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National Security Determination Threat Posed by Foreign-Produced Robotic Devices [pdf]

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Re: National Security Determination Threat Posed by Foreign-Produced Robotic Devices [pdf]

#61

Post by WarmWash »

diego_moita wrote: post #34

I see a funny pattern here. England created the Industrial Revolution but barely has any manufacturing these days. The U.S. created several industries (mass car manufacturing, electronics, clothing, etc) but today China produces more than them. They had more than half the worlds' GDP in 1944, they have less than 16% today. They're slowly following England's path.

It's just the path of economic development, and the benchmark for "comfortable life" is set by ambient economy of where you live.

So once the ambience reaches a level of "advanced degrees and massively leveraged worker impact" it becomes almost impossible to live in that environment on the level of "some school and hand knitting a scarf a day." It's totally intractable when you are competing with someone who generates a scarf of value every 30 seconds.

Re: National Security Determination Threat Posed by Foreign-Produced Robotic Devices [pdf]

#62

Post by cucumber3732842 »

hgoel wrote: post #24

The true intention of all of these seems to mostly be to give the government justification to pick winners and losers. Anyone that bends the knee gets their carveout or special exception, anyone that doesn't gets hit with all sorts of restrictions on top of the randomly applied tariffs. It seems the way to get Americans to embrace a centrally planned economy was to combine unashamed xenophobia with blatant corruption…

>The true intention of all of these seems to mostly be to give the government justification to pick winners and losers.

AlwaysHasBeen.jpg

You think the government kicked heavy industry out of the country (to China no less) because they truly believed in short sighted mid 20th century environmentalism? Of course not. They did it because Wall Street stood to make an obscene amount of money piecemeal selling that part of the economy overseas. Environmentalism just provided the excuse and pool of useful idiots from which to build political support.

Re: National Security Determination Threat Posed by Foreign-Produced Robotic Devices [pdf]

#63

Post by lossolo »

WarmWash wrote: post #59
revolvingthrow wrote: post #13

Ah, the newly popular "let's make the policy unusually broad and treat all foreign production as presumptively dangerous, regardless of country, manufacturer or security practices, this way we're more transparent about prioritizing a bribe rather than our stated concerns". > Advanced robotic devices are inherently networked systems which creates broad attack surfaces and leaves them vulnerable to data exfiltration, r…

>Good thing this isn't a concern in ones produced locally. It's not difficult to understand the folly of sharing data and control with your biggest adversary. It's so basic, but people chronically keep tripping on it, intentionally or not. This isn't even something new either, it comes from the cold war where the KGB was excellent at espionage particularly because of their smart leverage of regular people with access…

> It's not difficult to understand the folly of sharing data and control with your biggest adversary. It's so basic, but people chronically keep tripping on it, intentionally or not.

Like those self driving, remotely controllable Teslas that gather data 24/7, the ones I saw everywhere when I was in China?

Re: National Security Determination Threat Posed by Foreign-Produced Robotic Devices [pdf]

#64

Post by LoganDark »

hn_submit wrote: post #58
LoganDark wrote: post #7

This makes me wonder if we've ever had any evidence that "onshore manufacturing" prevents or even lessens foreign backdoors or security vulnerabilities. Honestly, to me it seems like onshore manufacturers are generally far more clueless than they have any right to be, so it's highly unlikely that they could both write materially better code and act as any meaningful barrier to internal compromise.

Apple is a case in point. It designs and engineers everything and stringently checks that its Chinese ODMs aren't quietly swapping in cheaper inferior parts or alter its software. I therefore assume Apple products are safe even though they're manufactured in China. But the fact is that most Western manufacturers are too lazy to develop things themselves and merely slap their label on a Chinese designed and manufactur…

> Apple is a case in point. It designs and engineers everything and stringently checks that its Chinese ODMs aren't quietly swapping in cheaper inferior parts or alter its software. I therefore assume Apple products are safe even though they're manufactured in China.

Absolutely. I trust Apple a lot more than I trust almost any other company. Maybe Valve is up there as well.

> But the fact is that most Western manufacturers are too lazy to develop things themselves and merely slap their label on a Chinese designed and manufactured product. This means that the Chinese could slip in anything in the hard/software which creates a huge security liability.

Well, the problem here would be a Chinese entity being required to create a US entity, which often just ends up with the US entity inheriting everything, including the slips, from the Chinese entity.

Re: National Security Determination Threat Posed by Foreign-Produced Robotic Devices [pdf]

#65

Post by palmotea »

revolvingthrow wrote: post #13

Ah, the newly popular "let's make the policy unusually broad and treat all foreign production as presumptively dangerous, regardless of country, manufacturer or security practices, this way we're more transparent about prioritizing a bribe rather than our stated concerns". > Advanced robotic devices are inherently networked systems which creates broad attack surfaces and leaves them vulnerable to data exfiltration, r…

> Ah, the newly popular "let's make the policy unusually broad and treat all foreign production as presumptively dangerous, regardless of country, manufacturer or security practices, this way we're more transparent about prioritizing a bribe rather than our stated concerns".

IIRC, these policies are backdoor way to ban Chinese products without explicitly banning Chinese products (because the administration is trying to make nice with China). I've read stuff that said very explicitly that the foreign router ban was like that, and this seems similar.

Re: National Security Determination Threat Posed by Foreign-Produced Robotic Devices [pdf]

#66

Post by hn_submit »

Tangurena2 wrote: post #46
hn_submit wrote: post #12

Why doesn't the U.S. simply ban all Chinese products that have an internet-connected computer in them? That would solve almost all security problems in one strike and force Chinese manufacturers to communicate via Bluetooth and update software through USB sticks or memory cards. The apps communicating with said devices through Bluetooth obviously can't connect to the internet either otherwise there'd still be an aven…

There's a box being sold called "SuperBox". It claims to be able to stream any movie/video. The claim is "just pay $300 and you won't need to subscribe to any streaming service anymore." However, part of what it does is hacks your home network and tries to take over every thing on that network. And it sends this all back to China. The vast majority of people buying & installing these are just ordinary people but some…

I've always been suspicious why Chinese companies are adding internet capability to products where it doesn't make sense. Why would a power converter need internet capability? TCP/IP capability...maybe. But internet? Internet means "the whole world can access my device." Same with IP cameras. Or EV chargers.

And they require it. Without internet connectivity the device simply won't work. This sounds fishy to me.

These devices should only be allowed to access local network addresses and no (internet) gateways.

Re: National Security Determination Threat Posed by Foreign-Produced Robotic Devices [pdf]

#69

Post by esbranson »

Lendal wrote: post #8

The irony is this will harm US manufacturing, not help it. Manufacturing is the sector that most depends on robotics. Companies will now have to sue the administration so they can continue operations without this new regulatory hindrance. I thought this president was supposed to eliminate regulations, not impose newer and stupider ones.

> Companies will now have to sue

Yes, that is covered by Annex A titled "You have to sue". Which is interesting because longstanding law says the US cannot normally be sued. Surely you're not be hyperbolic.

Re: National Security Determination Threat Posed by Foreign-Produced Robotic Devices [pdf]

#70

Post by mikewarot »

diego_moita wrote: post #34

I see a funny pattern here. England created the Industrial Revolution but barely has any manufacturing these days. The U.S. created several industries (mass car manufacturing, electronics, clothing, etc) but today China produces more than them. They had more than half the worlds' GDP in 1944, they have less than 16% today. They're slowly following England's path.

That's the "Cantillon Effect"[1]

  Cantillon suggested that inflation occurs gradually and that the new supply of money has a localised effect on inflation, effectively originating the concept of non-neutral money. Furthermore, he posited that the original recipients of new money enjoy higher standards of living at the expense of later recipients. The concept of relative inflation, or a disproportionate rise in prices among different goods in an economy, is now known as the Cantillon effect.
Because we got very good at manufacturing, that brought in hard currency, and raised the standard of living. This then was balanced out by that money then being spend on goods from abroad that used to be sourced locally, hollowing out the manufacturing base. Until the base collapses, and reforms again elsewhere, and the cycle repeats.

If the US had competent leadership, they could re-shore things, and benefit from China's upcoming collapse.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Cantillon#Monetary_the...

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