Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

dronedj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 742 posts

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

#51

Post by resoluteteeth »

itsacodething wrote: post #39
resoluteteeth wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want to know why the US would have interest in limiting the growth of DJI look no further then Ukraine and the impact drones have on the war. How is banning DJI drones in the US going to affect how they're being used in the war in Ukraine? Or do you mean that banning them in the US will somehow stop them from being used against the US in the future?

> How is banning DJI drones in the US going to affect how they're being used in the war in Ukraine? It will not. > Or do you mean that banning them in the US will somehow stop them from being used against the US in the future? No. This is about planning for the future. In the event of a war the US wants a large existing base of domestic drone manufacturers. Today, that just does not exist at scale as most are made in…

> This is about planning for the future. In the event of a war the US wants a large existing base of domestic drone manufacturers. Today, that just does not exist at scale as most are made in China. This is similar to efforts to re-shore chip manufacturing.

I don't think the US military generally uses off-the-shelf consumer products like the Ukraine military does, so does this actually affect them? They would be getting drones built to order from a military contractor anyway, so I don't think it really matters what the leading consumer manufacturer of drones is to the US military from that perspective.

Chip manufacturing seems like a slightly different situation in that if another country restricted US access to chips it would affect the entire US economy, so I think it has security implications in a broader sense where security is interpreted to include the stability of the US economy as a whole, rather than military supply specifically.

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

#52

Post by bluescrn »

mrandish wrote: post #29

This is so misguided it's breathtaking. Even if one buys into the supposed "harm" it's apparently trying to address, by targeting a specific corporate entity the proposed legislation won't do anything meaningful toward those ends. But it will confuse the market and hurt U.S. hobbyist consumers while being largely unenforceable anyway. It's one of those things that's just so dumb you assume it's only congressional ele…

Be thankful that consumer/hobbyist drones haven't been banned entirely already (banning other model aircraft along with them as collateral damage).

Especially after all the footage of essentially-hobby-grade drones with familiar open-source flight controller software being turned into very effective weapons of war in Ukraine.

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

#53

Post by svachalek »

empath75 wrote: post #31
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 definitely economic protectionism but it's mostly protectionism for national security reasons. I assume the US is going to start manufacturing drones for war in large numbers in the near term and they need to be made at home (or at least by allies).

This seems likely. For those that haven't been following the war in Ukraine, now that all the Cold War munitions have been mostly used up, drones are now the primary weapon of both sides due to literal "bang per buck". It seems clear that drones are the 21st century weapon of choice.

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

#55

Post by arcanemachiner »

lawlessone wrote: post #47
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...

>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?

Off the top of my head as a non-European: GDPR, 2-year warranties and other consumer protection laws

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

#56

Post by jonathankoren »

unethical_ban wrote: post #21
ganoushoreilly wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When companies receive outsized state subsidies that allow them to undercut the markets, it's not an apples for apples comparison. As for the unrelated legislation, I agree. Too many things are tacked on / added on. NO ONE is reading these things in complete given that sometimes they receive the full 1k pages hours before the vote. The other issue is the number of things funded that shouldn't be in general but that's…

If the US unfree market for automobiles (hello 2008) can't compete with Chinese state sponsored EVs, should we not do state subsidized EV and battery development here? Isn't electric transport that important? If the problem is privacy, why don't we legislate privacy instead of banning apps and banning items? My conspiracy theory would be that the US government doesn't want the citizen to have effective drones for sur…

Your questions are right, but the conspiracy theory is dreadfully wrong. If you want a motivating force for banning, but not actually competing by leveling the field, it’s ideology. The US government doesn’t do subsidies (except when they do).

The saddest thing about these decline of American manufacturing, and the fragility of supply chains is that all of this was predicted 30 years ago, but Wall Street and the billionaire management class did their typical shortsighted profits taking instead of sustainability, soured on by ideological capture of both parties.

I often think about how the world would be different if the people actual won the Battle of Seattle.

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

#57

Post by ganeshkrishnan »

rcpt wrote: post #35
nacs wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes this is a strange one. There is no viable competitor to DJI for consumers when it comes to the software side especially -- DJI software is miles ahead of the other drone producers (on-drone and their mobile apps).

When I try to download DJI fly app from the Play Store it always crashes.

which drone do you have? there is a DJI fly app version that you have to sideload. The current ones on playstore are just fine

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

#58

Post by goryramsy »

rcpt wrote: post #35
nacs wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes this is a strange one. There is no viable competitor to DJI for consumers when it comes to the software side especially -- DJI software is miles ahead of the other drone producers (on-drone and their mobile apps).

When I try to download DJI fly app from the Play Store it always crashes.

[dead]

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

#59

Post by squarefoot »

Sparkle-san wrote: post #13
gwbas1c wrote: post #11

What is DJI, why is it being banned, and why should the general public care about this? (In all seriousness, nothing I've read about "DJI" even explains the basics of the issue.)

DJI arguably makes the best consumer camera drones on the market. Why ban them? Because they're Chinese probably. https://www.dji.com/camera-drones

Probably yes. The industry can fight with quality or price against Chinese bad products and non Chinese good products, but products that are both Chinese and top notch quality are going to dominate the market because of comparatively lower costs. Now, that law can indeed have some basis, in theory, but tailoring it to a single brand won't achieve much as the Chinese industry can rebrand products at a cost and in times that are a fraction of a fraction of what it takes to any western democratic country to adjust the law against another brand. On the other hand, they can't make a generic law against say suspicious code running on consumer devices that could be used to exfiltrate personal data, as it would potentially hit every connected device out there, including western branded ones. My impression is that they (the law makers) are almost facing the wall where they should admit that closed proprietary devices are generally unsafe and bad, but can't because it would hurt the same industry that contributed to their campaigns, so they direct all weapons against the external enemy. "We're good, they're bad", and end of the story.

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

#60

Post by zamadatix »

empath75 wrote: post #31
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 definitely economic protectionism but it's mostly protectionism for national security reasons. I assume the US is going to start manufacturing drones for war in large numbers in the near term and they need to be made at home (or at least by allies).

If this were the case I'd expect it to be related to all drones from China though. It also doesn't seem needed given the contracts can just state the requirement without extra hoopla.
Post reply on HN