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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

#71

Post by hooverd »

bluescrn wrote: post #52
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.

Or 3D printers! You can print scary "ghost guns" with them. And they're mostly made in China. Although maybe Stratasys will push for that next now that they're lost their stranglehold on the market.

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

#72

Post by delfinom »

itsacodething wrote: post #19
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.)

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. The US wants to encourage domestic drone manufacturing by eliminating the largest Chinese manufacturer as an option.

Ah yes, $10k drones made in a different country's sweatshops. Not to worry, MURICA BRAND.

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

#73

Post by dangoor »

For people wonder how this got there, the blame goes to Rep. Elise Stefanik:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/2864

That bill was tacked onto a big "must pass" defense authorization and may not have survived on its own.

Here's an article with some speculation on why Stefanik introduced this bill: https://dronexl.co/2024/06/06/drone-industry-outrage-stefani...

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

#74

Post by jcpham2 »

mc32 wrote: post #23
itsacodething wrote: post #19

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. The US wants to encourage domestic drone manufacturing by eliminating the largest Chinese manufacturer as an option.

They have Skydio for that. There is no profit in consumer-oriented drones. The money is in lower volume professional & semi-professional use drones. You cannot compete with China even if we annexed Mexico for cheap labor in order to manufacture high volume low profit drones.

I very much prefer my Skydio2 drone over any DJI product I've ever flown. Totally subjective experience. I got tired of fixing DJI drones.

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

#75

Post by delfinom »

kaibee wrote: post #37
mc32 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have Skydio for that. There is no profit in consumer-oriented drones. The money is in lower volume professional & semi-professional use drones. You cannot compete with China even if we annexed Mexico for cheap labor in order to manufacture high volume low profit drones.

This is exactly the problem. The military needs single-use drones in high volume, and the production capacity/scale for that can only exist if it's subsidized by the consumer industry. > You cannot compete with China even if we annexed Mexico for cheap labor in order to manufacture high volume low profit drones. DJI isn't making drones by hand, they have automated factories. But its only worth building an automated f…

>This is exactly the problem. The military needs single-use drones in high volume, and the production capacity/scale for that can only exist if it's subsidized by the consumer industry.

Single use drones could exist without subsidizing by the consumer industry. Ukraine is literally doing it with rubberbands. Anything else would simply lead to overdesign and basically the same problem we have now where the enemy is simply lobbing cheap artillery in volume while we simply do not have smart missiles to spare for Ukraine, nor for ourselves if we got into such a war. Lmao.

The American MIC is largely...maliciously incompetent. I work in this sector. Overdesigning, so you can slap a 500% profit margin on something with more features than ever needed. Then you lobby the generals in charge of project funding with dinners, gifts and more.

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

#76

Post by nkrisc »

arcanemachiner wrote: post #55
lawlessone wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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

Oh, those pesky consumers getting in the way of the innovation of the free market with their protections. If only they could be fully exploited for maximum value extraction without interference.

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

#77

Post by sambull »

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…

I'm with you here. It's not a D/R thing it's a top bottom divide.

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

#78

Post by Tepix »

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).

Those drones will be built for war, how are they competing with DJI who refuses to let their drones be used for war?

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

#79

Post by cynicalsecurity »

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...

Okay, but what will happen if US goes to war with China?

This can happen much quicker and easier than you think. Some Chinese delusional leader is going to attack Taiwan and voila, all the import from China will immediately stop at that exact moment.

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

#80

Post by andy_ppp »

arcanemachiner wrote: post #55
lawlessone wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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

GDPR is really sensible legislation that largely only applies to companies who should be treating your personal data as sensitive data. I built a GDPR complaint system and was really happy about the security we put in place that we definitely wouldn’t have thought to do without these laws. Things like having someone you can ask and request personal data from at big companies is also an extremely well thought through idea. I don’t understand the issues people have with it to be honest…
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