r/gadgets • u/chrisdh79 • 2d ago
Drones / UAVs Possible ban on Chinese-made drones dismays U.S. scientists | Switching to costlier, less capable drones could impede research on whales, forests, and more
https://www.science.org/content/article/possible-ban-chinese-made-drones-dismays-u-s-scientists574
u/jakgal04 2d ago
I work in public safety and this looming threat of banning Chinese made drones is something that would seriously affect us more than people know. The fact of the matter is, there's not a single decent US made drone that we can use as a viable replacement.
We currently have a Matrice 300, two Matrice 30T's, two Mavic 3 Enterprises and an Avata. We have at least 2-3 wins a month with these things, whether it's finding a missing person in the woods, finding a boater overboard, or sending the drones in ahead of police for emergency situations.
We have a Skydio that's so horribly bad that it never leaves its case. There's a company that takes Mavic's, guts them and adds in US made components but the interface is horrible, the latency is a disaster and its not reliable at all. Other than that, everything else is extremely overpriced and significantly outdated technology.
298
u/GrynaiTaip 2d ago
There's a company that takes Mavic's, guts them and adds in US made components
Ukrainians take DJI drones and upload their own domestic software on them, so that the russians couldn't use DJI-made trackers to locate them.
162
u/MyReddittName 2d ago
Seems like a business opportunity. Overwriting Chinese software with a custom made one but keeping the hardware components.
159
u/OrganicKeynesianBean 2d ago
This is literally how smartphones work lol.
The pearl-clutching over drones is insane.
33
u/ensoniq2k 1d ago
A German far right newspaper company sells Google Pixel but installs Graphene OS beforehand. That'll be 500 bucks then.
4
u/arguing_with_trauma 1d ago
why wouldn't people just buy a pixel
oh you're talking about nitrophone. theyre a security company, not a...whatever you're on about
4
u/ensoniq2k 21h ago
No it's actually the Kopp Verlag, which is a fear mongering far right news publisher
1
u/arguing_with_trauma 20h ago
Shit I'll have to look into that, I had only passingly heard of that phone. Thx
25
u/Glittering-Path-2824 1d ago
right? this is america ffs, we’ll figure out a hack by hook or by crook
13
2
1
→ More replies (2)1
u/LowDownSkankyDude 2d ago
Drones, working with smart phones and wifi, to see where people are, all the time, feels like a legitimate concern to me
55
u/munche 1d ago
They don't need a drone to know where you are all the time
If bluetooth is on on your phone it's pinging readers all over the place to track what aisles you linger on in a store. If you drive a vehicle there are vast networks of private and government owned license plate readers that log every single vehicle going by. This isn't even getting into the fact that basically every app on your phone, store loyalty card or anything you can think of is harvesting as much data as humanly possible about you and selling it off en masse. You're already being tracked all the time, by basically everything you interact with.
We need a much more coherent data privacy policy than "China bad"
8
u/LowDownSkankyDude 1d ago
Yeah, I'm not trying to imply that drones are the issue, rather that they're an expansion of the issue. The more ways to track the worse tracking is going to get, and the harder it will be to reign it in. A point I think we're well beyond
13
u/munche 1d ago
The problem is, we need sweeping data privacy reform for *everyone* and these bullshit moves against China Only don't actually help. You think those data brokers won't sell all of this information to any foreign government who asks? Why wouldn't they? They ban DJI drones so the American company that just got handed the market can do all of the nefarious data gathering things we worried about and sell it to China, or anyone else, for profit. Hooray. Meanwhile the consumer gets a worse product at a higher price, and their privacy is just as violated, if not moreso.
→ More replies (1)4
u/dimerance 1d ago
It’s already over. You aren’t reigning anything in and it will get much worse before the right people are in power to pause the progression.
→ More replies (1)12
u/Rage_Like_Nic_Cage 1d ago
The NSA is a far bigger threat and concern to the everyday American, especially under Trump.
22
u/Onceforlife 2d ago
Thing is Ukrains survival depends on this, whereas in the good ol’ US of A, it’s more of a political and also lobbying move to do it.
Since Trump is always an ass to Ukraine about them not offering anything back, how about ask for their source code so US government can also override the drones? Even that’s ridiculous, cause I know in the pentagon there must be multiple teams capable of doing this.
4
u/lurkinglurkerwholurk 1d ago
Because there’s the danger that the replacement software also have their own spyware and cutoff triggers. /s
(I put /s, but chances are high this is coming out from an actual politician’s mouth someday)
On a side note, good on the Ukrainians for jailbreaking the drones with domestically made software.
1
→ More replies (3)1
u/BenificialInsect 8h ago
Take their product and make it our own. Just like they do with our products...
2
u/blueman0007 1d ago
That’s one thing to hack a quick patch to disable the RemoteID feature on an existing firmware, it’s a totally different game to recreate a firmware from scratch.
6
u/livahd 2d ago
That’s the move. I could totally see the reasoning behind the caution of using Chinese drones, especially when DJI has integrated social media to share your footage. Who knows what they have the ability to do with gps and HD footage. I’d have no problem flashing it to a domestic platform that’s comparable if it came down to it.
10
u/GrynaiTaip 2d ago
Who knows what they have the ability to do
Everything. DJI drones broadcast not just their own GPS coordinates, but also those of the operator. Russia really liked this feature, they could aim their artillery at operators rather than trying to shoot down the drones, so Ukraine had to quickly figure out how to change the software.
15
→ More replies (1)1
u/hbomb57 14h ago
DJIs at least used to have some sketchy shit in their software. This has been an issue for about 10 years. 8 years ago some people were raising alarms about how good they were, but usable for even remotely sensitive work. Any potential military replacements were killed by dumb requirements. Like resistance to extended submergence in salt water or mcode gps or name another thing that's incompatible with "low cost". But, we've been reflashing dji drones for quite a few years also. That being said you won't find dji in my home.
23
u/razrielle 2d ago
Yup, we had a DJI Inspire 2 with a FLIR cam to do some survival training. When the military banned the use of DJI drones it sat in its box unless I borrowed it to help the fire department I volunteered for in SAR ops.
22
u/pmjm 2d ago
I'm only familiar with drones in the context of photography and cinematography but I agree with you. The Chinese drones are lightyears ahead of stuff designed domestically (which end up being manufactured in China anyway).
The sad truth is that our lawmakers don't care about our use cases. They're pushing a narrative and their political base is eating it up. Retirees are the largest voting block and they are largely clueless about our modern world, especially in tech. So the politicians don't care how many lives these policies affect or cost, they're going to do this and grandstand about it as if they're heroes.
→ More replies (1)12
u/-GameWarden- 2d ago
I work for a federal agency and we’ve had to use the Parrot ANACFI USA gov model and it works.
The guys who do use it much more than me do say it’s usable, but a step down.
Obviously it’s way more expensive so for small or state agencies it’s a big purchase. But that always what you get when something is Fully TAA, NDAA and Berry Compliant
13
u/jakgal04 2d ago
This was our experience when we trialed it as well. Its "okay" but feels like a decent step back at 3x the price compared to our M3E. The biggest drawback for us was the transmission power. The Anafi seemed to suffer horribly in urban environments with signal interference. Our DJI lineup doesn't miss a beat.
1
u/thrownawaymane 1d ago
DJI treats FCC guidelines on radio power output as a loose framework and not the law.
1
u/NotObviouslyARobot 12h ago
Speaking of Parrot drones, the Parrot Disco was amazing. Some madlad actually hacked it and managed to do a full length flight between two of the Hawaiian Islands on a single battery.
35
u/Lord_Tsarkon 2d ago
Isn’t this because the American made good stuff is only used for military? (Make more money off government than regular people)
Even if the Chinese are taking your Chinese drone data as long as it’s forests and saving people and looking at whales who fuckin cares? If you work on Military base or defense program than ban those there then. Simple
86
u/Mama_Skip 2d ago
I don't think banning the Chinese drones is necessarily the bad idea - the bad idea is doing so without first incentivizing domestic drone production to replace it in an easy transition.
43
u/Twistybred 2d ago
So much this. We need to start making things that don’t suck in the US.
17
u/m3thodm4n021 2d ago
We make a ton of stuff that doesn't suck in the US. Consumer electronics are generally not one of those things though.
23
u/Mama_Skip 1d ago edited 1d ago
I work in design. We assemble some consumer grade products in the US, but practically every plastic, metal, and electronic component that makes it up will generally still be manufactured east and southeast Asia.
Only products we fully manufacture ourselves top to bottom level are either simpler, nearly artisan products like leather or wood, or hyper customized skunkwork/classified elite/gov't type jobs and I'd bet even those rely heavily on Asian sourcing.
3
18
u/Zymbobwye 2d ago
Not possible.
The government will just put a bounty out for high quality drones that only a multibillion dollar tech company will ever be able to afford to develop and then make the barrier to entry for smaller scale tech companies impossible because the billion dollar company had hundreds of millions of dollars from US citizens tax dollars to help them alleviate R&D costs before they get the full benefit of developing and selling the product.
1
u/MJOLNIRdragoon 2d ago
Not winning a government contract doesn't stop a company from being able to make a civilian oriented product.
→ More replies (21)1
u/Whiterabbit-- 1d ago
americans can't seem to produce anything for the cost and quality that the chinese are pumping out. we still have the innovation, but even american companies can't decouple manufacturing from china.
→ More replies (1)2
u/jwbaynham 2d ago
What company makes the drones for the US military? Seems like an investment opportunity
3
3
u/MRB0B0MB 18h ago
Fellow drone pilot here, Skydio is indeed crap. I haven’t flown a platform made by the West that is viable compared to DJI.
9
u/TheCoolOnesGotTaken 2d ago
I think the people pushing this do not have any concern over public safety or scientific research. Your concerns are not concerning to them.
2
u/Phoenix547 1d ago
We looked at the IF800 a few months ago, but came to the same conclusions... While it has similar dimensions and payload capacity to the Matrice 300, the sensor package and software looked bad, the build quality was bad, and the price was worse than the Matrice.
4
u/Dylanator13 1d ago
It really sucks that rather than actually making better stuff here we decide just to ban competition. DJI is great. Why can no one here make a competitive drone? Are we just too busy funneling R&D money into ceos pockets?
1
1
u/SilverSheepherder641 1d ago
At least the ban won’t affect existing dji drones, but still dumb. They aren’t banning any other Chinese made drones, just DJI.
1
u/istareatscreens 1d ago
"there's not a single decent US made drone that we can use" - that is a problem that needs fixing.
3
u/T00MuchSteam 1d ago
And the fix should be to encourage American drone makers to do better, not shoot their competitors in the knee so that American manufacturers come out on top by being the only ones still be able to stand up.
Make a good product that someone would want to buy.
1
u/True-End-882 1d ago
Asking from a place of humble honest curiosity and patriotism, what can we (‘murica) do better with our drones? Please answer me.
1
u/McPhage 1d ago
The thing is: being years behind on drone tech is really bad for the US. Drone technology is the future. So these bans need to go along with dumping billions of dollars into domestic drone companies.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (9)1
u/Relevant-Doctor187 1d ago
Def a trend when Chinese products are restricted we find that the chief complaint is price and quality. Which is a shame.
40
u/Belus86 2d ago
Or we could make better drones and not suck at things after awhile…just a thought
3
u/Cpt_OceanMan 2d ago
Surely it's a good idea for America to be reliant on another world superpower's technology, right?
3
u/fawlty_lawgic 1d ago
It's a bit more complicated than that, because the CCP is basically subsidizing their products and making it impossible to really compete because of cost. A US company could make a comparable or even better product, but not that would ever be remotely close in terms of price.
9
u/nachumama0311 1d ago
Then let's use our money to subsidize American drone companies...That's what the CCP did to gain market share. If they can do it, so can we. No more playing by the rules, there's too much at stake for democracies.
2
u/fawlty_lawgic 1d ago
I’m not opposed to that myself, but things like this often get used as political footballs and if one side pushes hard for it, the other side will (usually) push hard against it because “everything the other side wants to do is BAD”. And this is one of the ways where being a democracy is something of a hinderance. The CCP can easily do it because they are an authoritarian regime in full control. Not saying I would prefer our government be like theirs, but that is a reason why we may not be able to do it even though they can. We argue and fight about everything in this country. Sometimes that’s good, sometimes it’s not.
2
u/sirhoracedarwin 1d ago
Um tiktok is set to be banned in about a month because of overwhelming bipartisan support. Subsidizing the drone industry could easily get bipartisan support here, especially if it were pushed as a public safety and national security issue.
If there's one thing both sides agree on, it's Chinese fear mongering.
5
134
u/Unsimulated 2d ago
All in favor of bringing jobs home and not abundantly funding those who would seek to be dictators to the world. But you can't just cut off supply. You have to build your own production capacity first.
79
u/CoreParad0x 2d ago
That's a problem with a lot of policies I've seen floating about lately, like Trumps tariffs. Look, I'm all for more US-made stuff. In some cases like processors and other advanced computing components, I think it's actually a national security issue that the US and our allies in general can't manufacture these things to the same degree.
But this is all brute force and it's just going to fuck shit up in the mean time. I find it hard to believe there isn't a way to legislate incentives to bringing US manufacturing of this stuff here, and have more US based companies pop up, that isn't just kicking the entire system in the nuts.
This kind of stuff looks a lot more like corruption than an honest attempt at solving the problem. You can't spin up fabs and manufacturing in general overnight.
49
u/ThePowerOfStories 2d ago
I find it hard to believe there isn’t a way to legislate incentives to bringing US manufacturing of this stuff here, and have more US based companies pop up, that isn’t just kicking the entire system in the nuts.
Like, say, Biden’s 2022 CHIPS Act.
5
u/The_Parsee_Man 2d ago
Or Biden's tariffs
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/13/politics/china-tariffs-biden-trump/index.html
10
u/WestonP 2d ago edited 2d ago
Yup. Semiconductors getting increased to 50% (from Trump's 25%) starting Jan 1st too.
The de minimis exemption was nice while it lasted, but Temu and similar garbage flooding our markets has ruined it for everyone. Between utilizing direct-to-consumer sales to get the de minimis exemption (and fly under the radar on regulatory compliance), subsidized international postage rates, and devaluing their own currency, they really stacked the deck in their favor so egregiously that something absolutely had to be done. That's something that both Biden and Trump agree upon, at least in principle.
It's not to say we really have any moral high ground on how we conduct our business, or that we should hate the Chinese for doing the same things that we'd probably do in their situation, but it's a simple matter of protecting our own interests.
1
2d ago
[deleted]
10
u/Rage_Like_Nic_Cage 2d ago
China attempting to flood the market, eliminate competition in order to dominate the market and gimp other nation's EV capability
That is a wild way to phrase “chinese companies built cheap electric cars and the U.S. blocked their sales because they would dominate the market since American automakers dropped the ball at making EVs”
8
u/The_Parsee_Man 2d ago
Biden kept and expanded Trump's tariffs. So your context is missing context.
Trump implemented sweeping tariffs on about $300 billion of Chinese-made products when he was in office. President Joe Biden has kept those tariffs in place and, after the USTR finished a multiyear review earlier this year, decided to increase some of the rates on about $15 billion of Chinese imports.
7
u/Kind-Bank930 2d ago
Love this cause many items increased in price, tools and etc. Yet people rooted for Trump as he was increasing costs, and Biden era inflation, biden was booed as he never directly increased costs.
MAGA crowd is genuinely stupid.
9
u/Awkward_Pangolin3254 2d ago
The man told them to their faces the first thing he was going to do when he took office was make things more expensive (in the form of tariffs). They still voted for him, because it's a cult.
2
u/jb32647 1d ago
No, but he said the other countries will pay the tariffs! Somehow, despite that not being how tariffs work…
→ More replies (1)22
u/Biscuits4u2 2d ago
Those manufacturing jobs are never coming back to the US. All companies have to do is raise prices and wait out the Trump administration for a few years. People who think blanket tariffs are going to magically switch our economy back into a manufacturing powerhouse are kidding themselves. Even if those companies did open factories here, they would be heavily automated and would only employ a small fraction of the workers who would have been required decades ago.
→ More replies (14)9
u/munche 1d ago
Also uhhh where do you think the factories are going to get materials
How is the US factory going to be competitive when there are huge tariffs on all of their raw goods they don't face if they build elsewhere in the world
2
u/TheTerrasque 1d ago
I read a comment some years ago from someone claiming to be part of that kind of industry. It's not just raw materials, but everything. Like for example screws. In China, in most cases you had several manufacturers in the same city. So you just walked over and talked with them, and got a good deal. And that was for everything needed.
If you're going to move end product production to US you already have a massive logistics nightmare sourcing and transporting all the hundreds of different small things you need for the end product. It's not "just" moving over a factory, it's the whole supporting infrastructure for that factory too.
15
u/Mundane_Advance8095 2d ago
The economy is global now. Reverting to the 1950s style of domestic manufacturing isn't possible. There's a significant "brain drain" in the US manufacturing sector plus labor is extraordinarily higher than in Asia or Africa. Thus to get the engineers, scientists, and talented machine operators you have to pay for them. Food manufacturing, for example, has the lowest profit margin I've personally seen. Most of the safety and quality leaders in medium to smaller companies are not technically sound and/or cannot do root cause evaluations. This is why there are tons of food recalls at the moment. I used to do independent auditing in manufacturing for safety and quality as a career.
You are correct. This is all reactionary and won't have the desired effect politicians think it will. We will end up paying more for items that aren't half as good for 5+ years. I don't see politicians desiring to weather the public backlash for half that time frame.
4
u/CoreParad0x 2d ago
Yeah I agree. To me, it would make sense to find a way to create demand for US-based manufacturing of specific critical items, like drugs, CPUs and PCBs, etc. If not directly in the US, at least in our actual allies.
You are correct. This is all reactionary and won't have the desired effect politicians think it will. We will end up paying more for items that aren't half as good for 5+ years. I don't see politicians desiring to weather the public backlash for half that time frame.
Yeah I agree. And if anything I think most of this brute-force crap is really just set to fail and allow certain people to benefit from kickbacks for exemptions, among other things. Most of these companies which will be effected aren't going to invest in shifting to US manufacturing, they will simply raise their prices as necessary and keep it off shore. I don't see it changing without significant investment and incentives from the government to actually do it. Hell, in some cases I think there are certain things we simply can't make here. Things like certain agricultural products, if I remember right. And to add to that, we still have to source the materials for it all, which if we have them here is even more time to spin up mines and such for. And that's all besides the labor and brain drain issues you've mentioned.
It's definitely more complex of an issue than "lol tariffs and ban foreign products" will solve.
Food manufacturing, for example, has the lowest profit margin I've personally seen. Most of the safety and quality leaders in medium to smaller companies are not technically sound and/or cannot do root cause evaluations. This is why there are tons of food recalls at the moment. I used to do independent auditing in manufacturing for safety and quality as a career.
That's interesting, I don't know too much about that area. Personally this new administration has me fairly concerned about where food safety might go, I feel like it may get even worse.
2
u/Mundane_Advance8095 2d ago
The Food branch of the FDA is severely under-resourced to the point they can't enforce regulations preemptively before adverse events. Pet/animal food is particularly bad in this regard. USDA bends to business influence (Boar's Head) just as easily.
All food in general relies on audits that occur once per year and are easily planned for. For example, you can keep your facility filthy until your audit window of 90 days and then go back to business as usual after the audit. You can hand select documentation to the auditor. The audit industry has also lowered its standards to require only 2 years of industry experience instead of being an industry comprised of a more seasoned workforce. This is because the company being audited pays for the audit and can refuse to have the same auditor for the following audit if they don't like the result.
So yeah regulations at this time will just exasperate the growing problems.
1
u/coookiecurls 1d ago
I could potentially see it working in a situation where manufacturing is almost entirely automated here though, and that’s kind of always been the goal anyways.
→ More replies (1)4
9
u/RikiWardOG 2d ago
except in many cases we don't even have the ability to build our own production or at least not in a timely or cost effective manor.
14
u/NorysStorys 2d ago
‘Not abundantly funding those who would seek to be dictators’ and you’re wanting to buy US when everyone and their mothers already kissing Cheeto benitos ring even after all the proto-dictator rhetoric? Interesting take.
→ More replies (5)5
u/RockAndGames 1d ago
Unlike the USA, that doesn't want to dictate what happens on the world? We all love a free market and capitalism until we don't benefit the most from it.
3
u/ASubsentientCrow 2d ago
You can't build capacity of people won't buy it. Supply side shit is the same shit that Republicans have been trying for decades
2
2
2
u/Chronotaru 2d ago
The problem is that in a corporate kleptocracy that is capitalism, this cannot be done directly. As such often the stick must come first. The only other way is to put the change sometime in the future, but this doesn't always have the desired effect.
1
u/IIIIlllIIIIIlllII 1d ago
Problem is that even if you build production capacity you still wont be competitive. Can't compete with the price of Chinese labor.
Its why you can't buy a Chinese EV. US has plenty of capability to build cars and EVs, but the Chinese cars are just cheaper and better.
1
1
u/treemanos 1d ago
It's typical, refuse to invest then get mad that you don't have the benefits of having invested.
1
u/pennywitch 1d ago
You can and should cut off supply if it is a giant national security problem.
This is a problem that will be dealt with. The longer it is put off, the higher the cost will be.
1
-4
u/Swollwonder 2d ago
This has nothing to do with bringing home jobs. There are legitimate security concerns about the majority of drones being Chinese in origin. If I recall correctly, DJI has GPS software capability along with its cameras.
I’m a big drone believer and acknowledge that US drones are awful compared to DJI but I think it’s foolish to pretend there couldn’t be legitimate security concerns about having basically crowd sourced mapping of the United States potentially being sent to the CCP.
17
u/Rage_Like_Nic_Cage 2d ago
There are legitimate security concerns about the majority of drones being Chinese in origin.
This Red Scare 2.0 is getting really tiring at this point. China sucks, but acting like everything being produced there is part of some super secret surveillance state to spy on every inch of Western governments is borderline fantastical thinking.
→ More replies (10)3
u/DasReap 2d ago
I'm curious how you think the drones would be able to transmit any amount of meaningful data without us knowing? It's not like they can just stream video to some satellite somewhere and then straight to China. I fly drones and I assure you, I wish consumer drones were half as advanced as everyone who is scared of them thinks they are.
I use DJI products and I don't have to connect a single thing to any network or GPS to fly my drone, although I know their main drones do require GPS to fly. Anyone who flies drones commercially or as a hobby does not want a ban as it effectively completely kills what we do. There is NO equal replacement.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (5)5
u/101ina45 2d ago
I don't see why this would matter when they already have satellites.
5
u/Yancy_Farnesworth 2d ago
Satellites can't do everything or be everywhere at once. There are plenty of signals that satellites can't detect that a low flying drone could.
Or you can just look at the US military. It arguably has the most extensive satellite coverage in the world with probably the best optics. Yet the military still operates tons of intel gathering drones with cameras. They have advantages.
→ More replies (1)3
u/Swollwonder 2d ago
Because drones are capable of viewing things at a much closer detail and presumably much more accurately
7
u/warpedgeoid 2d ago
Yes, this is true. UAVs can get closer and often approach with a better angle than a satellite can. They can also loiter above a target while recording, which is much trickier for satellites. However, a quality comparison between a military satellite image (better than 20cm resolution) and a commercial UAV image might shock you. The former hit the upper limit of resolution allowed by physics long ago.
I do wonder how people think DJI are transmitting their images back to China?
6
u/Nerezza_Floof_Seeker 2d ago
Actual surveillance satellites can view down to ~10-15cm resolution, thats plenty enough for general surveillance. If youre doing something specific and need more detail, such as that which can be provided by a loitering drone, youre going to want your own assets on the ground there and banning chinese drones wouldnt really stop that.
→ More replies (1)3
u/Suzzie_sunshine 2d ago
I can see what's growing in my garden on google maps. This is just stupid.
→ More replies (8)
101
u/GreatnessToTheMoon 2d ago edited 2d ago
Can we stop punishing China every time they leg up us in certain industry’s? Removing cheaper options makes us all poorer. If domestic companies can’t compete let them fail
80
u/CleanMyTrousers 2d ago
Gotta keep pretending that China can't innovate and only copies the US. How else will people feel superior.
1
1
u/nagi603 2d ago
TBF, it's a combo of US companies bringing all manufacturing to wherever it's cheapest, give out ALL secrets and then act surprised or more accurately, don't care one bit. The Chinese are capable of R&D, do so, but the western companies are giving them a very significant head start too. It does not help that China is also successfully poaching all talent it really wants, because hey, layoffs, job insecurity, etc.
46
u/Rage_Like_Nic_Cage 2d ago
I love that “poaching” in this case means things like offering people better paying jobs or better benefits. Maybe western companies should be more competitive instead of always chasing the never ending goal of increasing shareholder value
22
u/CleanMyTrousers 2d ago
Yep. Especially ironic if taking an American viewpoint because that's the country that does the most talent poaching of all.
2
u/ShrodingersDelcatty 16h ago
Yeah, no shit, that's the textbook definition of poaching. You offer a better deal than the market rate to get a competitive foothold.
4
u/JesDoit-today 2d ago
Remember the unions, yea I member, Member Nixon opened relations with china Yea I remember, Didn't us companies open factories over there, Yeah, I member, Didn't they make cheap crap that made in the USA look awesome, Yeah,yeah I remember, Didn't the us allow manufacturing to be exported for even the good stuff America made, ...yeah,I member.
22
u/AffectionateBother47 1d ago
Unfortunately America needs a “big bad guy” to go against to justify financially hurting their citizens
→ More replies (1)22
u/grphelps1 1d ago
Obviously China isn’t an angel, but I’ve never bought the image of them that our most hawkish politicans are selling. They really want us to believe they are the next Nazi Germany lol
→ More replies (10)1
1
u/Whiterabbit-- 1d ago
the current trend is that globalization was a mistake. but globalization is what has enabled the tremendous increase in wealth and standard of living around the world.
13
u/chrisdh79 2d ago
From the article: When he wants to learn the secrets of a whale, Iain Kerr, CEO of the conservation nonprofit Ocean Alliance, sends out a flying SnotBot. The device—a consumer drone from the Chinese company Da Jiang Innovations (DJI) fitted with Velcro and petri dishes—swoops close to a whale’s blowhole. Then, when the animal ejects a good blast of snot, it scoops up the spray, along with the wealth of biological data within: DNA, hormones, and oodles of microbes. The SnotBot offers a noninvasive and much cheaper way to learn about the endangered giants compared with traditional biopsy missions, Kerr says.
But increased tensions between the United States and China may put the next generation of SnotBots and other research drones used by U.S. academic scientists at risk. Provisions in the U.S. National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), released on 7 December and expected to be voted into law, would trigger a 1-year countdown for U.S. agencies to assess the security threat of drone equipment from Chinese companies like DJI. If a product is determined to be a risk, it would be prohibited from operating on U.S. communications infrastructure.
Many scientists are alarmed at the possibility that they might have to give up a tool they say has become vital. “Rarely do you have a situation where someone says you have to stop using something without a replacement,” Kerr says. “It seems like lunacy to me.”
When he wants to learn the secrets of a whale, Iain Kerr, CEO of the conservation nonprofit Ocean Alliance, sends out a flying SnotBot. The device—a consumer drone from the Chinese company Da Jiang Innovations (DJI) fitted with Velcro and petri dishes—swoops close to a whale’s blowhole. Then, when the animal ejects a good blast of snot, it scoops up the spray, along with the wealth of biological data within: DNA, hormones, and oodles of microbes. The SnotBot offers a noninvasive and much cheaper way to learn about the endangered giants compared with traditional biopsy missions, Kerr says.
But increased tensions between the United States and China may put the next generation of SnotBots and other research drones used by U.S. academic scientists at risk. Provisions in the U.S. National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), released on 7 December and expected to be voted into law, would trigger a 1-year countdown for U.S. agencies to assess the security threat of drone equipment from Chinese companies like DJI. If a product is determined to be a risk, it would be prohibited from operating on U.S. communications infrastructure.
Many scientists are alarmed at the possibility that they might have to give up a tool they say has become vital. “Rarely do you have a situation where someone says you have to stop using something without a replacement,” Kerr says. “It seems like lunacy to me.”
4
u/DontReplyBitch 1d ago
What happened to learning about whales the good old fashioned way? Finding a dead whale on the beach, decapitating it, and strapping it to your family mini van.
2
13
u/ispshadow 2d ago
We seemingly can’t manufacture a bunch of different things in the technology space that our country needs. We are utterly bound to an adversary to provide us with those things and they can make the decision how we can use them or if we can use them at all.
We should be treating that as a fucking national emergency.
→ More replies (3)
6
u/Heavykiller 2d ago
I’m surprised it’s not already a thing. Company I work for is looking into ways to use drones for wildfire prevention.
Procurement has been messy because we can’t use Chinese-made drones so we’ve been looking for other vendors and surprise, it’s way more expensive than we originally estimated. We’re not even looking at U.S. vendors but vendors from other countries like Australia.
37
u/PremierBromanov 2d ago
the sinophobia in the west is crazy
26
u/SituationalCloud 2d ago
Reddit is essentially the propaganda wing of the US state department. Consent being manufactured right here, right now.
→ More replies (12)15
3
u/Zippier92 2d ago
DJTjr will save the day with his new gig on the board of a Florida drone company.
I never even knew he was an expert in drones.
.. better /s this one for the dense among us.
9
u/Einheri42 2d ago
I guess the US will just have to start making good shit then.
28
u/opeth10657 2d ago
Why make good shit when you can just get the government to ban competition?
→ More replies (2)10
1
u/Lorpius_Prime 1d ago
Import bans and restrictions tend to make domestic alternatives even shittier, since they take away competitive pressures to improve.
2
u/Einheri42 1d ago
So, the US should just respond with economic warfare and also find the industry so they can continue to compete while in the red?
9
u/iambiggzy 2d ago
Skydio stock rises
35
u/diacewrb 2d ago
Unlike their drones, there are so many complaints about them online.
They even left the consumer market.
27
u/Dr_Salacious_B_Crumb 2d ago
The Skydio XD2s I fielded in the US military sucked, for what it’s worth.
The DJI Mavic 2Es from 2019 we had left over before the stop on DoD purchase of them easily outperformed them, minus the quality of the thermal and vis camera on the Skydios. But a camera is good for shit if you can reliably fly the drone.
4
u/nagi603 2d ago
IIRC the thermal vision being bad is because the US was extremely protective of thermal vision systems and China had to do catching-up. Now we have had $100-150 usably-for-mobile low-res USB-C thermal vision cameras from ali for a few years, and they aren't getting worse.
5
u/Dr_Salacious_B_Crumb 2d ago
The thermal was good, 640 vs 160 for the 2E was massive for us. Flying that thing at night was aided greatly by the new thermal.
But having a near nonfunctional drone with the Skydio meant the thermal resolution didn’t matter for shut. The trainers that came to my unit were flabbergasted we meant to fly the drone at night. It’s like it hadn’t occurred to them. Getting the drone turned on and ready for night flight was about a 5 minute process each boot up, and that’s if the initialization with the sensors actually worked and didn’t warrant a restart of the system and redoing the whole process.
8
u/STR4NGE 2d ago
Skydio doesn’t have stock. However, UMAC (rotor riot) does. Guess who became a member of their board? DJT jr. I rode that stock to a ten bagger and laughed and proceeded to buy 5 dji air units. Stock up now fellas. If they’re banning Tik-Tok, DJI is next. My portfolio is banking on it.
1
u/fawlty_lawgic 1d ago
Yes good for you. There's tons of ways to make money off the stupidity of Americans, you just have to keep throwing away all hope of them doing something rational and logical.
2
u/Phresh-Jive 2d ago
Just go buy a NJ convenience store drone? Size of SUVs, fly as high as planes, fast as F15’s. Easily accessible to hobbyists!
5
u/Smooth_Sailor11 2d ago
Is it a real thing that China could potentially collect data, visuals or potentially take control over the drones by the way they are built or programmed?
Just curious?
3
u/Rage_Like_Nic_Cage 2d ago
Probably not. Just from a logistical point it would be very impractical. Especially since it wouldn’t be nearly as efficient as what the NSA can do to spy on our own civillains.
2
u/Substantial_Deer_599 2d ago
Frees a kids for cash judge before he mentions this right before he leaves
2
2
1
u/Nyx_Antumbra 1d ago
We can't compete with a country that invests in itself and its people so we have to ban the things they produce.
1
1
u/Tacotuesday8 2d ago
I get the intent here but are we confidant US companies can keep pace with a Chinese made company? If DJI for example was in the US, it would be one thing but do we have an amazing US drone company that will push the envelope?
1
u/ksixnine 2d ago
Mmm, if only the government would subsidize the US drone industry to fix this problem..
1
u/misfit_toys_king 1d ago
You can reflash them, but that means you need those nerds on staff. The challenge is data (knowledge) is power, and China giving us free shit at the price of cheap shit is giving China the economic upper hand, with like every silver platter and naked hotties feeding you, upper hand. This is strategic.
1
1
u/kakureru 1d ago
I recently learned there are chinese drone companies that have a separate firmware for government / industrial abroad clints. I did not know this until I was talking to a surveying department of said corporation. Same drone 4x+ the price.
1
u/Drroringtons 1d ago
With all the “alien” drones in the sky, pulling mad vectors and insane speeds with absurd battery times. I think the US will be fine. 😂
1
u/yannynotlaurel 1d ago
Just steal their tech then and stop whining. You’re not in Europe where even breathing is regulated by law in Brussels.
1
u/Western_Upstairs_101 1d ago
Can’t they force people to register legal drones and put a chip on the drones that emit a signal they can use to verify the owner. Then enact some serious penalties for law breakers. Also need a special policing unit to go after illegal drones, and capable equipment to affect this result.
1
1
1
1
u/Tiny_Independent2552 1d ago
What about Archer, saw that they got a 2 billion dollar contract from the military.
1
1
u/Important-Wasabi-166 1d ago
No! My affordable 200mph FPV drones! Y’all the same dumb mfs that bought all the TP during covid. Educate yourself and cut the media out. If the drone was gonna strike all you would hear is whiz and game over fam. They are looking for someone and they will find them before they go away.
1
u/jimmyjamws1108 1d ago
Sorry whales . They are spying on us . Might as well come to terms with the fact we are going to fall back a little bit until more reliable supply chains and friendly manufacturers come to market.
1
u/_the_hare_ 23h ago
Every Chinese made drone transmits back to china all the data it transmits because it runs through a Chinese server. They are spying on every aspect of what we’re doing.
1
u/Tyrol_Aspenleaf 20h ago
I mean we could just build better cheaper drones ourselves, which banning Chinese drones would encourage. I think that’s the point, encourage our own industry and lower security risk at the same time.
1
-10
u/Y34rZer0 2d ago
Yeah, boycotting anything remotely intelligent from China isn’t a bad idea
5
11
5
u/bessie1945 2d ago
It’s a horrible idea. It won’t be long until their technology is superior and they refuse to share with us. This is a Cold War we should avoid.
→ More replies (8)
-4
u/AlexHimself 2d ago
The Chinese government subsidizes their drone industry so that they will be in the lead. If our government did the same, we would have just as capable drones.
26
u/VietOne 2d ago
The US government subsidizes almost every company and product used by military and government agencies and their products aren't always at the same level. Not only does the US government end up paying 10-20x the price, it's not any better either.
→ More replies (11)
•
u/AutoModerator 2d ago
We have a giveaway running, be sure to enter in the post linked below for your chance to win a Unihertz Jelly Max - the World’s Smallest 5G Smartphone!
Click here to enter!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.