It's not even about security.

Likely just a maneuver for a bribe. Like TikTok and so on...

The idea is to provide protection for incubating a local industry in what's deemed a key strategic sector. But that's not the best way to do it. See what the Jones Act did to US shipbuilding.

We should make foreign companies manufacture here, just like China did. It also works as a jobs program and builds up and industrial base and skill, as we've seen with the Japanese automotive sector.

Unfortunately, they're half in the bag of running the country like a business. People, the rich ones, the ones who manage this site and who buy things like twitter, CBS, CNN, etc etc, want this.

This isn't anything more than grift for grift sake.

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?

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

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.

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.

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

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.

When the entire system is created with loopholes for the rich, this is what happens. lawlessness, disguised as lawfullness.

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.

That seems to be the whole point of USA these days

Yet another move to benefit those who hold Elise Stefanik's leash .

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)

> 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.

Steel manning this argument:

  Electronic warfare resistant loitering munitions. They would transmit sparse point clouds to the enemy for training.

The obvious concern would be China building high-res maps of every inch of US cities.

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.

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.

Palmer Luckey owns a drone company. He can't have an objective opinion on his competitors being banned.

> 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?

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.

No, it very much depends on the application, what you're trying to do. Different tools for different jobs. Don't conflate.

yeah, who could ever need accurate and immediate depth perception, having to carry a 4090 in my roomba to badly reconstruct it from 4 pictures so it can stop bumping into walls is like the future man

LiDAR in drones is not necessarily the "stereo vision" application you are thinking of, it can also be something as simple as a LiDAR altimeter.

Well, Elon thought that too and we still haven't seen any robotaxi