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DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

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Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#241

Post by petesergeant »

henvic wrote: post #28

DJI is, by far, the best drone equipment brand for photography, industrial usage, etc. It's disheartening to witness the US embracing protectionism for high-tech. If the United States does this, it might as well join the European Union's decadence in killing tech startups by stifling the competitiveness of their market...

> It's disheartening to witness the US embracing protectionism for high-tech

Is it? I suspect China has zero regrets in embracing protectionism for social media. The American drone consumer will get squeezed for a few years, until the US develops decent home-grown suppliers in a strategic industry. Hard to think of a better limited use of protectionism tbh.

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#242

Post by mandibles »

sschueller wrote: post #178

So I guess the new viable business strategy in the US is: 1. Find a sector which a foreign companies dominates 2. Enter this sector even with a bad product 3. Go to congress and get the other ones banned because they are "insert reason here".

The mercantilist impulse will live forever.

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#243

Post by merpnderp »

bri3d wrote: post #192
kaibee wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the problem. The military needs single-use drones in high volume, and the production capacity/scale for that can only exist if it's subsidized by the consumer industry. > You cannot compete with China even if we annexed Mexico for cheap labor in order to manufacture high volume low profit drones. DJI isn't making drones by hand, they have automated factories. But its only worth building an automated f…

High volume single-use drones and DJI drones are almost completely orthogonal in terms of technology, production, and procurement. The only thing they really share is MEMS gyroscopes and brushless motor windings. Making a million FPV bomb drones and making a million consumer camera drones are such dramatically different tasks that there is not a chance this theory holds water.

You should look at see what kind of drones are dominating Ukraine's skies. You'd see some water being held. And you probably should have googled this before making this comment.

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#244

Post by 6510 »

Retric wrote: post #152
Teever wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they weren't able to stop people from growing and distributing marijuana then I doubt they'll be able to stop this.

It takes minimal skills or effort to grow pot. This is closer to banning moonshine which was arguably fairly effective.

True but some efforts are way beyond what is done in agriculture. They for example have been mutation breeding[0] since it was discovered on much larger scale than public efforts. The mutants check all possible boxes except taste. Grow faster, drinks more, more THC, resistant to heat and diseases, likes light 24/7 even while flowering, all the same size, no branches, few leafs, easier to clone.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_breeding

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#245

Post by flaminHotSpeedo »

lupusreal wrote: post #104
andy_ppp wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDPR is really sensible legislation that largely only applies to companies who should be treating your personal data as sensitive data. I built a GDPR complaint system and was really happy about the security we put in place that we definitely wouldn’t have thought to do without these laws. Things like having someone you can ask and request personal data from at big companies is also an extremely well thought through…

Most people have no problem with the GDPR. It only seems otherwise on this forum and similar echo chambers / bubbles where lots of people made their fortunes with adtech.

My only complaint with GDPR is when I have to do boring work in the name of GDPR compliance :)

But it's also driven some pretty interesting projects, so I'd probably call it a wash or perhaps a slight positive, even if I were to ignore the major benefits as a consumer

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#246

Post by luma »

mcculley wrote: post #125
samatman wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"automated factory" is somewhat redundant, no? The point is that most people who will buy a $700 Chinese drone will buy a $1000 US drone if that's all they can get. I am of the opinion that the US made a very serious mistake by opening up tariff-free trade with countries which do not have comparable labor and environmental safety laws. The Feds should have come up with reasonable estimates of what foreign manufacturi…

> US made a very serious mistake by Was it a mistake if the goal was to get cheaper products at the expense of foreigners losing fingers? I agree it is myopic policy for the long term, but certainly many voters are happy to push safety problems somewhere else.

It is bad policy long term, and this policy has been around for a long time. At some point we need to address bad policy.

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#247

Post by beloch »

henvic wrote: post #28

DJI is, by far, the best drone equipment brand for photography, industrial usage, etc. It's disheartening to witness the US embracing protectionism for high-tech. If the United States does this, it might as well join the European Union's decadence in killing tech startups by stifling the competitiveness of their market...

Speaking as a Canadian, U.S. trade protectionism is nothing new. It happens all the time and frequently targets allies like Canada rather than rivals like China. What U.S. citizens should watch out for is when U.S. protectionism winds up hurting the U.S.'s own economy. e.g. Tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber may have helped out a few U.S. softwood lumber producers with good lobbyists (and Jimmy Carter), but the increase in lumber prices had a much larger negative impact on the U.S. economy as a whole due to higher costs of building materials impacting pretty much everyone.

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#248

Post by gruez »

mrtksn wrote: post #208
lawlessone wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If the United States does this, it might as well join the European Union's decadence in killing tech startups by stifling the competitiveness of their market... I can still buy a DJI drone here in Europe. What stifling are you referring to?

It's a meme on Twitter, essentially libertarians are pushing the idea that EU killed its tech industry through heavy reagulation and by tech they mean online advertisement. They keep posting graphs of market capitalisation claiming that Europe must be failing because doesn't have speculative public trading stocks. There's also the top-list theme, making list of top-10 companies by market cap, claiming that if your co…

>They keep posting graphs of market capitalisation claiming that Europe must be failing because doesn't have speculative public trading stocks.

Say all you want about "speculative public trading stocks", but I trust public markets' pricing more than private markets[1] or the government[2].

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-02-26/what-h...

[2] https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/05/25/c...

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#249

Post by vkou »

prmoustache wrote: post #91

Who decided it is a good idea to pass brands / companies specific bills? If DJI is doing nasty things, prohibit the nasty things DJI doing in the law, not the brand. Then condemn DJI if needed. How do this law protect from any DJi competitor doing the same stuff (or even a spinoff company through a complex scheme)?

> Who decided it is a good idea to pass brands / companies specific bills?

People who want to move this country even further in the direction of Rule By Law, as opposed to Rule Of Law.

This sort of thing works out well for the already-connected and corrupt, and it's not like anyone in 2024 is deluded that we make principled decisions on anything.

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#250

Post by luma »

mc32 wrote: post #49
kaibee wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the problem. The military needs single-use drones in high volume, and the production capacity/scale for that can only exist if it's subsidized by the consumer industry. > You cannot compete with China even if we annexed Mexico for cheap labor in order to manufacture high volume low profit drones. DJI isn't making drones by hand, they have automated factories. But its only worth building an automated f…

Single-use means $20K - $50K, not $2K. What militaries are competing against with the Houthis and in Ukraine, is 20 - 50K drones and right now taking them down with $2MM missiles or a 50K drone taking out a 2MM tank. Dial those numbers up and you can see how the imbalance in cost is unsustainable. They don't need drones to be 2K.

UA is showing the world what can be done with <$1k drones. China has that market locked down right now, presumably this legislation is aiming at that market. This isn't about Reaper-scale drones.
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