying pesticides, or military. There are a handful of brands making smaller drones, but they're all a decade behind DJI in features and quality control, or they cost $20,000.

I'd be fine with a ban if there was a legitimate security concern, but there isn't, this is just part of the trade war and it only stands to harm US consumers and small businesses. The entire aerial photography industry is going to collapse and one's only option will be large companies with hex rotor drones and Red cameras.

makers maybe, but what about users?

Capitalists hate competition.

Competition for the labor market on the other hand? Hell yeah fucking let's use slaves in a prison or other country!

Problem is that, especially with the automakers, is that a lack of competition becomes an excuse to not invest in innovation. For example, General Motors is throwing billions into stock buy-backs, when they probably should be throwing that into EVs.

That only works if you have competition. We don’t really have free markets. The consolidation is so extreme that auto makers for example really don’t care if consumers want a high value budget EV. Why should they? They can make you collectively buy something else when you need a car to get to work.

I wish I could show my country next to my username or something lol.

You could use a vanity username with a flag emoji in it, if you really wanted to.

I have yet to see that happen. If anything they'll just raise their prices because they no longer have any competitors.

Yeah they aren't going to invest in their product. They don't have any reason to now. They're now the best product you can buy and they raised the price to reflect that.

You could register to your local Lemmy server, if there is one.

Honestly, if there was american branded stuff I would prefer it to made in China stuff. I want to stimulate our own economy not China. For example: computer stuff, small microprocessor stuff like arduinos, circuitry components, rubiks cubes, audio stuff. All of those are dominantly Chinese, if I want to find good American stuff I can't. Someone needs to take the fucking risk and do it.

No, in this case it's the same problem.

We're talking about banning DJI because the Chinese government subsidizes manufacturing useful things, whereas the US' approach to corporate policy is to ban anything that prevents a billionaire from getting richer, and now the US is mad that China mysteriously got a better drone industry.

Either the US should reform itself until it prioritizes building useful shit cheaply instead of enriching finance industry assholes or it should shut. the. fuck. up.

I'm viewing it more as "We have problem, and other related problem. We're only going to do surface level solutions to be able to say at least we tried when elections come up".

Passing a law? Yeah it's pretty much the same workload.

I don't know about the other states/cities, but in my city it would be real simple. Just ban companies from buying real estate. Maybe an individual can own 6 houses. I'm not saying that people can't own and rent out houses. I'm saying ban it so that company can't buy entire neighborhoods, and then monopolize the prices.

Similar reason to why they banned Dahua and Hikvision cameras from US government facilities. No intentional backdoor have been found in those either, just some security vulnerabilities that have been patched. They're still very widely used, and you should always have security cameras on a separate VLAN with no internet access, regardless of which country they're manufactured in.

FPV drones are being used as kamikaze weapons. DJI drones are being used as spotters because they can hold position easily and zoom from far away.

Paid is minor inconvenience, not foss is major problem

Well one is talking about a personal buyer choosing to buy a $200 HDMI cable that cost $0.50 to manufacture and spent $5 on marketing, and the other is talking about Chinese companies investing millions of dollars into shipping goods across the Pacific potentially deciding that the risk of their deliveries not being able to be made is more than the gains of selling them in that particular country, so they're not related concepts at all.