Likely just a maneuver for a bribe. Like TikTok and so on...
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.
This isn't anything more than grift for grift sake.
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...
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
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.
And more properly there is an introduced bipartisan bill - SAFE LiDAR Act.
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.
National Security Determination Threat Posed by Foreign-Produced Robotic Devices [pdf]
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.
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.
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..
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 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
China policy was made by teams of Engineers within The Party, and operate very differently than disconnected US trust-fund kids. =3
Moreover they also have 2 market leaders in that techs
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.
I'm so fucking tired of Adam Bry's fucking bullshit. Show me the consumer drone I can buy from Skydio.
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.
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.
Electronic warfare resistant loitering munitions. They would transmit sparse point clouds to the enemy for training.
Why not ban pencils? You can draw maps or schematics of secret things, plus they can be used to stab people!
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.
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.
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.
This is not the same thing as taking a picture from a satellite.
“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.
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.
Serious question, which drone makers would you say are superior over those that are fear mongering to get million dollar contracts ?
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?
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.
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 ..
> 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.
And yes, when you have to cite a literal drone maker to sell their position... good god man.
https://preview.redd.it/475jdxno8xfh1.jpg?width=2252&format=...
