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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

#671

Post by solardev »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #581
solardev wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That didn't use to be true. There was once several Western consumer drone companies (3D Robotics, Parrot, GoPro, Intel, etc.) as recently as the mid-2010s. They gave up on the consumer space because DJI just totally ate their lunch, releasing better, cheaper drones year after year. I still remember how in any given year, the annual DJI drone releases would be smaller, cheaper, better, and fly longer than the other co…

They competed until they were undercut, and then just didn't bother pursuing more profitable business instead. That is to say, if you can make a drone for $200, and DJI puts one out for $50, you don't really stand chance, so get out of the way and find more profitable businesses. Anyways, DJI seems to just publish its revenue ($3.83b in 2021) but is it actually making money (profit, not revenue)? I'm not finding anyt…

Drones weren't just a commodity to be farmed out to the lowest bidder, though. DJI had significantly better technology in addition to being cheaper. They had better transmitters (with the standalone controllers), redundant sensors, obstacle detection and avoidance, camera sensors and lenses, FLIR, flight time, range, wind correction, gimbals, FPV headsets... all of it. Each year they'd come up with some major innovation and iterate on all the other parts, while their competitors would stagnate for several years at a time between new models (which couldn't compete even at release). In any given year, DJI always seemed to have the advantage. They did all of that ON TOP of being cheaper.

You don't get to do that by simply undercutting your competitors. No, DJI handily won the drone wars by being cheaper AND better and constantly improving. They simply outcompeted.

I think we have a tendency to look down on Chinese manufacturers as copycats, but DJI is an exception to that rule. Their founder Frank Wang was basically a young college engineer who bootstrapped the whole consumer drone industry, worked ruthlessly hard, and stayed way ahead of his competitors, becoming Asia's youngest billionaire. Forbes story about him: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2015/05/06/dji-drones-f...

The Wikipedia article is also interesting and shows how ruthless and effective the company was: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DJI (for better or worse)

I mean, compare them to Lenovo, who's done nothing really new since they took over Thinkpads from IBM (except maybe folding convertibles). DJI is the polar opposite of that; they invented not only their own brand of drones, but pretty much created (and then dominated) the entire consumer drone market across the whole world.

If they were an American company, we'd be celebrating their success and Wang would be right up there next to Musk. DJI doesn't nearly get enough credit for the crazy amount of R&D they had to do to get the consumer drone industry to where it is today. Even if some of it is military trickle-down, that doesn't usually happen that quickly and cheaply. Even police & fire, who usually inherit those techs, tend to go with DJI, despite them not being US-made. IMO it's a shame that DJI happens to be caught up in the political turmoil of our times. Their products really are far above their peers. (And I don't even own any; sold my Phantom a decade ago.)

I don't know DJI's financials, but they've been around for nearly two decades by now. If they've been able to fool investors (or even the CCP) for that long while secretly losing money the whole time, well... guess they made a good business out of it? At least they made a useful product, compared to most of our shady ad-tech companies.

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

#672

Post by dji4321234 »

kelnos wrote: post #536
dji4321234 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It can only be side-loaded on Android, because their app breaks a number of policies on privacy and data gathering. I don't think this is the reason, I think it's more that they're just too lazy to jump through the approval and maintenance hoops that come with an app store, especially because their home market (China) doesn't even use the Play Store. The iOS version of their app is Apple-approved and present in the…

Your post convinced me of the opposite of what you were going for; after reading it, I get even more of a feeling that DJI does shady things.

I wasn't exactly going for "DJI is great" - it's kind of funny that's how it came off.

My points were:

* DJI's use of Secneo on Android isn't hiding a "sendAllYourPhotosToTheCCPServerNow" function. This seems obvious but I've seen this take everywhere.

* However, DJI's apps are loaded with telemetry that's indistinguishable from malware. They ARE full of shady things.

* I wouldn't run a DJI app on my own phone.

* I would use a standalone DJI remote for most low to medium assurance applications, because while the shadiness remains in many ways, the threat model is easy to understand and boundaries are pretty easy to draw.

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

#673

Post by dji4321234 »

derefr wrote: post #554
dji4321234 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It can only be side-loaded on Android, because their app breaks a number of policies on privacy and data gathering. I don't think this is the reason, I think it's more that they're just too lazy to jump through the approval and maintenance hoops that come with an app store, especially because their home market (China) doesn't even use the Play Store. The iOS version of their app is Apple-approved and present in the…

I feel like you're underestimating the average large state actor's ability to employ subtlety when they really care about a long-term foreign intelligence operation. For example, it doesn't have to be the case that DJI has ever been told to collect data for the CCP. That would be a big OPSEC violation — as soon as anyone in the foreign media learned of it, DJI would be as dead as Huawei or Tiktok. Instead, it could j…

> arranging it so that DJI "just seems to never be able to" hire any security experts

They're foot-nuking themselves this way, as well. Due to their poor security, DJI are also easily compromised by Western interests and collect a ton of data about Chinese drone operations. I suppose someone could argue they decided that this is worth the cost of the operation, etc., but it seems... odd.

> hire product managers from a pool trained on CCP-sponsored university programs and industry media sources, that have those product managers parroting "useful" beliefs like "more analytics is always better."

The CCP don't need to do any work to make this happen. I totally agree that they benefit, thus my "indistinguishable from malware" comment. But this is how product management works worldwide. Maybe the modern obsession with product telemetry has been a years-long deep intelligence op, but I think it's easier to attribute to standard corporate behavior.

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

#674

Post by celdon25 »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #647
redserk wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To start: I do not trust the CCP, but my trust in the American legal system has been waning. What's the legal recourse for a US Citizen served with a dodgy FISA-related subpoena/warrant? Or if a government agency wants to purchase tracking data that includes my phone from a data collection agency? Say the state of Texas purchases geotracking data for app users who cross state lines.

> my trust in the American legal system has been waning. Why? We just watched a former POTUS and the current POTUS's son get convicted of felonies in courts with juries. Is there a better test of the legal system?

Yikes, you must not have been following the cases or know the laws very well if that’s your takeaway from those.

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

#675

Post by blessedwhiskers »

taneq wrote: post #642
rainsford wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple famously told the FBI to go pound sand when asked to help access an iPhone in an actual terrorism case (i.e. it wasn't about going after dissidents or journalists or anything), even though such help was definitely within Apple's technical power. Now, while admitting that I am no way claiming the US is perfect, does anyone actually think something even remotely similar would ever happen between a Chinese company…

They sure did! They also (was it around that time? I forget...) pushed pretty hard for everything to be stored in iCloud, where coincidentally it's not protected by any of the on-device security and can (as I understand it) be legally requisitioned by the authorities. Happy to be corrected (with sources) if I'm wrong here but otherwise this seems very much on par.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/102651

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

#676

Post by toss1 »

deciplex wrote: post #617
toss1 wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever slim you want to think your recourse is in the US, it is FAR better and broader than in the country that has uncounted mobile execution vans with zero available records of who is executed. At least the US is trying to be a democracy, and has largely functioning checks and balances. CCP is flat-out 'you cannot even talk or access information on things that make us look bad, such as Tibet or Tiananmen Protests…

> Playing false equivalence games will end very badly. Okay: Chinese report higher satisfaction with their government and the direction their country is headed in than virtually any Western nation and much more than in the US. The Chinese economy is doing the opposite of enshittification, whereas the US is openly embracing the trend at this point with inflation / capital strikes, shrinkflation, consolidation, rent-se…

I was not talking about false equivalence about their economic status; I was talking about falsely equating or 'whatabout-ing' their human rights status.

And if you think that polls of life satisfaction are meaningful among a population who are forbidden to criticize their govt except in limited ways (e.g., local officials), I'd like to talk about some fantastic oceanfront land in Kansas...

Economy? Of course people are happier to have a change from abject poverty, but it is entirely based on unfair export trade practices and highly leveraged investments both official and shadow-banking. At this point both are extremely fragile as the democracies start to catch on and the over-leverage starts to work against it. Even the massively over-inflated official growth numbers have tanked. On the economy, I'd choose to be in the USA over China, no hesitation.

"Transforming entire continents"? You mean making extortionate loans to impoverished countries to build their own ports and extract resources? Again, that has limited runway as people figure out that it isn't such a good deal.

And I notice that you entirely avoided the human rights citizen security issue. Yes, the US has corporate over-harvesting of data, and govt agencies can buy and/or demand access to the data. We also have court processes. Meanwhile, China has OFFICIALLY one party, a massive and highly intrusive surveillance and censorship apparatus second to none in the world, and mobile execution vans literally seizing and executing people on the street by the tens of thousand or more, but there are no public records. Again, no contest, USA is massively qualitatively and quantitatively better.

Serious question, if you don't think so, why haven't you moved to China? I'm sure they'd welcome such an advocate.

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

#677

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

celdon25 wrote: post #674
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my trust in the American legal system has been waning. Why? We just watched a former POTUS and the current POTUS's son get convicted of felonies in courts with juries. Is there a better test of the legal system?

Yikes, you must not have been following the cases or know the laws very well if that’s your takeaway from those.

Why yikes? I followed the former POTUS's trial closely.

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

#678

Post by AnimalMuppet »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #662
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not false equivalence. You seem to be completely missing the point. Let's say that there's a major terrorist attack that uses a freight train as a bomb. Let's say that it took very careful, long term observation of trains in order to gather the information that made the attack possible. Let's say that in response, Congress passes legislation that makes it illegal to loiter in a location where you can watch r…

I appreciate the explanation. The argument that China can't throw you in jail is technically correct but ignores all of the things that they can do to you. They won't throw you in jail they only seek to erode and nullify the West. I'm not worried about jail as much as I'm worried about surveillance of my friends and family for profile building, blackmail, staging cyber attacks on power grids and water treatment, and…

I also worry about those things. China (and Russia, and Iran) are definitely trying to "erode and nullify the West"; I worry about they succeeding. I worry that, at least in part, they are succeeding.

But as the saying is, "Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely." The West could erode itself, too - by giving too much ability to spy on citizens to the powers that be. The more power, the more it can be misused, and the more incentive to get in power it gives to someone willing to misuse it. I also worry about that danger.

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

#679

Post by sudosysgen »

dtquad wrote: post #163
kaibee wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the military perspective at this point is that they want drones at all price points. Those 20-50k drones, I assume you mean like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZALA_Lancet and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Shahed_136 ? The cost estimates for those are quite wide, but in terms of raw materials even those low-cost prices are kind of absurd right? $20,000 for a few motors, batteries, basically a modern smart…

I don't understand why every estimate assumes Russian and Iranian engineers work for free and only include the raw material/components cost of these weapons systems. R&D costs makes up the vast majority of the cost of Western weapons systems.

They don't. The estimates are typically 3x-4x the cost of the raw materials. Besides, for these weapons it's the marginal cost that counts.

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

#680

Post by jpgvm »

casey2 wrote: post #546

This protectionism is just getting ridiculous now. You can't ship most manufacturing jobs overseas and expect china not to out compete eventually. Yes they are stealing ip, who cares, japan did the same thing. Trying to stop in now is just going to cause another depression.

Claiming DJI stole IP though is ridiculous. They have been so far ahead for so long anything they might have stolen ~15 years ago is surely obsolete.
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