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- Hacker News
- I hope there's a plan for local production in the US with all the banning of stuff right, left and center.
Soon they'll ban Colombian coffee for being too good and making people want more of it. Or who knows whatever else.
- No plan would be a better alternative to than the plan the current craptocracy would come up withby k12sosse
- 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.
by diego_moita - China has 4x the population of the US, so it's not exactly odd that they would produce more than the US.by tdeck
- 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.
by WarmWash - That's the "Cantillon Effect"[1]
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.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.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...
by mikewarot - 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.by LoganDark
- "foreign backdoors" and "security vulnerabilities". Both are an worn-out excuse, not some real concern.
Gaslighting as a policy.
by cingraa - 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 manufactured product. This means that the Chinese could slip in anything in the hard/software which creates a huge security liability.
by hn_submit - Note that they also banned Chinese inverters at the same time. Industrial inverters are still made in the US but solar inverters are often made in China. So is this an attack on home solar and solar farms?by rapjr9
- There's some clarification here, see the editors note at the end:
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2026/07/28/fcc-bans-foreign-prod...
So there won't be an immediate impact on solar inverters, but there might be a long term impact on ease of use (no more OTA firmware updates) or price (made in USA costs more).
by rapjr9 - Its an attack on solar in the aggregate, similar to how they're using DOE must run orders to keep coal plants generating needlessly.
Powerplants under DOE emergency orders are producing less energy than before - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49002828 - July 2026
> The Department of Energy ordered six power plants to delay their retirements last year. Two of them produced zero electricity in the first quarter of 2026, and another one is now offline for repairs.
by toomuchtodo - There is a threat, but they are exaggerating it. Most of the advanced legged robots are glorified cameras and pack animals and are still in the research phases of implementation. Still, as someone who owns one of these, the amount of black-box software inside them is concerning. It's easy to chalk this up to intellectual property guarding, but who knows... I'd love to purchase *quality* domestically produced legged robots for research, but they are generally nonexistent. All this policy is going to do is hamper our efforts in research, which is a terrible idea if we want to produce a domestic supply chain. I'm sure they had absolutely 0% input from anyone who knows anything about robotics. Rather than this policy, why not simply require a full open source software stack?by kjjohnsen
- i got a better solution. make open firmware and user flashing mandatory. if anyone can inspect the code for backdoors and replace it with brand new software then any security issues go out the window.
should apply to domestic products too for good measure.
by tancop - yea but they don't wanna do that
- Amazingly ironic that the administration most deeply in bed to the finance sector's bidding is now identifying the result of the finance sector's 50 year push to offshore everything a problem for National securityby passwordoops
- Is your definition of "finance sector" "everyone who likes money"?by gowld
- I remember a big push by business journals back in the 2000s with claims that "executives who offshore work get 18% greater bonuses than executives who don't".by Tangurena2
- 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 avenue for subversion.
Just banning one Chinese product category at a time willy nilly doesn't help as there are a zillion other product categories of Chinese stuff with internet connections. From toys (with camera's in them), to refrigerators, power converters, microwaves, televisions to smartphones.
by hn_submit - Removing an internet connection doesn't really solve much when you're talking about autonomous AI-driven robots with vision and hearing. It's a whole different category to toys, refrigerators, etc. My refrigerator isn't going to suddenly pick up a weapon and start attacking things on command. Nor does it have an easy way to receive instructions through side channels. I'm not saying I agree with Trump's policy - but removing internet isn't a solution either.by jbstack
- Probably why you couldn't ban all at once...there'd be not much left.by nono_ninja
- Why does Ross, the largest Friend, not simply eat the other five?by petesergeant
- While that seems helpful it would not be enough. Consider this as a counter example.by eej71
- Going one at a time, in small apparently myopic focus is how a politician shakes the lobbyist money tree. "You could be next!"by bsenftner
- 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 will be executives, or people working for the feds. Did they bring their work laptop home and plug it in to their network? So it can get attacked outside the office firewall? Remember how stuxnet was spread?
This is a podcast about it: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/172/
by Tangurena2 - > In response to this threat, the White House convened an executive branch interagency body with appropriate national security expertise, see 47 U.S.C. § 1601(c)(1), comprising agencies that included appropriate national security agencies, id. § 1601(c)(4), which determined jointly and severally that: All foreign-produced advanced robotic devices pose an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States and to the safety and security of U.S. persons and should be included on the FCC’s Covered List, unless the Department of War (DOW) transmits to the FCC a specific determination that a given foreign-produced advanced robotic device, or a class of such devices, does not pose such risks. The interagency group and the agencies comprising it determined that foreign-produced advanced robotic devices presented the specific unacceptable risks of (a) posing a supply chain vulnerability that could disrupt U.S. economic and national security, and (b) creating a cybersecurity risk that threatens the security of critical infrastructure and thus the safety and security of U.S. persons.
>
> To facilitate this transition period, entities that produce advanced robotic devices in a foreign country are encouraged to apply for Conditional Approvals (Annex A) which, if approved, will allow such producers to continue to receive FCC authorization for their products while they work to onshore manufacturing and address the U.S. government’s national security concerns described above.
- > executive branch interagency body with appropriate national security expertise
Pete and his drinking buddies, probably.
- 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.by Lendal
- > 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.
by esbranson - By sue you mean bribe to get an exception, correct?