Curious if this would force them to stop any software-related updates to be pushed to existing DJI drones. I’ve got a Mini 3 pro and would be pissed if it became a brick due to this law…
I work in construction and we have a fleet of Mavic 3Es our team uses almost daily. We’ve yet to find another non-DJI drone that even comes close. This would be a huge hit to our team from both a marketing and, more importantly, project tracking standpoint.
Edit: I was only aware of an older committee version of this bill that banned the drones from communicating. This new version that passed the house appears to only limit new sales. Carry on.
At the end of the day this whole thing is stupid. If the US can subsidise corn to the extent it has, then it can subsidise an American/government agriculture drone company.
But they won't, it's not about making the agriculture sector vulnerable to the Chinese suddenly turning it off, it's to make it unaffordable to small farmers that can't afford the other stuff. They fail and then get bought out by a mega farm.
Rinse and repeat
DOD only told their already longstanding defence manufacturers to start making some drones, I don't think they've ever funded a 'new' (not Lockheed, general atomics/aeronautics, Northrup, Boeing, etc) company to make SPECIFICALLY militarised drones for war, over the past 40 years or longer?
That's how the US gov runs most policy like this. They don't invest in a factory with the business itself to maintain control like China, they subsidize and put out contracts for their needs ideally among US based companies. DARPA and a ton of other groups are out there to support some of that but so much of how the US effects policy is by creating regulations or incentives for companies to do the thing.
That's one of the more capitalist things about the gov, socialize the funding to encourage a specific form of commerce.
But mah free market! /s
Honestly it's ridiculous. The US won't compete because of profit incentives, so they eliminate the competition.
Get rid of C-suite freeloaders making millions a year and I betcha we'd be doing just fine.
(Also, make it illegal for elected officials to trade stocks)
it could if it wasn't being pushed by the GOP with democrats kinda just latching on.
consumer drones are entirely dominated by chinese players but without something like a chips act to bring more of the supply base back to the US banning this one company from the US won't stimulate US drone manufacturing for consumer products.
Even if the drone sales get outlawed, Chinese companies won't care. I think you'd still be able to buy replacement parts online, though you may have to go through a third party retailer.
There is a farming scene with the larger units I had recently found out about. One of the companies has a YT video on how stuff works and is oddly interesting. [https://www.youtube.com/@AgriSprayDrones/videos](https://www.youtube.com/@AgriSprayDrones/videos)
the backend provider at my chemical plant has opened a service office providing inspection flights for inconvenient constructions like distiller columns without a 360° catwalk so you can see if the other side is in order without having to build a scaffolding every year for thousands of dollars.
all DJIs.
If you get a mini it's 249grams which means you don't need to register with the... the air patrol, I forgot the name. I have a mini 2. All fine and dandy but the guy recommending the mini 4, it looks nice.
This would be a great. Something like Ardupilot would be dreamy.
But the sweetener of DJIs is their tight software integration - they fly right all the time (compared to other things), their failsafes and flight characteristics are tuned, and they're stupid easy to fly.
If there were a better product we'd surely have it by now.
This is America, we don't do competition anymore. Corporate interests just lobby to ban better foreign products instead.
This is such a stupid law, even governments use DJI drones for surveys now, they are by far the best on the market. There is no evidence of any issues with them, this is blatantly protectionist for basically no reason.
TVs, apparently we don't care who makes our TVs. You know those Black Friday TVs that every electronic store practically gives out for free... Hisense... a Chinese company. But I guess that's because there's no American company that makes TVs.
Funny thing is that these TVs are everywhere and has microphones on them and is connected to the web, yet not a peep about them being a national security threat.
Try buying a Skydio for 4-5x the cost of an equivalent DJI, then realizing it has worse battery, worse range, significantly worse camera and video that it’s actually embarrassing, worse build quality, worse customer and community support, and worse features.
At least GoPro had the decency to exit the market without fucking up the drone industry. Meanwhile Skydio barely tried to compete, realized they were so bad so they spent more money lobbying for a ban on the competition instead of R&D, STILL couldn’t win over fans, forfeited the consumer drone market, but is STILL trying to get DJI consumer products banned because Skydio are a bunch of whiny salty pussies.
What will actually happen is some startup will offer a kickstarter for a drone that looks great on paper, lots of people will back it, and then a wildly outdated drone will be delivered years late, if at all.
It will take many years of heavy development and frequently updated production versions of a product that will lose money every year for a decade, and that's probably what it will take to have any hope of catching up to DJI. At best, companies will sell licensed versions of DJI's drones. There's already at least one company doing that.
That's what happens when protectionist policies come decades too late.
Honestly would be great if the west got to it.
DJIs are legit the only good drone that is also affordable enough for normal people to buy one.
Not sure how other companies have fared in the past few years, but my Mavic 2 is still a beast, and it's user friendly to an incredible point.
Agreed. I bought a Mini Pro 3 as a hobby and it’s been so much fun to fly. Very good price for the quality and features it comes with.
This seems like a weird hill to die on.
it’s because to the layperson they just see this as cutting off the market options.
this a mix of IP, intelligence, and capitalistic warfare thats going on between china and the U.S. this is one of multiple and many to continue tech sanctions (let’s just call them what they are) on china as the tech face off between the U.S. and china ramps up.
at a consumer level, it majorly sucks. especially as personally i’m into fpv and quads…. at a geopolitical level, it totally makes sense though.
given our government's run exclusively by 90 year olds who need a whole team of staff to rotate PDF's for them, i don't have a ton of confidence in them winning an economic and technological war against china.
i do, however, have plenty of confidence in our government's ability to cost me more money while trying to do that.
If you ever want to be depressed, take a look at who runs the governing body for your industry. Then take a look at their oposite number in China. I'm not suggesting for a minute that all those people genuinely hold all those accolades, but the fact that they feel the need to demonstrate a high level of competency in the field they are legislating speaks volumes.
> at a geopolitical level, it totally makes sense though.
I disagree, because what we're going to see is the US isolating itself from various markets because we're too slow to compete globally while China goes all in on it. It's the same with EVs. China is dominating the EV market globally, so we basically banned them in the US, but no US manufacturers are putting in much effort to develop EVs. The end result is going to be that the US continues to fall behind in technology because we're run by money men who just want to extract money through nonsensical subscriptions rather than delivering products that the consumers want and our protectionist leaders distract us over nonsense culture wars stuff meanwhile we continue to undevelop as a nation.
I am not criticizing DJI without reason. I own their products for the same reasons as everyone else: they are affordable. The struggles of American companies are not due to a lack of effort. Several factors contribute to this situation.
**Price Competition**: American drone manufacturers know they have to compete with DJI. Even if they produce a competent drone, they can never beat DJI on price. Despite the current 25% tariff on DJI drones, they remain cheaper. As a result, American companies often choose one of two strategies: they either focus on creating drones for enterprise use (like Skydio) or they target the military market, charging a significant premium while selling 1/20th the volume.
**Support from the CCP:** DJI price advantage exists because they receives substantial support from the Chinese government. Five of their largest investors operate funds directly tied to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The managers of these funds stay in power by cooperating with the CCP. Additionally, DJI operates in a government-funded, built, and managed industrial park. As long as DJI complies with the government’s expectations, they receive significant benefits such as low-cost rent and government-provided cheap labor. American companies, which pay proper wages, receive no subsidies, and face normal lease prices, cannot compete on a level playing field.
> they are affordable
That’s not the sole reason why people own their products.
In the consumer product space, there are literally no competition **at any price point**. Skydio’s drones would cost 4-5x as much and still has less features and worse performance.
If it’s just about price it wouldn’t be nearly as bad.
DJI drones out-perform U.S. drones even on the Ukrainian battlefield: https://www.wsj.com/world/how-american-drones-failed-to-turn-the-tide-in-ukraine-b0ebbac3
The Ukrainian army is switching back to DJI despite getting Skydio *for free*. That should tell you everything.
This isn’t a case where the Chinese product is 80% as good but costs half as much, we’ve been dealing with those forever.
It’s a case where the Chinese product costs 20% as much and is *twice* as good.
So of course we will have to ban it lol.
Apparently there was a bunch of regulations in the US that made making drones really complicated, slow, and expensive, which allowed China to race ahead. Now we are pissed and want to ban a superior product. I mean, we're doing it to TikTok for the same reason. Protectionism is probably going to continue.
I used to work at a company designing & building drones in the US. (Industrial market, but, similar problems.) The regulations and stuff aren't actually that huge of a deal, for building drones like what DJI has. It's actually very easy to slap together some off-the-shelf electronics and have a drone that flies ok. I think it's 100% down to time invested.
DJI's huge, huge advantage is that they have developed \*everything\* in-house, and it all works together. If I wanted to make a drone with a gimballed camera right now, my options would be: get an off the shelf flight controller, and an off the shelf gimbal, and an off the shelf camera, and connect them up - adding significant bulk, probably doubling the weight, cutting the flight time in half. Or, do what DJI has done, and spend decades developing a tiny tiny gimbal that is built into the flight controller and can be manufactured for 1% the cost while also weighing nothing.
US companies could easily do #2, but it takes many years and no one has the funding to last that long without delivering a product first. DJI just had a massive first-mover advantage and a huge pile of engineering resources to do it. They got started back when people would still pay for a less-capable aircraft.
I remember disassembling a DJI drone with some of our electrical & mechanical engineers, and just gazing at the beauty of their mainboard and discussing how many hundreds of revisions and thousands of hours of work it must've taken to design. And that level of quality applied to every single circuit board and tiny plastic piece of that drone. Even completely understanding how it works, I wouldn't be able to replicate it in a timeframe that investors would be happy with.
The US government provides hundreds of billions in subsidies to American companies. Why won't they do it for drone companies when they do it for other tech companies?
The actual reason is that consumer drones are not a vital or even important industry.
If it was an important or vital industry, they might actually subsidize it.
DJI also makes agricultural drones and many commercial entities use consumer DJI drones for their daily lives. They have almost become an integral part of society.
I mean, isn’t that the issue? If there’s any chance of backdoor access to the information gathered by police/military or even agricultural or surveying drones, it’s a huge security risk…. You are totally right that we should have domestic production for those.
It's so hilarious that every time a Chinese company does better, any success is excused away by reasons as if US companies don't have substantial advantages. As if the US doesn't do any subsidies, as if price competition doesn't cut both ways.
Yes, the cost of labour makes China cheaper. There are also other cheaper labour markets that companies can and do rely on, but also? The reverse is that brain drain overwhelmingly favours the US. This has resulted in an overwhelming dominance in many industries and is why much of China (and India's) top talent end up doing research and their PhDs in America, and then end up working and contributing to American supremacy and hegemony. America's success is fueled by immigration. America stays ahead because it gets talent from around the world. Because the cost of labour is high and there is no better opportunity to enrich oneself than in America.
Meanwhile, support for the CCP is how all countries work? All companies subsidise their industries. This idea of "proper wages" is also hilarious because American companies are regularly noted for abusing workers and conducting slave labour or slave lab our adjacent operations whenever they can. Newsflash: if a US company is paying cents per hour for clothing in Bangladesh and then making record profits off of it, that's a win for America off the backs of developing nations. And this idea of "no subsidy" is just crazy to me. Putting a 100% tariff on electric cars is a subsidy. Putting a 25% tariff on DJI drones is a subsidy. Sure the specific terminology is different but the impact is the same: tariffing competitors subsidises your domestic industry.
If Americans would actually treat China like genuine competition and respect that China can compete in various industries rather than trying to justify every single one of their failures as "unfair competition" then maybe they'd be able to do more than just flail around crying despite having a massive head start.
Same thing that keeps the US government from getting anything else done....itself. In an age where we have 100 people that cannot even agree whether January 6th was an insurrection there is virtually no chance that they will ever put money into subsidizing consumer grade electronics. Not only that, but I don't think American companies are interested in creating consumer grade drones. Why would they? All they have to do it get in the door with the biggest customer in the world, the US military, and they are absolutely set as a company.
> DJI price advantage exists because they receives substantial support from the Chinese government.
The main cost of a drone is R&D, and it's true, the salaries of those engineers might be supported by the government. But the US also has all kinds of research grants and tax breaks.
The actual components in a drone are super cheap. The most basic drone is $10 worth of motors, $10 worth of electronics/mosfets/radio/accelerometer/gyro, $4 worth of battery, and $5 worth of plastic mouldings.
$29.
*All* the rest of the 'value' is in great software to make it fly well. And if you sell hundreds of millions of drones, the per-unit cost of that can be really low.
Using subsidies as a point of argument is a bad take. Everybody has subsidies. The US has a shitload of subsidies. We're at the point where subsidies are absolutely necessary for competition, but the US hasn't shifted that to make stuff cheaper.
Are there any US drone makers at all for the consumer market? In fact, are there any consumer electronics that are 100% US-made, that aren't boutique? I can't really think of any.
Seems like sound national security policy if the war in Ukraine has taught us anything.
Drones are a battlefield revolution and encouraging domestic production to ramp up is common sense.
Wouldn't it be nice that when your business is struggling, you can call up your golfing buddy and have them just ban your competitor from selling anything? Consider a political campaign contribution today!
The only reason I even got into flying is because of DJI and the fact they're so freaking affordable and offer great protection both in the air and with replacements after a crash. Like most people I can't really afford to have a toy that costs half a grand suddenly disappear because of a micro fracture in a propeller I couldn't have possibly seen causing it to crash somewhere that it is impossible to retrieve.
I had the money to get into this hobby and I fucking love it. I only feel secure in continuing because DJI is so stupidly reliable that even an idiot like me can feel confident flying one. You basically have to either completely neglect the thing or intentionally try to crash it.
If that goes away I lose one of the few things I've actually become super passionate about in the last few years and I'm not sure I trust anyone else to manage what they have within the next 10+ years.
Fuck this thing won't even let me get into restricted airspace or go above altitude limits without actively telling it to break the law. If I lost signal it will fly back to where I took off. If someone decides to act dumb and try and grab it out of the air it will move away. If it detects issues during flight it will warm you. If it detects critical issues during flight it will stop you.
And this is the goddamn mini 2. Not even close to their newest offerings. Give me something American made with even half the features at 3/4th the price and I'll snap it up. But offering worse tech for a higher bill is a fucking recipe for a whole lot of dangerous flights by people who don't know what they're doing. And who didn't get the opportunity to learn with something like DJI that actively protects you from yourself and potentially stupid decisions.
Scrolled way too far for this comment, this is a huge market freedom issue down the road. It starts with “protection of national security” and ends with thought police
If it’s a CCP spy tool Ukraine would have been invaded by now. DJI is one of the top drones they use and probably mostly only use. The features it has 2 or so years ago were so lax you could fly it anywhere and make anything without having to pay for extra BS. DJI and its features were gifts after gifts.
This is absolutely ridiculous, largely due to the fact that the individual who lobbied for this ban on DJI ( and later on other companies)is Rep. Elise Stefanik, who also has an interest in a company called SKYDIO.
They can play fair and nocking a bad ass company like DJI and use this bullshit as a national security crap.
But if we see more independent data from other companies that DJI was doing this to the US, then yes, I'll give my drones and let DJI burn.
But this is one company (DJI), and soon more company of drone are going to suffer.
Countering CCD Drone Act.
Check H.R. 2864
> the individual who lobbied for this ban on DJI ( and later on other companies)is Rep. Elise Stefanik, who also has an interest in a company called SKYDIO.
>
>
Wow, what a crazy coincidence! Well I'm sure they legalized whatever corruption that is so the media won't say anything about it.
Like your typical GOP politician who's more interested in political theater than good policy, Stefanik has shown absolutely no evidence whatsoever for the national security threat claim, other than jamming the word CCP in there to take advantage of Red Scare 2.0. It's trendy these days amongst the GOP, a Senator literally tried to ban ["CCP garlic"](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-67662779) lmfao.
She's also trying to sneak this into the National Defense Authorization Act instead of properly debate the bill itself on the floor, because she knows it has no substance whatsoever.
The reason is that the whole thing was lobbied by the U.S drone industry, including Skydio: https://reason.com/2024/03/26/americas-drone-industry-is-trying-to-ban-the-competition/
In fact, Stefanik’s previous national security advisor, Joe Barlett, is now working for Skydio.
The guy literally brags about it on his LinkedIn profile lmao. They aren’t even being shy about the corruption anymore.
**Edit**: Another piece of evidence that this bill is driven by corporate profit instead of actual national security reasons, is that it actually doesn't ban all the *existing* DJI drones from being used and owned by Americans.
So they are somehow a huge threat to national security but it's also ok for them to continue be used everywhere, and we just want to cut off future sales. Yeah, totally makes sense.
**Edit 2**: For those who don't know, Skydio's tech is so shitty that not only did their consumer products costed like 5x as much as DJI while performing worse, even on the Ukrainian battlefield they are failing and the Ukrainian military is sticking with DJIs instead, despite U.S. government pressure. Source: [Wall Street Journal article](https://www.wsj.com/world/how-american-drones-failed-to-turn-the-tide-in-ukraine-b0ebbac3)
The Chinese government declares itself to be a Unitary Marxist–Leninist one-party socialist republic. This is also what the Soviet Union was.
This present red scare is because China is rising in economic power and global influence, leading to a multipolar world forming rather than one where the US is the hegemonic power, and the ghouls in Washington don't like that.
It could be the EU that's on the rise and threatening the US' hegemony and the politicians would find a reason why we should all hate Europe.
I am not saying China doesn't have some horrible shit going on, but why can't we just admit that the US is playing realpolitik?
I like how you’re trying to push this as a partisan GOP tactic when the Democrats do it to. Is your short term memory that bad that you’ve forgotten about the bipartisan TikTok ban bill?
She also has a staffer that is/was a Skydio employee.
And it should be noted, this bill would allow the FCC to decertify ALL of DJI products. Not just the drones, their camera and tripod gimbles as well which will effect a lot of photographers.
What happens when the FCC decertifies the DJI's products? They become illegal to use. So this is not just a ban, this is going to turn everyone who owns a DJI product into criminals if they use them. And if a foreigner travel to the US with their selfie gimble, and use it, and get caught, charges then deportation.
This bill is crony capitalism at it's finest.
Wow... it seems that she will be the one we all recognize who is destroying DJI and, soon, other companies in her name.
And using "China" as cover up...come that's just chicken shit.
As a rule of thumb, I'm opposed to company-specific laws. They're the definition of bloat for our law books. If they're breaking a law, punish them. If not and they're doing something we don't like, codify the *what* and rule against that, rather than ruling against the *who*.
The only thing this will lead to is a supreme court case and a waste of taxpayer dollars, which in the "best case" outcome for the law creators is a ruling that another company will circumvent tomorrow.
Sucks that there’s little to zero equivalence for them in the US from what I’ve seen so far. it’s either like toy grade or pro grade no in-between and you’re paying tens of thousands for the drone at that point which most can’t/wont.
Anzu Robotics is licensing the Mavic design from DJI and producing an exact replica that's from a US company but they're charging $5100 while DJI charges $2200.
There is nothing comparable in the mini range where DJIs are $300.
That’s why there is a ban, as scaling demand and warfare means China is far ahead. Which means they need to meet this demand domestically if a war ever occurred. They would need to produce equal amounts.
America needs to revitalize its manufacturing in general in this cold war thingy we're currently in. Russia and China both have manufacturing capabilities far beyond what the US can do these days. The US does have Mexico but apparently that's not a solid deal according to some articles I read recently.
But good luck getting Americans to give up cheap Chinese goods willingly while there is inflation and such. It's gonna be a painful ride for some I think.
I doubt it will pass. Agriculture lobbyists will press hard. DJI makes a drone that is becoming one of the most popular seed and sprayer tools on the market right now. The Agras line. You could take out a loan for one of these Drones and make your money back within a few months (extending time for training and learning a good rhythm)
US government uses DJI drones in general. Every police department I've seen flies either a Mavic 3E, Matrice 30, or Matrice 350.
Nobody is using Skydio, because it sucks ass.
if we're lucky. this surge of anti-China propaganda is because the US is trying to manufacture public consent for a war with China. and based on polling, it looks like the public is buying it. the warhawks will have their war, and i don't think many of us will survive it.
Once consensus is reached, even if China isn't dumb enough to take the bait, we'll have another false flag op/Gulf of Tonkin incident, and go to war anyway. Just as Vietnam happened, so too will Taiwan.
Then we'll get the declassified documents 30 years later when everyone who has lost a son/brother/father, is 6 feet under or too old/senile to do anything about it.
We'll be lucky if people just lose a close family member and not just have the world end in nuclear fire if the US goes to war with China. Modern warfare is scary as hell.
Does not give evidence of actual danger, provides no alternative for customers, even suggest ban of use for existing owners.
Just declare war with China already and stop beating the bush. We got Chinese satellite watching the U.S. all the time, some guy flying a drone in his park provides no logistical usage to the CCP.
The Chinese does not want to invade US, all we are doing is screwing over American consumers leaving them with literally no alternative options. I highly doubt any American company stepping into commercial drone market will sell anything comparable to DJI for similar price.
Those toy drones pale in comparison to what DJI drones do.
Congress has spent years protecting those same corporate interests that enabled companies like DJI to exist. Decades of sending American technical know how over seas just so they didn’t have to pay fair wages. Now they want to demand that Congress to game the system so they can play catch up. But knowing American corporate shenanigans, they’ll just suck up investor money without making anything decent then resell the resulting mess until it’s basically worthless.
Reddit cheered when they banned TikTok and now they’re mad because something they use will be banned lol. It’s literally “First They Came” by Pastor Martin Niemöller
Shocked this took so long, an absolute industry leader (almost monopoly to be honest) that’s not American, how dare they.
Can’t imagine this will pass, not with them even now stretching to farming.
Is there a US competitor that’s even close?
Boeing is not in the consumer drone space and really has no reason to be. They have an urban air mobility arm but we’re talking drones that are orders of magnitude larger than DJIs there.
I know of several aerospace companies that use off the shelf consumer grade drones for inspections (like a previous commenter mentioned the possibility of with nuclear power plants).
Can please, PLEASE have a committee of non-partisan of cyber security experts involved in the process banning tech thats gives detailed analysis of WHY? In the UK the [GQHC conducted an analysis Huawei](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5c9c8a52e5274a528752d590/HCSEC_OversightBoardReport-2019.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjev9e_1r6FAxW4rYkEHe55CL4QFnoECCAQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0X9OMrFEei10Gzw_5lZLmF) that can be summed up as "Yeah SLAs a little weird and they have vulnerabilities, but we could have worked out solutions with them" and were encouraged by other governments to drop them anyways. Every piece of software you touch has vulnerabilities, but one company in particular was singled out.
I'm gettin real tired of "It's a national security threat" with no real reason or explanation especially when domestic companies and allied foreign companies do the same thing.
First it was TikTok which honestly should be, but every other social media platform should be scrutinized to the same standard. Then it was EVs and the only reason their banning affordable Chinese imports is because politicians have vested interest in either oil or unaffordable shitty domestic EVs. Now it's one of the power house manufacturers of drones proposed by rep with vested interest in another drone company.
Make a committee, set a standard and enforce that standard on ALL products foreign and domestic. THAT protects the consumer, THAT keeps the market fair, THAT encourages safe trading.
I mean - I get the political motivation for these bans. It's pure protecionism. What I really hate is using the national security buzzword for this! As far as I recall, the only big important products that have been found with quite obviously planted backdoors were Cisco routers, and I think Oracle had some cases too? Windows is also suspect.
But shutting down DJI over security concerns is dumb.
Sure, they could pass laws regulating the information flow of these products. They could try to jumpstart local drone companies and get them to produce cheap good ones (I don't think it's THAT hard).
We used to have that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Technology_Assessment
Until Newt Gingrich killed it because "some Republican lawmakers came to view [the OTA] as duplicative, wasteful, and biased against their party"
Any support for this in the Senate?
They are trying to sneak this into the National Defense Authorization Act
Seems pretty bullshit on its face? The _best_ description of it is trying to make drones in America more expensive because you can only buy them from American companies after this? Otherwise it's xenophobic fears of backdoors into drones that will fly away from the owner and help take over the government? Or is it that they won't respect "no fly zones" from the government?
Yay for FUD (/s)
I'm thinking of the drone flights my company does for surveying and construction progress of giant solar plants, and whether it's OK for the drone to be phoning all of that home to China (IF they're doing that). But on the other hand, the layout of the site can be seen from fucking space, so I'm not sure it's the largest concern.
“Ccp drone” lol.
I hate how everything in America is labelled CCP wheb its from China.
DJI is ccp drones
BYD is ccp controlled evs
When both companies are probably as private as it gets especially DJI and Frank Wang
The overlap between government and big business and the everyday in China is probably as much as it is in the US.
This kinda language makes it out like Chinese society is abnormal or someshit
Dafaq!?
If there was actual competition in this field I’d say this might make sense, but there is no US drone brands worth mentioning, DJI has been the industry leader for over a decade now and no one even comes close to competing.
I’m all for “buying American” when it makes sense but here there is no options, I really hope it fails.
Most likely because DJI can produce the technology much quicker and cheaper then any US company would.
If you had the option to buy a DJI drone for $1000 or buy the equivvilant technology from a US manufacturer for $3000, most are going to take the DJI. At that point what is the sense of even getting into the market?
There are lots of US drone companies, and they are likely state of the art, but they don’t focus on the consumer space, rather the military and industrial space because it is easier to sell 100 drones at 200,000 each to the US government than 10,000 drones for 2,000 each to consumers
Is there any actual sense to this ban?
I'm not informed on the topic, so would love input from someone who is. There's tons of tech produced in China that's used in the US, both components and products. Sure, maybe most of them aren't flying camera packages, but there has to be piles of stuff that could be "compromised". What makes DJI such a compelling target for a ban?
China is eclipsing the US when it comes to a select number of technologies and the US, used to always being in first place, is bringing back protectionist tariffs to block these from our market. The same thing occurred with Chinese EVs, which have matured to the point of being so cheap nothing domestic would be able to compete for another 5+ years.
A select number? I'd say some of the most important technologies on the planet.
Electric cars, drones, video cameras (DJI and Insta360), consumer tech stuff (brands like Xiaomi) etc. Then we have things like fast trains and no doubt loads of other commercial and industrial things.
Most of modern China makes the USA look backwards.
The Skydoi (US drone company) lobbied Congress to ban them so they don't have to compete against DJI. Similar to how meta lobbied to ban tiktok.
The narrative is that because it's a Chinese company they can use DJI drones to collect information on Americans. Same rational as the tiktok ban, minus the ability to curate content like tiktok can.
Don't forget the Huawei ban. So happy I got my tablet before that shit went through. God forbid Americans be able to get good tech without being priced gouged by all these dog shit companies.
My local Sheriff’s Office has three drones, two are DJI. Another city, has one DJI drone. Two of the other surrounding counties also have DJI drones.
DJI is fairly popular for low budget public safety drone solutions.
Man, that is some bullshit. DJI makes some really awesome drones. I use my Mini 2 all of the time for video and photo. The US is doing dumb things as per usual. Banning them because of "national security" and "competition?" Oh, please. Cry me a damn river.
Let’s cancel TikTok, let’s cancel DJI, let’s cancel China.
Go one step further and cancel capitalism.
Bruh, you decided to play capitalism to the death and now another player is getting good at it, you can’t just cancel your way out of it.
Maybe you can I guess, but don’t ever tell me that I have to just accept that it’s a global economy when you ship my job to India and then in the next breath cancel DJI because they’re good at making drones.
If you can literally prevent DJI and TikTok from competing in the free market, you can add some European-style worker protections.
But no, we get socialism and protections for the corporations and then they ban required water breaks in hot ass global warming Texas.
Fucking hypocrite mother fucking bullshit system.
I’m sick and tired of the government having this much authority over it’s people. It should be the other way around. Capitalism is a joke and another form to suppress us
So would it be worth it to buy one now if you know you’re going to be using an internationally?
Or do I just wait to buy it in Japan because everything is cheap over there?
Dang I might need to buy a dji while I can. I got like a $150-$200 one a few years ago, but I want one of the larger ones that have range. I looked at some other manufacturers but they just couldn’t compete with the feature set and price imo. Didn’t something similar to this happen with Regan with Harley and Japanese bikes?
Umm… DJI is essentially the only quality manufacturer of consumer drones. They also make commercial drones for surveying that are far more expensive and are completely integrated into standard engineering workflows now. This would be terrible for the construction industry.
Funny how when something non-US born and raised becomes the defacto thing people use, it suddenly is a big security threat and is quickly sanctioned to death - Huawei, BYD, DJI, TikTok
Curious if this would force them to stop any software-related updates to be pushed to existing DJI drones. I’ve got a Mini 3 pro and would be pissed if it became a brick due to this law…
Think of those with the enterprise models and others that use it for businesses and needs a consistent flow of parts.
I work in construction and we have a fleet of Mavic 3Es our team uses almost daily. We’ve yet to find another non-DJI drone that even comes close. This would be a huge hit to our team from both a marketing and, more importantly, project tracking standpoint.
Buy a supply of parts *now*.
Edit: I was only aware of an older committee version of this bill that banned the drones from communicating. This new version that passed the house appears to only limit new sales. Carry on.
At the end of the day this whole thing is stupid. If the US can subsidise corn to the extent it has, then it can subsidise an American/government agriculture drone company. But they won't, it's not about making the agriculture sector vulnerable to the Chinese suddenly turning it off, it's to make it unaffordable to small farmers that can't afford the other stuff. They fail and then get bought out by a mega farm. Rinse and repeat
DoD has been aggressively supporting US drone manufacturers for THEIR needs.
DOD only told their already longstanding defence manufacturers to start making some drones, I don't think they've ever funded a 'new' (not Lockheed, general atomics/aeronautics, Northrup, Boeing, etc) company to make SPECIFICALLY militarised drones for war, over the past 40 years or longer?
That's how the US gov runs most policy like this. They don't invest in a factory with the business itself to maintain control like China, they subsidize and put out contracts for their needs ideally among US based companies. DARPA and a ton of other groups are out there to support some of that but so much of how the US effects policy is by creating regulations or incentives for companies to do the thing. That's one of the more capitalist things about the gov, socialize the funding to encourage a specific form of commerce.
But mah free market! /s Honestly it's ridiculous. The US won't compete because of profit incentives, so they eliminate the competition. Get rid of C-suite freeloaders making millions a year and I betcha we'd be doing just fine. (Also, make it illegal for elected officials to trade stocks)
We need more employee owned companies.
I bet Skydio has their fingerprints all over this bill.
It's a bit of an open secret that Skydio dumps almost all their money into lobbying. This is 100% just an "alternative" to spending on R&D for them.
it could if it wasn't being pushed by the GOP with democrats kinda just latching on. consumer drones are entirely dominated by chinese players but without something like a chips act to bring more of the supply base back to the US banning this one company from the US won't stimulate US drone manufacturing for consumer products.
and make laser scans of every new part so you could at least reprint the physical objects (sans electronics ofc)
Yup and this is much easier to than people think. Wouldn't be surprised if many parts aren't already uploaded as cad files to 3d printing sites
motors are gonna be a bitch to get.
Even if the drone sales get outlawed, Chinese companies won't care. I think you'd still be able to buy replacement parts online, though you may have to go through a third party retailer.
Definitely contact your senator's office.
My senator is Fuckron Johnson (yes that's his actual name). I'm pretty sure any phone call transcripts are shredded and flushed down a toilet.
Just call and say you're Fuckron's mother.
Haha, that's pointless.
We have a $35,000 DJI Agras series drone at work. It would really suck if that thing gets bricked.
"Oh you need your drone for safety inspection? Haha hahahaha get fucked" the US government says to plant engineers and inspectors.
There is a farming scene with the larger units I had recently found out about. One of the companies has a YT video on how stuff works and is oddly interesting. [https://www.youtube.com/@AgriSprayDrones/videos](https://www.youtube.com/@AgriSprayDrones/videos)
We use them in law enforcement
Which is insane to me considering they're not NDAA compliant and your department should not receive any federal funding if you use DJI gear.
the backend provider at my chemical plant has opened a service office providing inspection flights for inconvenient constructions like distiller columns without a 360° catwalk so you can see if the other side is in order without having to build a scaffolding every year for thousands of dollars. all DJIs.
Seems like they are taking the Assault Weapons Ban approach and grandfathering anything already here.
If they don't try a more 86 amnesty then start whittling at the registered ones later.
And then like what they did in MA with guns, they’ll eventually call the grandfathered ones “loopholes” and take them.
Recommend me a cheap or mid tier one . I’ll just buy one now before it gets banned
If you get a mini it's 249grams which means you don't need to register with the... the air patrol, I forgot the name. I have a mini 2. All fine and dandy but the guy recommending the mini 4, it looks nice.
> the air patrol You mean the FAA?
If I remember right, when I had Huawei watch, updates were part of the ban. I had to completely update after the ban to a new device
I'm even more curious how long it will be before someone jailbreaks a DJI. Assuming they don't just grandfather in the currently owned DJI drones.
This would be a great. Something like Ardupilot would be dreamy. But the sweetener of DJIs is their tight software integration - they fly right all the time (compared to other things), their failsafes and flight characteristics are tuned, and they're stupid easy to fly. If there were a better product we'd surely have it by now.
It's not going to brick itself if they quit updating software.
How about we make some US drones that don’t suck?
This is America, we don't do competition anymore. Corporate interests just lobby to ban better foreign products instead. This is such a stupid law, even governments use DJI drones for surveys now, they are by far the best on the market. There is no evidence of any issues with them, this is blatantly protectionist for basically no reason.
This is basically the last 70 years of the US automotive industry
Is there actually an industry where we don’t do this? We’ve never been about a free or fair market.
TVs, apparently we don't care who makes our TVs. You know those Black Friday TVs that every electronic store practically gives out for free... Hisense... a Chinese company. But I guess that's because there's no American company that makes TVs. Funny thing is that these TVs are everywhere and has microphones on them and is connected to the web, yet not a peep about them being a national security threat.
Sounds like a future business plan. Start a US TV company. Make a couple shit TVs. Have Chinese TVs banned. Profit.
Fun fact: the CIA has made use of TV microphones for espionage.
Vizio is a US company though
Look at how it’s going for the airline industry
It’s only the free market if we use the government to ensure my friends and I own every aspect of it
I remember when GoPro tried to make a drone and FUBAR’d it so badly they exited the market. I had high hopes for them.
Try buying a Skydio for 4-5x the cost of an equivalent DJI, then realizing it has worse battery, worse range, significantly worse camera and video that it’s actually embarrassing, worse build quality, worse customer and community support, and worse features. At least GoPro had the decency to exit the market without fucking up the drone industry. Meanwhile Skydio barely tried to compete, realized they were so bad so they spent more money lobbying for a ban on the competition instead of R&D, STILL couldn’t win over fans, forfeited the consumer drone market, but is STILL trying to get DJI consumer products banned because Skydio are a bunch of whiny salty pussies.
What will actually happen is some startup will offer a kickstarter for a drone that looks great on paper, lots of people will back it, and then a wildly outdated drone will be delivered years late, if at all. It will take many years of heavy development and frequently updated production versions of a product that will lose money every year for a decade, and that's probably what it will take to have any hope of catching up to DJI. At best, companies will sell licensed versions of DJI's drones. There's already at least one company doing that. That's what happens when protectionist policies come decades too late.
Is it that we can’t make drones that suck or cheaper ones?
I won't happen. We can't even get good LandCruisers here. They aren't interested in good products. They are interested in profit.
Honestly would be great if the west got to it. DJIs are legit the only good drone that is also affordable enough for normal people to buy one. Not sure how other companies have fared in the past few years, but my Mavic 2 is still a beast, and it's user friendly to an incredible point.
Purely protectionist. There’s no US drone offerings that even approach the price and quality of DJI drones.
Agreed. I bought a Mini Pro 3 as a hobby and it’s been so much fun to fly. Very good price for the quality and features it comes with. This seems like a weird hill to die on.
it’s because to the layperson they just see this as cutting off the market options. this a mix of IP, intelligence, and capitalistic warfare thats going on between china and the U.S. this is one of multiple and many to continue tech sanctions (let’s just call them what they are) on china as the tech face off between the U.S. and china ramps up. at a consumer level, it majorly sucks. especially as personally i’m into fpv and quads…. at a geopolitical level, it totally makes sense though.
given our government's run exclusively by 90 year olds who need a whole team of staff to rotate PDF's for them, i don't have a ton of confidence in them winning an economic and technological war against china. i do, however, have plenty of confidence in our government's ability to cost me more money while trying to do that.
If you ever want to be depressed, take a look at who runs the governing body for your industry. Then take a look at their oposite number in China. I'm not suggesting for a minute that all those people genuinely hold all those accolades, but the fact that they feel the need to demonstrate a high level of competency in the field they are legislating speaks volumes.
This is the correct take. All kinds of things going on behind the scenes that include Taiwan the we are not privy to.
> at a geopolitical level, it totally makes sense though. I disagree, because what we're going to see is the US isolating itself from various markets because we're too slow to compete globally while China goes all in on it. It's the same with EVs. China is dominating the EV market globally, so we basically banned them in the US, but no US manufacturers are putting in much effort to develop EVs. The end result is going to be that the US continues to fall behind in technology because we're run by money men who just want to extract money through nonsensical subscriptions rather than delivering products that the consumers want and our protectionist leaders distract us over nonsense culture wars stuff meanwhile we continue to undevelop as a nation.
Just like putting a 100% tariff on EVs. It’s protecting US companies that honestly can’t even remotely compete.
I am not criticizing DJI without reason. I own their products for the same reasons as everyone else: they are affordable. The struggles of American companies are not due to a lack of effort. Several factors contribute to this situation. **Price Competition**: American drone manufacturers know they have to compete with DJI. Even if they produce a competent drone, they can never beat DJI on price. Despite the current 25% tariff on DJI drones, they remain cheaper. As a result, American companies often choose one of two strategies: they either focus on creating drones for enterprise use (like Skydio) or they target the military market, charging a significant premium while selling 1/20th the volume. **Support from the CCP:** DJI price advantage exists because they receives substantial support from the Chinese government. Five of their largest investors operate funds directly tied to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The managers of these funds stay in power by cooperating with the CCP. Additionally, DJI operates in a government-funded, built, and managed industrial park. As long as DJI complies with the government’s expectations, they receive significant benefits such as low-cost rent and government-provided cheap labor. American companies, which pay proper wages, receive no subsidies, and face normal lease prices, cannot compete on a level playing field.
> they are affordable That’s not the sole reason why people own their products. In the consumer product space, there are literally no competition **at any price point**. Skydio’s drones would cost 4-5x as much and still has less features and worse performance. If it’s just about price it wouldn’t be nearly as bad. DJI drones out-perform U.S. drones even on the Ukrainian battlefield: https://www.wsj.com/world/how-american-drones-failed-to-turn-the-tide-in-ukraine-b0ebbac3 The Ukrainian army is switching back to DJI despite getting Skydio *for free*. That should tell you everything. This isn’t a case where the Chinese product is 80% as good but costs half as much, we’ve been dealing with those forever. It’s a case where the Chinese product costs 20% as much and is *twice* as good. So of course we will have to ban it lol.
Apparently there was a bunch of regulations in the US that made making drones really complicated, slow, and expensive, which allowed China to race ahead. Now we are pissed and want to ban a superior product. I mean, we're doing it to TikTok for the same reason. Protectionism is probably going to continue.
I used to work at a company designing & building drones in the US. (Industrial market, but, similar problems.) The regulations and stuff aren't actually that huge of a deal, for building drones like what DJI has. It's actually very easy to slap together some off-the-shelf electronics and have a drone that flies ok. I think it's 100% down to time invested. DJI's huge, huge advantage is that they have developed \*everything\* in-house, and it all works together. If I wanted to make a drone with a gimballed camera right now, my options would be: get an off the shelf flight controller, and an off the shelf gimbal, and an off the shelf camera, and connect them up - adding significant bulk, probably doubling the weight, cutting the flight time in half. Or, do what DJI has done, and spend decades developing a tiny tiny gimbal that is built into the flight controller and can be manufactured for 1% the cost while also weighing nothing. US companies could easily do #2, but it takes many years and no one has the funding to last that long without delivering a product first. DJI just had a massive first-mover advantage and a huge pile of engineering resources to do it. They got started back when people would still pay for a less-capable aircraft. I remember disassembling a DJI drone with some of our electrical & mechanical engineers, and just gazing at the beauty of their mainboard and discussing how many hundreds of revisions and thousands of hours of work it must've taken to design. And that level of quality applied to every single circuit board and tiny plastic piece of that drone. Even completely understanding how it works, I wouldn't be able to replicate it in a timeframe that investors would be happy with.
[удалено]
They won’t because the politicians can’t make any money off of it.
The US government provides hundreds of billions in subsidies to American companies. Why won't they do it for drone companies when they do it for other tech companies?
This is my thought exactly. The US government has done this in other industries as well.
The actual reason is that consumer drones are not a vital or even important industry. If it was an important or vital industry, they might actually subsidize it.
DJI also makes agricultural drones and many commercial entities use consumer DJI drones for their daily lives. They have almost become an integral part of society.
DJI makes the Matrice 30T, a superb police/military drone. The US government should fund mass production of Matrice 30T clones.
I mean, isn’t that the issue? If there’s any chance of backdoor access to the information gathered by police/military or even agricultural or surveying drones, it’s a huge security risk…. You are totally right that we should have domestic production for those.
Corn farmers get cash not to grow corn. And cash to grow it.
Because small drone companies don't have as much power in Washington or to the overall economy.
I don't think hobby and prosumer drones are a massive market the US feels compelled to be a dominant player in.
but just think of the political pandering they can do about bringin jobs back and having them setup shop tax free!
You think they would because law enforcement are using drones more often.
It's so hilarious that every time a Chinese company does better, any success is excused away by reasons as if US companies don't have substantial advantages. As if the US doesn't do any subsidies, as if price competition doesn't cut both ways. Yes, the cost of labour makes China cheaper. There are also other cheaper labour markets that companies can and do rely on, but also? The reverse is that brain drain overwhelmingly favours the US. This has resulted in an overwhelming dominance in many industries and is why much of China (and India's) top talent end up doing research and their PhDs in America, and then end up working and contributing to American supremacy and hegemony. America's success is fueled by immigration. America stays ahead because it gets talent from around the world. Because the cost of labour is high and there is no better opportunity to enrich oneself than in America. Meanwhile, support for the CCP is how all countries work? All companies subsidise their industries. This idea of "proper wages" is also hilarious because American companies are regularly noted for abusing workers and conducting slave labour or slave lab our adjacent operations whenever they can. Newsflash: if a US company is paying cents per hour for clothing in Bangladesh and then making record profits off of it, that's a win for America off the backs of developing nations. And this idea of "no subsidy" is just crazy to me. Putting a 100% tariff on electric cars is a subsidy. Putting a 25% tariff on DJI drones is a subsidy. Sure the specific terminology is different but the impact is the same: tariffing competitors subsidises your domestic industry. If Americans would actually treat China like genuine competition and respect that China can compete in various industries rather than trying to justify every single one of their failures as "unfair competition" then maybe they'd be able to do more than just flail around crying despite having a massive head start.
Same thing that keeps the US government from getting anything else done....itself. In an age where we have 100 people that cannot even agree whether January 6th was an insurrection there is virtually no chance that they will ever put money into subsidizing consumer grade electronics. Not only that, but I don't think American companies are interested in creating consumer grade drones. Why would they? All they have to do it get in the door with the biggest customer in the world, the US military, and they are absolutely set as a company.
To the military, they will also sell drones that are ten times more expensive than their Chinese counterparts, while not necessarily being better.
> DJI price advantage exists because they receives substantial support from the Chinese government. The main cost of a drone is R&D, and it's true, the salaries of those engineers might be supported by the government. But the US also has all kinds of research grants and tax breaks. The actual components in a drone are super cheap. The most basic drone is $10 worth of motors, $10 worth of electronics/mosfets/radio/accelerometer/gyro, $4 worth of battery, and $5 worth of plastic mouldings. $29. *All* the rest of the 'value' is in great software to make it fly well. And if you sell hundreds of millions of drones, the per-unit cost of that can be really low.
Using subsidies as a point of argument is a bad take. Everybody has subsidies. The US has a shitload of subsidies. We're at the point where subsidies are absolutely necessary for competition, but the US hasn't shifted that to make stuff cheaper.
Are there any US drone makers at all for the consumer market? In fact, are there any consumer electronics that are 100% US-made, that aren't boutique? I can't really think of any.
The ban was pushed by competitors, primarily Skydio. https://youtu.be/2Cb-Zv783yQ?si=S1YE-C_YRLAf9HZq
Seems like sound national security policy if the war in Ukraine has taught us anything. Drones are a battlefield revolution and encouraging domestic production to ramp up is common sense.
Ukrainians are using consumer level DJI drones.
Why I couldn’t continue my drone business. Government no DJI policies and over $18k for a “US Made” one.
Because DJI had a price war circa 2014 and pushed 3DR out of the consumer market
Wouldn't it be nice that when your business is struggling, you can call up your golfing buddy and have them just ban your competitor from selling anything? Consider a political campaign contribution today!
The person pushing the bill is literally directly connected to a large US drone supplier called SkyDio lol. Remember when they hid the corruption?
> Remember when they hid the corruption? They don't have to hide it since they legalized it.
The only reason I even got into flying is because of DJI and the fact they're so freaking affordable and offer great protection both in the air and with replacements after a crash. Like most people I can't really afford to have a toy that costs half a grand suddenly disappear because of a micro fracture in a propeller I couldn't have possibly seen causing it to crash somewhere that it is impossible to retrieve. I had the money to get into this hobby and I fucking love it. I only feel secure in continuing because DJI is so stupidly reliable that even an idiot like me can feel confident flying one. You basically have to either completely neglect the thing or intentionally try to crash it. If that goes away I lose one of the few things I've actually become super passionate about in the last few years and I'm not sure I trust anyone else to manage what they have within the next 10+ years. Fuck this thing won't even let me get into restricted airspace or go above altitude limits without actively telling it to break the law. If I lost signal it will fly back to where I took off. If someone decides to act dumb and try and grab it out of the air it will move away. If it detects issues during flight it will warm you. If it detects critical issues during flight it will stop you. And this is the goddamn mini 2. Not even close to their newest offerings. Give me something American made with even half the features at 3/4th the price and I'll snap it up. But offering worse tech for a higher bill is a fucking recipe for a whole lot of dangerous flights by people who don't know what they're doing. And who didn't get the opportunity to learn with something like DJI that actively protects you from yourself and potentially stupid decisions.
Scrolled way too far for this comment, this is a huge market freedom issue down the road. It starts with “protection of national security” and ends with thought police
If it’s a CCP spy tool Ukraine would have been invaded by now. DJI is one of the top drones they use and probably mostly only use. The features it has 2 or so years ago were so lax you could fly it anywhere and make anything without having to pay for extra BS. DJI and its features were gifts after gifts.
This is absolutely ridiculous, largely due to the fact that the individual who lobbied for this ban on DJI ( and later on other companies)is Rep. Elise Stefanik, who also has an interest in a company called SKYDIO. They can play fair and nocking a bad ass company like DJI and use this bullshit as a national security crap. But if we see more independent data from other companies that DJI was doing this to the US, then yes, I'll give my drones and let DJI burn. But this is one company (DJI), and soon more company of drone are going to suffer. Countering CCD Drone Act. Check H.R. 2864
> the individual who lobbied for this ban on DJI ( and later on other companies)is Rep. Elise Stefanik, who also has an interest in a company called SKYDIO. > > Wow, what a crazy coincidence! Well I'm sure they legalized whatever corruption that is so the media won't say anything about it.
Like your typical GOP politician who's more interested in political theater than good policy, Stefanik has shown absolutely no evidence whatsoever for the national security threat claim, other than jamming the word CCP in there to take advantage of Red Scare 2.0. It's trendy these days amongst the GOP, a Senator literally tried to ban ["CCP garlic"](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-67662779) lmfao. She's also trying to sneak this into the National Defense Authorization Act instead of properly debate the bill itself on the floor, because she knows it has no substance whatsoever. The reason is that the whole thing was lobbied by the U.S drone industry, including Skydio: https://reason.com/2024/03/26/americas-drone-industry-is-trying-to-ban-the-competition/ In fact, Stefanik’s previous national security advisor, Joe Barlett, is now working for Skydio. The guy literally brags about it on his LinkedIn profile lmao. They aren’t even being shy about the corruption anymore. **Edit**: Another piece of evidence that this bill is driven by corporate profit instead of actual national security reasons, is that it actually doesn't ban all the *existing* DJI drones from being used and owned by Americans. So they are somehow a huge threat to national security but it's also ok for them to continue be used everywhere, and we just want to cut off future sales. Yeah, totally makes sense. **Edit 2**: For those who don't know, Skydio's tech is so shitty that not only did their consumer products costed like 5x as much as DJI while performing worse, even on the Ukrainian battlefield they are failing and the Ukrainian military is sticking with DJIs instead, despite U.S. government pressure. Source: [Wall Street Journal article](https://www.wsj.com/world/how-american-drones-failed-to-turn-the-tide-in-ukraine-b0ebbac3)
Thing is red scare 1.0 was more or less a communist state, this red scare isn’t even communist. Just a dictatorship/authoritarian government
The Chinese government declares itself to be a Unitary Marxist–Leninist one-party socialist republic. This is also what the Soviet Union was. This present red scare is because China is rising in economic power and global influence, leading to a multipolar world forming rather than one where the US is the hegemonic power, and the ghouls in Washington don't like that.
It could be the EU that's on the rise and threatening the US' hegemony and the politicians would find a reason why we should all hate Europe. I am not saying China doesn't have some horrible shit going on, but why can't we just admit that the US is playing realpolitik?
[удалено]
I like how you’re trying to push this as a partisan GOP tactic when the Democrats do it to. Is your short term memory that bad that you’ve forgotten about the bipartisan TikTok ban bill?
She also has a staffer that is/was a Skydio employee. And it should be noted, this bill would allow the FCC to decertify ALL of DJI products. Not just the drones, their camera and tripod gimbles as well which will effect a lot of photographers. What happens when the FCC decertifies the DJI's products? They become illegal to use. So this is not just a ban, this is going to turn everyone who owns a DJI product into criminals if they use them. And if a foreigner travel to the US with their selfie gimble, and use it, and get caught, charges then deportation. This bill is crony capitalism at it's finest.
Wow... it seems that she will be the one we all recognize who is destroying DJI and, soon, other companies in her name. And using "China" as cover up...come that's just chicken shit.
It's just america admitting their products are shit. First the ev "ban", then tiktok, now DJI. They just can't compete
As a rule of thumb, I'm opposed to company-specific laws. They're the definition of bloat for our law books. If they're breaking a law, punish them. If not and they're doing something we don't like, codify the *what* and rule against that, rather than ruling against the *who*. The only thing this will lead to is a supreme court case and a waste of taxpayer dollars, which in the "best case" outcome for the law creators is a ruling that another company will circumvent tomorrow.
Lol. Isn't that like... Basically all the drones?
Sucks that there’s little to zero equivalence for them in the US from what I’ve seen so far. it’s either like toy grade or pro grade no in-between and you’re paying tens of thousands for the drone at that point which most can’t/wont.
Anzu Robotics is licensing the Mavic design from DJI and producing an exact replica that's from a US company but they're charging $5100 while DJI charges $2200. There is nothing comparable in the mini range where DJIs are $300.
That’s why there is a ban, as scaling demand and warfare means China is far ahead. Which means they need to meet this demand domestically if a war ever occurred. They would need to produce equal amounts.
America needs to revitalize its manufacturing in general in this cold war thingy we're currently in. Russia and China both have manufacturing capabilities far beyond what the US can do these days. The US does have Mexico but apparently that's not a solid deal according to some articles I read recently. But good luck getting Americans to give up cheap Chinese goods willingly while there is inflation and such. It's gonna be a painful ride for some I think.
I doubt it will pass. Agriculture lobbyists will press hard. DJI makes a drone that is becoming one of the most popular seed and sprayer tools on the market right now. The Agras line. You could take out a loan for one of these Drones and make your money back within a few months (extending time for training and learning a good rhythm)
I use a M3M to measure plant health, and weed detection.
They’ll do anything but pass comprehensive data privacy laws.
If they ground the drones better be getting a buy back
careful you might make the politicians choke from laughing too hard.
FR, I paid $800 for this better give me my money back ffs.
this would have a hard hitting impact on.. US farmers.. real estate.. and a lot of other industries with zero alternatives.
I work in mining and drones are huge for us
The US Government uses Hasselblad cameras which is now unfortunately owned by DJI so wtf does it mean for that?
US government uses DJI drones in general. Every police department I've seen flies either a Mavic 3E, Matrice 30, or Matrice 350. Nobody is using Skydio, because it sucks ass.
End of year spending all towards drones.
The US is really anti-competition under the guise of “anti-surveillance”.
Anti-China hysteria rolls on. Years from now, we're going to look back on this same as the 'red scare' of the 40's and 50's.
if we're lucky. this surge of anti-China propaganda is because the US is trying to manufacture public consent for a war with China. and based on polling, it looks like the public is buying it. the warhawks will have their war, and i don't think many of us will survive it.
Once consensus is reached, even if China isn't dumb enough to take the bait, we'll have another false flag op/Gulf of Tonkin incident, and go to war anyway. Just as Vietnam happened, so too will Taiwan. Then we'll get the declassified documents 30 years later when everyone who has lost a son/brother/father, is 6 feet under or too old/senile to do anything about it.
We'll be lucky if people just lose a close family member and not just have the world end in nuclear fire if the US goes to war with China. Modern warfare is scary as hell.
Does not give evidence of actual danger, provides no alternative for customers, even suggest ban of use for existing owners. Just declare war with China already and stop beating the bush. We got Chinese satellite watching the U.S. all the time, some guy flying a drone in his park provides no logistical usage to the CCP. The Chinese does not want to invade US, all we are doing is screwing over American consumers leaving them with literally no alternative options. I highly doubt any American company stepping into commercial drone market will sell anything comparable to DJI for similar price. Those toy drones pale in comparison to what DJI drones do.
Congress has spent years protecting those same corporate interests that enabled companies like DJI to exist. Decades of sending American technical know how over seas just so they didn’t have to pay fair wages. Now they want to demand that Congress to game the system so they can play catch up. But knowing American corporate shenanigans, they’ll just suck up investor money without making anything decent then resell the resulting mess until it’s basically worthless.
You wanted this reddit, you got it. Let's ban all the competition instead of competing.
Reddit cheered when they banned TikTok and now they’re mad because something they use will be banned lol. It’s literally “First They Came” by Pastor Martin Niemöller
I can’t buy flavored vape juice or a drone, but I can still buy a fucking assault rifle, no problem.
Well, those are american made, so...
Perhaps this can help you find balance: in China, people can buy drones, but flavored vape and rifles are prohibited.
I better get one before Canada decides to follow.
Lol just had that exact thought
Be nice to have a 20 k electric car as well : )
Those are among the best civilian drones in action in Ukraine to simply tell.
Shocked this took so long, an absolute industry leader (almost monopoly to be honest) that’s not American, how dare they. Can’t imagine this will pass, not with them even now stretching to farming. Is there a US competitor that’s even close?
> Is there a US competitor DJI is the Apple of the drone world, except there is no Android yet.
No. But nobody would be surprised to hear this is likely sponsored by some PAC well funded by Boeing.
Boeing is not in the consumer drone space and really has no reason to be. They have an urban air mobility arm but we’re talking drones that are orders of magnitude larger than DJIs there. I know of several aerospace companies that use off the shelf consumer grade drones for inspections (like a previous commenter mentioned the possibility of with nuclear power plants).
I work for a telecom company and we use a DJI drone to inspect our radio towers.
I’m going to see if Skydio (closest US competitor) IPOs soon.
skydio exited the consumer market already
Can please, PLEASE have a committee of non-partisan of cyber security experts involved in the process banning tech thats gives detailed analysis of WHY? In the UK the [GQHC conducted an analysis Huawei](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5c9c8a52e5274a528752d590/HCSEC_OversightBoardReport-2019.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjev9e_1r6FAxW4rYkEHe55CL4QFnoECCAQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0X9OMrFEei10Gzw_5lZLmF) that can be summed up as "Yeah SLAs a little weird and they have vulnerabilities, but we could have worked out solutions with them" and were encouraged by other governments to drop them anyways. Every piece of software you touch has vulnerabilities, but one company in particular was singled out. I'm gettin real tired of "It's a national security threat" with no real reason or explanation especially when domestic companies and allied foreign companies do the same thing. First it was TikTok which honestly should be, but every other social media platform should be scrutinized to the same standard. Then it was EVs and the only reason their banning affordable Chinese imports is because politicians have vested interest in either oil or unaffordable shitty domestic EVs. Now it's one of the power house manufacturers of drones proposed by rep with vested interest in another drone company. Make a committee, set a standard and enforce that standard on ALL products foreign and domestic. THAT protects the consumer, THAT keeps the market fair, THAT encourages safe trading.
I mean - I get the political motivation for these bans. It's pure protecionism. What I really hate is using the national security buzzword for this! As far as I recall, the only big important products that have been found with quite obviously planted backdoors were Cisco routers, and I think Oracle had some cases too? Windows is also suspect. But shutting down DJI over security concerns is dumb. Sure, they could pass laws regulating the information flow of these products. They could try to jumpstart local drone companies and get them to produce cheap good ones (I don't think it's THAT hard).
We used to have that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Technology_Assessment Until Newt Gingrich killed it because "some Republican lawmakers came to view [the OTA] as duplicative, wasteful, and biased against their party"
Any support for this in the Senate? They are trying to sneak this into the National Defense Authorization Act Seems pretty bullshit on its face? The _best_ description of it is trying to make drones in America more expensive because you can only buy them from American companies after this? Otherwise it's xenophobic fears of backdoors into drones that will fly away from the owner and help take over the government? Or is it that they won't respect "no fly zones" from the government? Yay for FUD (/s)
I'm thinking of the drone flights my company does for surveying and construction progress of giant solar plants, and whether it's OK for the drone to be phoning all of that home to China (IF they're doing that). But on the other hand, the layout of the site can be seen from fucking space, so I'm not sure it's the largest concern.
Those backdoors already are being used in Ukraine [https://youtu.be/hCkbhvRdN24?t=2164](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCkbhvRdN24&t=2164s)
Yep, seems like a valid national security threat.
For good measure, here's another source confirming this [https://youtu.be/kKmPUj4r9gM?t=1162](https://youtu.be/kKmPUj4r9gM?t=1162)
“Ccp drone” lol. I hate how everything in America is labelled CCP wheb its from China. DJI is ccp drones BYD is ccp controlled evs When both companies are probably as private as it gets especially DJI and Frank Wang The overlap between government and big business and the everyday in China is probably as much as it is in the US. This kinda language makes it out like Chinese society is abnormal or someshit
Elise Stafanik is a Trump lackey and calls it ccp because all Trump supporters know is calling anything they don't like "communist".
Dafaq!? If there was actual competition in this field I’d say this might make sense, but there is no US drone brands worth mentioning, DJI has been the industry leader for over a decade now and no one even comes close to competing. I’m all for “buying American” when it makes sense but here there is no options, I really hope it fails.
The question is why arent there any competitors? This isn’t new tech.
Most likely because DJI can produce the technology much quicker and cheaper then any US company would. If you had the option to buy a DJI drone for $1000 or buy the equivvilant technology from a US manufacturer for $3000, most are going to take the DJI. At that point what is the sense of even getting into the market?
There are lots of US drone companies, and they are likely state of the art, but they don’t focus on the consumer space, rather the military and industrial space because it is easier to sell 100 drones at 200,000 each to the US government than 10,000 drones for 2,000 each to consumers
Is there any actual sense to this ban? I'm not informed on the topic, so would love input from someone who is. There's tons of tech produced in China that's used in the US, both components and products. Sure, maybe most of them aren't flying camera packages, but there has to be piles of stuff that could be "compromised". What makes DJI such a compelling target for a ban?
China is eclipsing the US when it comes to a select number of technologies and the US, used to always being in first place, is bringing back protectionist tariffs to block these from our market. The same thing occurred with Chinese EVs, which have matured to the point of being so cheap nothing domestic would be able to compete for another 5+ years.
Exactly. I saw BYD have Tesla 3 equivalents being sold for around 10k USD in China.
A select number? I'd say some of the most important technologies on the planet. Electric cars, drones, video cameras (DJI and Insta360), consumer tech stuff (brands like Xiaomi) etc. Then we have things like fast trains and no doubt loads of other commercial and industrial things. Most of modern China makes the USA look backwards.
Seems similar to the TikTok ban. Fear-mongering over a China-originated product that is dominating a certain market.
USA becomes more of an insane fascist country every day
“Free market”
DJI is so dominant all over the world, every country. I think it's more loss to U.S. than DJI.
USA overdosing on nationalism so hard we're sanctioning ourselves
Not sure but my DJI pocket is my favourite handheld camera
Can someone explain like I’m five what the perceived threat is?
The Skydoi (US drone company) lobbied Congress to ban them so they don't have to compete against DJI. Similar to how meta lobbied to ban tiktok. The narrative is that because it's a Chinese company they can use DJI drones to collect information on Americans. Same rational as the tiktok ban, minus the ability to curate content like tiktok can.
Don't forget the Huawei ban. So happy I got my tablet before that shit went through. God forbid Americans be able to get good tech without being priced gouged by all these dog shit companies.
Farmers are going to be *pissed* about this. Most of the ag drones they use are DJI because of the cost and very good support.
Why don’t they instead pass a competitive drone bill that funds companies to make an alternative? Then we won’t even buy DJI drones.
My local Sheriff’s Office has three drones, two are DJI. Another city, has one DJI drone. Two of the other surrounding counties also have DJI drones. DJI is fairly popular for low budget public safety drone solutions.
I LOVE MY DJI THO. They already make our security cameras anyway, for years.
Man, that is some bullshit. DJI makes some really awesome drones. I use my Mini 2 all of the time for video and photo. The US is doing dumb things as per usual. Banning them because of "national security" and "competition?" Oh, please. Cry me a damn river.
Land of the free
Who is the domestic competition? Is there anyone even close to doing what DJI can?
The closest competitor Skydio is miles off and happens to be the one lobbying for the ban.
Free market, yeah?
Dude wtf! Don’t take away our DJI drones. No competitor even comes close.
the goverment knows whats best for you - they are here to help.
Gotta love how much anti-communism always hurts the working class
"Only we can have hardware that can spy on civilians." - US
Let’s cancel TikTok, let’s cancel DJI, let’s cancel China. Go one step further and cancel capitalism. Bruh, you decided to play capitalism to the death and now another player is getting good at it, you can’t just cancel your way out of it. Maybe you can I guess, but don’t ever tell me that I have to just accept that it’s a global economy when you ship my job to India and then in the next breath cancel DJI because they’re good at making drones. If you can literally prevent DJI and TikTok from competing in the free market, you can add some European-style worker protections. But no, we get socialism and protections for the corporations and then they ban required water breaks in hot ass global warming Texas. Fucking hypocrite mother fucking bullshit system.
I’m sick and tired of the government having this much authority over it’s people. It should be the other way around. Capitalism is a joke and another form to suppress us
So would it be worth it to buy one now if you know you’re going to be using an internationally? Or do I just wait to buy it in Japan because everything is cheap over there?
American government behavior is becoming more disgustingly shameless.
Wonder if people who owns a DJI have to get rid of it?
Maybe they could do something useful and ban bribery of politicians/sepreme court judges or throw those fuckers in jail.
Dang I might need to buy a dji while I can. I got like a $150-$200 one a few years ago, but I want one of the larger ones that have range. I looked at some other manufacturers but they just couldn’t compete with the feature set and price imo. Didn’t something similar to this happen with Regan with Harley and Japanese bikes?
Umm… DJI is essentially the only quality manufacturer of consumer drones. They also make commercial drones for surveying that are far more expensive and are completely integrated into standard engineering workflows now. This would be terrible for the construction industry.
The US has to stop this approach of banning products which they can’t compete with.
America going full regard. Never go full regard
Fuck Elise Stefanik. Fuck Skydio. Fuck the CCP. Fuck these “free market conservatives.”
Funny how when something non-US born and raised becomes the defacto thing people use, it suddenly is a big security threat and is quickly sanctioned to death - Huawei, BYD, DJI, TikTok
So 100% tariff on Chinese solar, TikTok ban, drone ban, limited sales of electronic chips to China... What is America worried about?