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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

#681

Post by rchaud »

janalsncm wrote: post #552
palata wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just an excuse, after 10 years failing to compete. Western drone companies have received billions in investments to make competing drones, but repeatedly fail, for some reason. Western company can't compete, but that's on them. Banning DJI won't change anything, Western companies have to get their act together.

Frankly, the DoD likely spent something like 5-8 trillion dollars over the last 10 years. If we establish that drone manufacturing is a matter of national security, it seems critically important to understand why domestic production keeps failing and fix those problems rather than just giving up.

If it's a matter of national security, why would it be made available to the American consumer? They'd have more than enough business from the DoD, and wouldn't have to compete on price.

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

#682

Post by rchaud »

totalview wrote: post #657

Wider implications beyond just the consumer drone market. My company and several of our clients (who are all much larger companies than us) have $100,000s - $X,000,000s of DJI enterprise drones, batteries, and payloads (Matrice 300, 350, zenmuse p1 camera, etc) I know the bill still has to go through the senate, but this is going to be a sore subject for a lot of American companies who use DJI equipment.

No reason for the Senate to not vote it into law. There are no lobbyists telling them to do otherwise. In an election year, they desperately need to show that they can get something, anything passed.

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

#683

Post by rchaud »

redserk wrote: post #597
janalsncm wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a good book on the American surveillance apparatus Means of Control by Byron Tau. People are a lot more watched than they think. The Apple example is well-known because it is an exception. Much more common is not only compliance but making an entire business out of selling private data to the government. https://theintercept.com/2022/04/22/anomaly-six-phone-tracki... It really doesn’t matter that China is wo…

> It really doesn’t matter that China is worse. It’s not a competition. The fact that people in other places have even less privacy doesn’t make me feel better. This is exactly the sentiment I wanted to convey. I'd feel far more comfortable if we didn't settle for "at least we're not as bad as..." levels of rhetoric. Unsavory surveillance practices in one country shouldn't give us a justification to accept the declin…

Whataboutery has become increasingly common post-Patriot Act America, especially as surveillance technology improved in the smartphone, always-connected age.

It was common to criticize the USSR/Iron Curtain countries for encouraging citizens to spy and report on each other. Today, in the world after the 2013 NSA revelations, Ring.com cameras, Alexa smart speakers, bossware apps and Palantir, surveillance is a "market opportunity".

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

#684

Post by riiii »

deepGem wrote: post #326

DJI's response (a bit dated) https://dronedj.com/2024/03/02/dji-response-drone-ban-us/ The allegations are so subjective that they sound like some middle schooler complaining to their mom. “DJI drones are collecting vast amounts of sensitive data – everything from high-resolution images of critical U.S. infrastructure to facial recognition technology and remote sensors that can measure an individual’s body temperatur…

[flagged]

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

#685

Post by tiberious726 »

palata wrote: post #511
cm2012 wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market will open up for new companies after the China ban takes effect. Right now they can't compete.

That's just an excuse, after 10 years failing to compete. Western drone companies have received billions in investments to make competing drones, but repeatedly fail, for some reason. Western company can't compete, but that's on them. Banning DJI won't change anything, Western companies have to get their act together.

I mean... 10 years of not being able to compete with companies subsided with a world powers national treasury isn't really saying much of anything

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

#686

Post by ryandrake »

palata wrote: post #664
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 The situation was more that western companies could make a drone for $1000, and DJI would make a significantly better drone for $500. Were they both $1000, the DJI drone would still clearly be better. I am not praising DJI for free here. I just think that we need to face the truth. There is no way to improv…

It's not like their drones run on Black Magic or Wizardry. Surely someone can just buy that $50 drone, take it apart, see what components they are using and how much their costs are, and start from there?

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

#687

Post by janalsncm »

rchaud wrote: post #681
janalsncm wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, the DoD likely spent something like 5-8 trillion dollars over the last 10 years. If we establish that drone manufacturing is a matter of national security, it seems critically important to understand why domestic production keeps failing and fix those problems rather than just giving up.

If it's a matter of national security, why would it be made available to the American consumer? They'd have more than enough business from the DoD, and wouldn't have to compete on price.

I guess there’s two possibly related questions. One, should military drones be available to consumers and two, why does price matter. On the first, you don’t have to make them available to consumers and probably shouldn’t for the highest end drones.

But B2C is a forcing function that pushes costs down. Military budgets aren’t infinite, and better manufacturing techniques mean more drones in a shorter period of time independent of cost.

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

#688

Post by redserk »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #660
deciplex wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

China is still a developing nation. China is winning at the junior economic Olympics. The same way all the major 1st world economies dominated it when they were developing. Come back and waive your victory banner when China has a $60k GDP per capita and has the current growth trends it does. It needs to increase its GDP 500% before that happens though...

GDP per-capita only works if you're comparing places with similar costs to live and costs to produce.

It's nearly meaningless to use it as a measure of individual quality-of-life without correlating it to the price it costs to produce/consume goods.

This is why the military spending arguments are so weird comparing the US and China. Even omitting the weird bookkeeping that keeps their defense budget supposedly low, it costs much less to produce military goods/services than here.

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

#689

Post by deciplex »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #660
deciplex wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

China is still a developing nation. China is winning at the junior economic Olympics. The same way all the major 1st world economies dominated it when they were developing. Come back and waive your victory banner when China has a $60k GDP per capita and has the current growth trends it does. It needs to increase its GDP 500% before that happens though...

China is the workshop of the world what are you even talking about? Their infrastructure is more developed (and more advanced) than most places in the US.

You seemed to be confused by the fact that China hasn't financialized their economy and turned it into a giant Ponzi scheme / wealth extraction machine. That's the point: they're trying to avoid the terminal rent-seeking behavior endemic to Western economies.

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

#690

Post by _lvbh »

cynicalsecurity wrote: post #636
balls187 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Okay, but what will happen if US goes to war with China? Actual armed conflict? Total annihilation. Neither side wants this. Its why China will not invade Taiwan, and why the US won't put its boot on the neck of the China.

Okay, in a few years China senselessly invades Taiwan just because. Not a real scenario?

The US literally has troops 6 miles off the coast of China and they haven’t reacted beyond some complaining in press releases. China won’t be fighting either the US or Taiwan anytime soon
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