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  • Hacker News
  • Another dumb move how do you expect to keep up to the rest of the world, which will just move on, another thing that’s bad is that most of the local US drone companies are not exactly moving all that fast to make drones for civilian use within America, they all want to cater/make military drones to sell at a high price to the American government at the expense of the American taxpayer.
    by Danox
  • Is that really any surprise? Consumers are cost sensitive and have you seen the morass of obtuse and pointless regulations surrounding drones in the US? Meanwhile the military can do whatever it likes and has much deeper pockets.

    The cherry on top is how utterly unenforceable (in a practical non-proliferation sense) the bulk of the regulations are. Strap a microcontroller dev board to anything sufficiently lightweight and it can become a drone. The most expensive part of a DIY heavy lift build that breaks ~all the rules is probably the props.

    by fc417fc802
  • Aaaaand this "ban" will be just as incompetently executed as the ban that happened like, what, a couple weeks ago about drones? Literally all the manufacturers did was create some shell companies, change the branding a bit, and boom. So much for banning things, amiright? Not to mention the shear amount of customer confusion because now they have to figure out what differentiates all these new brands nobody has ever heard of.
    by ethin
  • When the entire system is created with loopholes for the rich, this is what happens. lawlessness, disguised as lawfullness.
    by frogperson
  • FCC's move is fair .. an adjacent view to this is best summed up by Palmer Lucky in this interview (https://www.hoover.org/research/palmer-luckey-wants-america-...?) ...

    “Imagine if there had been a novel … like a Tom Clancy novel” where, during the Cold War, the Pentagon’s most secure electronics would be made by the Soviet Union under Kremlin supervision ..

    Imagine running an aerial LiDAR/SLAM over gov sites .. mil bases .. ports .. airports .. power plants ... eeven if the system is completely benign .. ur talking about a technology whose output can be an extremely detailed representation of the physical environmen.

    by gyanchawdhary
  • This move has nothing to do with national security. It, like everything else this administration has done, is protectionism where some groups that have bribed Trump or have his halfwit children as beneficiaries get to move into the vacuum left by vastly superior options being banned from the market.

    > best summed up by Palmer Lucky

    Oh gosh, by the guy with the drone company? Surely 100% sincere, honest commentary! No way it's self-serving nonsense.

    > Imagine running an aerial LiDAR/SLAM over gov sites .. mil bases .. ports .. airports .. power plants ... eeven if the system is completely benign .. ur talking about a technology whose output can be an extremely detailed representation of the physical environmen.

    For most of this they could find any number of commercial providers with extremely precise maps. I mean, you understand that satellites are doing this now, right? I'm sure Palmer just forgot to mention that. China's last gen satellites we know create a 3D map within 10cm accuracy, and they're probably better now.

    by llm_nerd
  • What is there to imagine all the major countries in the world have satellites in space there is no place to hide, the only question is, will you make things within your territory that work well that also sell to the rest of the world, the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans seem to understand. Everything is coming back around full circle for America.

    Banning and sanctioning good products from around the world isn’t gonna work long-term. You also have to make things within your country and you have to pay a fair wage in the end… America is going to have to recalibrate and except the fact that if you want good products, you’re gonna have to do it in country more often and you’re gonna have to pay the price or you are going to be isolated from the rest of the world.

    by Danox
  • > the Pentagon’s most secure electronics would be made by the Soviet Union under Kremlin supervision

    What electronics here are among the Pentagon's most secure? Why would the Pentagon have to buy LIDAR from a Chinese company?

    Will we ban every import of something the Pentagon might buy?

    > Imagine running an aerial LiDAR/SLAM over gov sites

    > a technology whose output can be an extremely detailed representation of the physical environmen.

    How do you evision those things happening? How are either of those things prevented by this ban?

    by mmooss
  • Palmer Luckey owns a drone company. He can't have an objective opinion on his competitors being banned.
    by edaemon
  • Even if one accepts this argument as valid, an outright ban on an entire technology is the most freedom restricting, invasive, economically disruptive remedy possible. There are more targeted remedies which can be equally effective for national security purposes but, coincidentally, those remedies aren't as protectionist.
    by mrandish
  • > Conversely, the notice also details the billions that domestic drone makers like Skydio, which has committed $3.5 billion to US manufacturing, have raised since the original ban

    I'm so fucking tired of Adam Bry's fucking bullshit. Show me the consumer drone I can buy from Skydio.

    by kotaKat
  • Yet another move to benefit those who hold Elise Stefanik's leash .
    by snypher
  • Another move to remove competition for Don Jr.?
    by cr125rider
  • That, or to avoid surrendering yet another technology relevant to the future to China. As if them manufacturing the bulk of world's solar panels, wind turbines and heading for EVs isn't bad enough.
    by ACCount37
  • That seems to be the whole point of USA these days
    by option
  • How’s a Lidar is a national risk?! (It’s easy to build a lidar based drones in a weekend project) Also, knowing plenty of US based drone manufacturers, most of their stuff are dependent on Chinese parts, the radio communication is on top of that list. If I were DJI, I would make Lidar and similar components modular, so they can still sell these drones while consumers can buy these modules later or DIY it, like literally most of the drones, which will be great for other consumers in the world for the easy repairability.
    by tamimio
  • The obvious concern would be China building high-res maps of every inch of US cities.
    by theptip
  • Steel manning this argument:

      Electronic warfare resistant loitering munitions. They would transmit sparse point clouds to the enemy for training.
    Not saying I support it.
    by greenavocado
  • > How’s a Lidar is a national risk?!

    The anti-flock community believes it's because they can destroy image sensors from a distance. And banning the foreign ones means they can order domestic-made drones to have firmware that prevents them from operating in certain ways or in certain (government) areas, among other things.

    The finance community thinks they just don't want competition that might rival or sell better than domestic ones, similar to the ban on Chinese EVs.

    The privacy community thinks they only want surveillance to be possible from within, likening it to previous bans on DJI drones and Chinese routers. And the administration is currently working on trying to ban other kinds of networking gear as well as cellular modems from China (which is basically every phone in the country).

    Would love to hear other theories. Perspectives are fun.

    by ranger_danger
  • I don't think it's LiDAR itself that is the risk. The FCC note read more like the cause is trade and supply-chain protectionism. (https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/robots-nsd.pdf)
    by onetimeusename
  • What about Lidar-equipped (and why not, even cameras) foreign cars that scan every one of the country's roads and everything around them? Cars are increasingly packing this kind of tech and telemetry.
    by buran77
  • Volvo EX90 has a lovely lil bump above the windshield collecting LIDAR stats for some future purpose … Volvo … Li … Geely … PRC … feeling sleepy … can’t stay focused … everything is fine.
    by gorgoiler
  • i think its mostly to do with reach .. road only telemtry is much narrower in scope compared to a drones reach and also purpose built for mapping buildings, topography etc
    by gyanchawdhary
  • Foreign lidar cars are already effectively banned under the same 7 year old (renewed yearly) "emergency powers" Executive Order that led to this drone ban. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/05/17/2019-10...

    And more properly there is an introduced bipartisan bill - SAFE LiDAR Act.

    by larpingscholar
  • Related:

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

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49095714

    by ChrisArchitect
  • The government's response to the security threat of drones has been illogical and negligent at every turn.

    For example, the Big Beautiful Bill only appropriated $800M for counter-UAV systems. That's insanely low given the broad threat exposure and the fact that they've literally changed what ground combat looks like. For perspective, we spent $400M on the Qatari 747 retrofit and appropriated $400M on the hope that "naval shipbuilding autonomy and AI" might be a thing.

    by runlevel1
  • American consumers are stuck with crappier and much more expensive tech. Thanks Mr President! I'm sure that's what your voters were asking for!
    by amanaplanacanal
  • Keep in mind people knowingly voted for a Kleptocracy, this market is what everyone expected.

    As investment markets overheat on a perfectly legal 1.6Tn debt-bubble created by the magnificent 7 driven index funds, it is not our job to "fix" policy issues... but merely profit by the situation.

    It is naive to blame a single geriatric man for the situation, as royal courts have created kings since the dawn of civilization. =3

    by Joel_Mckay
  • What's the FCC's statutory authority for this? This adds mobile LIDAR units to the FCC's "Covered List". The CFR entry for the Covered List [1] claims this is under the Secure and Trusted Communications Act of 2019, [2] or the FCC's authority to regulate RF emitters. RF is generally considered to end at 3 terahertz, per the ITU. Whether the FCC has jurisdiction over non-communication uses of lasers is not at all clear. Lasers are usually regulated in the US by the Food and Drug Administration.

    Expect lawsuits.

    [1] https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-A...

    [2] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-116publ124/pdf/PLAW...

    by Animats
  • Okay that's a good question, but before we even get to the issue of authority what is even the point of this? In what way is this specific piece of regulation as written not a massive own goal?
    by fc417fc802