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The U.S. Government Just Followed Through on Its Ban of DJI Drones

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Re: The U.S. Government Just Followed Through on Its Ban of DJI Drones

#171
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't take one tragic mistake or bad-apple cop and draw conclusions about the fate of the country from it. As per a sibling comment: > The bad apples metaphor originated as a warning of the corrupting influence of one corrupt or sinful person on a group: that "one bad apple can spoil the barrel". Over time the concept has been used to describe the opposite situation, where "a few bad apples" should not be seen…

Regardless of all the rest, what a saying meant 1000 years ago is irrelevant. I find it bizarre anyone is providing historical usage as if proves something. You could pick endless words and sayings in English from 1000 years ago, which are entirely different now. So what? The modern usage is quite clear.

> The modern usage is quite clear.

Perhaps it is "clear", but it may have lost the lesson of the original adage. Perhaps that lesson is worth knowing.

Re: The U.S. Government Just Followed Through on Its Ban of DJI Drones

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Its obvious that she was resisting arrest and trying to flee. But as for the ICE agent being in front of the car... barely . I don't believe he genuinely feared for his life, he could have simply stepped out of the way. I think he saw the woman fleeing, figured he was close enough to being in harms way to justify himself, and shot the woman because he was mad at her. I've been in situations like that in Walmart parki…

I don't understand what jurisdiction ICE has to enforce traffic laws. We see other vehicles drive around her vehicle, so at most it was a minor inconvenience for ICE. Call the local LE on her if you don't like how she's parked in the road and they can issue a ticket.

Re: The U.S. Government Just Followed Through on Its Ban of DJI Drones

#173
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> America isn’t safer if Ukraine scores another 100K Russian casualties Europe is safer though, so there's that at least. Russia can't invade the United States of course, but it can invade other countries in Europe, and it is actively taking action to do so.

Some 150,000,000 people in Russia vs some 450,000,000 in EU. I think it is unrealistic and I think Russia / Putin knows it.

Depends. Is he actually fighting 450,000,000 in the EU? Is Portugal going to send troops to the front lines in Estonia? Will Germans accept being drafted to go fight in Ukraine? These are serious questions. Meanwhile Putin is very much able to draft Russians to fight wars, and god-forbid he takes over Ukraine he'll send Ukrainians too.

Re: The U.S. Government Just Followed Through on Its Ban of DJI Drones

#174
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not that hard to make. USA will be fine. If some of the software and hardware manufacturing expertise can be built here thats great.

They're hard to develop . That is proven by the fact that DJI is by far the industry leader, and everyone else is trailing. We're not talking about duct-taping a Go Pro to an OTS drone.

They don't need to be that hard to develop. It's not like you need a return to base feature. Sort of like wanting to learn how to fly a plane, but not take off and land the plane. You don't need to have the full feature set of a DJI drone to make it a weapon. You also don't need to worry about the battery life of coming back, so you've essentially doubled your distance capabilities, so maybe a stronger radio. Do you need the video return signal too? I guess that would be some decent PR footage on the nightly news propaganda stations though, so might be worth the expense??? You also don't need to be burdened with the GeoFencing features of a DJI, but would be funny to see a bunch of attack drones all hover just outside a map boundary because the target has their base listed in the GeoFence library!

So while not duct-taping a GoPro (we'd use Gaff tape anyways), they could use bailing wire with a grenade or c4 bundle to attach it.

Re: The U.S. Government Just Followed Through on Its Ban of DJI Drones

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're hard to develop . That is proven by the fact that DJI is by far the industry leader, and everyone else is trailing. We're not talking about duct-taping a Go Pro to an OTS drone.

Just looking at the injection molded shell of my Mavic Mini makes me cringe when thinking about the startup cost. It's the plastic shell; not the motors, nor the circuitry, nor the optical parts...and to think you could build that in the USA is laughable. DJI releases 2-3 models every 2-3 years... if you could even find a company in the USA machining the steel molds at that frequency (i don't think it exists) how are…

We'll just let Boeing build them. They have the know-how.

Plus, if we're talking military drones vs civilian drones, they wouldn't need plastic shells. That'd just be more weight reducing distance. Then again, military industrial complex would probably try to make them stealth capable, be designed by committee from 22 nation states, be micro-USB mandated to comply with EU standards, blah blah. Yeah, you're right, we'd never be able to build them here.

Re: The U.S. Government Just Followed Through on Its Ban of DJI Drones

#176
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lesson learned from Ukraine is that importation of drones is a terrific asset, rather than a liability. Maybe you think that lesson would not apply to the USA, but that wouldn't be a lesson learned from Ukraine, rather the lesson learned would be the opposite.

The lesson from Ukraine is the importance of having access to drones. It doesn't take any remarkable mental feats to realize that if your primary source of drones is China, then that access may not be reliable in the event of conflict with China.

> then that access may not be reliable in the event of conflict with China.

Some might call that poor pre-planning. If you're about to go to war with your biggest supplier, you'd be well advised to stock up on supplies before firing the first shot.

Re: The U.S. Government Just Followed Through on Its Ban of DJI Drones

#177
Reading through the notice from the FCC, it sure feels like they've also banned a lot of the critical components that go into line of sight RC airplanes. It really sucks, I kind of wonder if this won't crush the hobby and cause a lot vendors like Horizon or Hobby King to go under if they can't bring in planes or parts. Maybe they think someone is going to do a terrorism with their foamie Crack Yak or Turbo Timber..

Re: The U.S. Government Just Followed Through on Its Ban of DJI Drones

#178
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reducing the diversity of your supply chain and instead making your self so incredibly vulnerable that all an adversary has to do is fubar your own domestic supply chain (because imports have long been banned) is way less robust than maintaining imports. If you actually wanted what you claim, you'd allow imports while taxing or subsidizing until they look roughly break even with domestic offerings.

> all an adversary has to do is fubar your own domestic supply chain "All you need to do to defeat the US is completely destroy its entire industrial base"

Are you suggesting to attack China, as that's the US' industrial base

Re: The U.S. Government Just Followed Through on Its Ban of DJI Drones

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s hard to say on this one. There is a pretty extensive history of Chinese govt spying via consumer products [0]. Having worked formerly with the intelligence community, they tend not to tip their hand when they are aware of asymmetrical information. It’s plausible that the determination was made that there were backdoors/spy equipment/whatever in the products, so no audit or smooth talking from corp representative…

The link you shared details hacker groups exploiting consumer hardware. This is very different than selling compromised, backdoored hardware.

Intent is of course tricky to prove, but there is overwhelming evidence that’s Chinese government views the role of Chinese companies in the consumer electronics supply chain as a strategic, exploitable asset.

> Huawei has a history of IP theft and security incidents related to backdoors and malware going back nearly 20 years.

> ZTE has been accused of including unusual backdoors in some products and was caught selling equipment containing U.S. technology to Iran and North Korea, in violation of trade agreements. … Security researchers, however, noted that the backdoors were “highly unusual” and appeared intentional because they were supporting software updates.

Source: https://www.congress.gov/117/meeting/house/112475/documents/...

Re: The U.S. Government Just Followed Through on Its Ban of DJI Drones

#180
post #2

Seeing how drone warfare has become the new hot front in 21st century conflicts like Ukraine, it's hard not to speculate on the implications of this as political unrest continues to rise in the U.S. It's no secret that the current U.S. regime views a sizeable portion of its own civilian citizens as enemy combatants. They are already shooting people in the face and not even putting up a pretense of acting shocked at t…

You don't need a revolution narrative to criticize this ban. It's already bad policy on its own merits: it freezes innovation, hurts hobbyists and small businesses etc

These things are true, but they don't explain why the u.s. government would make it a priority to ban such technologies. saying "well, republicans are bad so they do bad things" robs us the ability to understand the world.
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