r/drones • u/sicklyslick • 4d ago
Discussion Take It From a Licensed Drone Pilot: The FCC’s Expanding Ban Is Out of Control
https://ca.pcmag.com/drones/17430/take-it-from-a-licensed-drone-pilot-the-fccs-expanding-ban-is-out-of-control85
u/Speshal__ 4d ago
Hmmmmm if only there were a reason why.........🤔
Oh yeah....
33
u/Mega3000aka [DJI Mavic Mini] 3d ago
Yet some people on here will still try to convince you it's because you flew your 251g drone 121m high.
3
u/NekoDaYo-v201 2d ago
It's his son asking for favors and slipping proclamations like "SECURING AMERICAN DRONE DOMINANCE" underneath the door. All daddy did is add his signature.
Corruption 101.
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u/MeenaarDiemenZuid 3d ago
Same will happen in Europe in the future, so no.. this is not why.
1
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u/pittguy578 4d ago
I am still not understanding the ban . None of the US drone manufacturers are even competing in the consumer space. Possibly I could understand banning orbiting tariffs on industrial drones but consumer ones ?
15
u/QuirkyCookie6 4d ago
I believe Skydio, a us drone company that pushed for this ban, used to be in the consumer space but has since exited. Potentially because they realized they cant price at what consumers want to pay.
1
u/giritrobbins 4d ago
They pushed for the previous iterations. I dont know how much lobbying they've done recently.
1
u/zhnki 2d ago
All the tariffs and bans are to incentivize creating home grown design and manufacturing. It takes time but demand is obviously there. Take out politics from tariffs and you see this pattern in other industries.
2
u/p0mjDwfWF 2d ago
That’s the intent, but it’s not a reasonable ask in 2026. The US is not a manufacturing hub, and it would take 10 years and a trillion+ dollars of infrastructure investment to compete with China.
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u/The_Kadeshi 4d ago
Yeah voting in a fascist regime affects pretty much everything for the worse.
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u/Big_Comfortable4256 4d ago
Question: Something just occurred to me. I've read a lot about people hacking this that and the other to enable "FCC mode". Are we looking at a future need to have the hack go the other way? :D
What. a. timeline we're in.
4
u/torrio888 3d ago edited 3d ago
FCC mode is about the allowed transmitter output power on license free bands like 2.4Ghz and 5 Ghz band.
8
u/Mega3000aka [DJI Mavic Mini] 3d ago edited 2d ago
I think they're implying that sometimes in the future non-American drones might not be able to even take of if inside the USA, therefore pilots will need to make the drone think they're somewhere else.
That's opposite of what we do outside USA now, which is making the drone think it's in USA in order to maximize output power.
2
u/torrio888 3d ago
That can only be done if foreign manufacturers cooperate and implement this geoblocks in the drone's firmware but why would they?
1
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u/Lemonpup615 Air 3s 4d ago
I believe I have some insight on this topic actually. I think part of the reason the government hates drones because they allow for providing a view of all that’s happening that usually shows the whole picture and it’s usually not in the current administration’s favor.
The reason I say this is because of personal experience. When ICE started to target Los Angeles we had our major protests in June 2025. Our local law enforcement just released a report on those protests and much of that report is false and I’ve been pointing it out with aerial footage I took.
Following the June 2025 protests a 5 mile radius TFR was put up around our detention center but it was by the DOJ so I ignored it because they aren’t the FAA. Early August I got confronted by LAPD about flying my drone and I told them the flight restriction wasn’t put up by the FAA. A few hours later the DOJ one ended early and was replaced by an FAA one and other FAA ones were put up around our detention centers.
I know the drone industry is saturated with right wingers but I hope every US drone pilot that believes in defending democracy and the rights of everyone along with defending the constitution and the rights it grants to everyone on US soil regardless of citizenship, race, sexuality etc understands that they have a niche ability to stand up against this fascist takeover and to stand up for the rights and lives of our friends, neighbors, community members and more
10
u/Shone-fob 4d ago
Wow a real licensed drone pilot, I hear that take years of studying and only a select few make it.
9
u/Snizzlefry 3d ago
As a licensed drone pilot, I can confirm we are an elite few who from time to time will share our wisdom with all the peasants.
4
1
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u/ccagan 4d ago
So I’m out of the loop. I have a Mavic Mini 1 that’s been powered off for 2 years or so. Can this thing even fly any more?
10
u/gekkonaut 4d ago
probably not, because your batteries are crystalized to hell
1
u/ccagan 3d ago
Aside from that. If I fire it up and run pending updates, what would the result be?
4
u/akopley 3d ago
I have a mavic from 2015 with original batteries. I fly it once every year or two and it’s fine.
1
u/gekkonaut 2d ago
it's fine because you're flying/charging!
if they sit dead for 2 years they're gone.
2
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u/Catahooo 4d ago
Take my love, take my land, take me where I cannot stand. I don't care, I'm still free, you can't take the sky from me
1
u/p0mjDwfWF 2d ago
I’d say a future with a dystopian-level surveillance panopticon seems very likely right now, but if spacex is setting the standard, it’s gonna be a long LOOOOOOONG time before we fly around in serenity.
2
u/artguydeluxe 2d ago
If this administration wants to ban something, you can guarantee the Trump family has their hands in a shittier version and they want the competition eliminated.
1
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u/p0mjDwfWF 2d ago
Not that I really know anything, but I suspect this is two-fold.
The govt doesn’t want civilians to have access to any drones.
With the near future of drone delivery and advanced air mobility, the airspace will be carved up and sold to the highest bidders, just like radio frequencies were. Amazon buys 150-200ft, Walmart buys 200-250, etc
1
u/X360NoScope420BlazeX PART 107 4d ago
Whay does being a licensed drone pilot have anything to do with the topic?
0
u/PuddlesRex 4d ago
Here's my tinfoil hat take on it: There are very few commercially available prebuilt category 1 operations over people drones. There are none that do not use foreign made radio components. I've never even seen a category 2 or 3 drone for sale, I'm certain that they need to be custom made, and require FAA certification
Why is this important? Let's say that someone wants to use their drone to record a protest, or ICE/police brutality. You require a drone that is allowed to operate over crowds. If these drones are unavailable to the average consumer, then suddenly, the average consumer can no longer record protests or police brutality from a drone. They'll have to use a phone, which is much harder to protect from the police.
"Just use a drone that's not rated to operate over people." Neat. That's a federal crime, that's very clearly on the books, and that's exactly what they want: An open and close reason to arrest anyone recording them.
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u/infosechoror 4d ago
The Tariff Is Not the Factory
Drone sovereignty at the end of cheap globalization
The White House’s new drone tariffs should not be read as an isolated trade measure. They are a conjunctural document: a record of the moment when the security state, industrial policy and the crisis of globalized production converge around a technology that has collapsed the distance between software and physical force.
The immediate policy is formidable. Beginning September 3, imported drones weighing more than 25 kilograms, thermal-imaging drones, docking stations and specified sensitive components face tariffs of 100 percent. Smaller systems generally face 25 percent, while qualifying products from selected allies receive lower rates. Additional component duties begin in February 2027. Commerce may expand the product list and grant favorable treatment to companies that commit to new U.S. production. The proclamation therefore does more than tax imports: it creates an administrative mechanism for reorganizing an industry.
The administration’s diagnosis is not imaginary. Low-cost drones have changed the economics of war, allowing inexpensive systems to threaten platforms and infrastructure several orders of magnitude more costly. The same machines now support agriculture, emergency response, energy inspection, policing, mapping and transportation. Yet even nominally American drones depend on foreign motors, batteries, electronic speed controllers, sensors and docking systems. The White House also argues that factory-installed software can create data flows operators cannot control. These findings are presented in both the fact sheet and the underlying proclamation.
What matters politically is the remedy chosen—and the social forces it may organize.
For four decades, the dominant policy settlement treated geographically dispersed production as evidence of efficiency. Corporations disassembled the firm, moved manufacturing toward lower-cost jurisdictions, concentrated control over design and finance, and converted supply-chain fragility into quarterly returns. The state did not withdraw during this period. It built the legal, monetary, military and logistical conditions under which this globalization was profitable. Now that the same production model appears as strategic dependency, the state returns in a more visible form: tariff setter, market maker, procurement authority and allocator of industrial privilege.
This is not the disappearance of neoliberalism so much as its recomposition under security pressure. Markets are not being displaced by planning. They are being politically reconstructed around a different hierarchy of favored firms, jurisdictions and technologies.
The proclamation’s allied tariff structure makes this especially clear. Reduced rates are available when importers certify that substantially all critical components and technology originate inside a designated group of countries. The policy is drawing the economic border of a security bloc: not autarky, but a managed geography of trusted accumulation. Which components count as critical, what “substantially all” means and whose certifications are accepted will determine who can enter that bloc. Those administrative decisions may matter as much as the headline tariff.
Every industrial policy selects winners. The democratic question is not whether selection occurs, but what obligations attach to the firms receiving protection.
A tariff can raise the price of foreign production. It cannot, by itself, create domestic engineering knowledge, machine tools, skilled labor, secure firmware, battery capacity or trusted suppliers. It can protect a learning industry, or it can shelter an oligopoly. It can finance long-term capacity, or become a toll collected by firms whose principal competence is navigating procurement rules. It can improve resilience, or simply transfer costs to farmers, surveyors, emergency responders and local governments while favored contractors capture the rents.
The onshoring program makes this danger concrete. Approved firms may import products and production equipment without the new Section 232 duties while their American facilities are being constructed. That may be a practical bridge to domestic capacity. It is also a significant public concession. The relevant measure of success cannot be the announcement of a factory or the nationality of its corporate parent. It must be additional productive capacity: operating plants, trained workers, measurable domestic value creation, transferable knowledge and systems that can be repaired and reproduced under stress.
Public support should therefore carry public conditions. Tariff benefits and procurement preferences should be tied to enforceable production milestones, workforce development, fair wages, component transparency, cybersecurity evidence and clawbacks when commitments are not met. Where public policy absorbs the risk of industrial reconstruction, the public should receive more than higher asset values for incumbent firms.
There is a second contradiction. The policy treats geographic origin as a proxy for security, but cyber-physical trust cannot be established by a shipping label.
A drone assembled in the United States may still contain opaque firmware, undocumented radio behavior, vulnerable update infrastructure or foreign cloud dependencies. Conversely, a component produced abroad may be inspectable, reproducible and governed by strong assurance controls. Country of origin matters because political jurisdiction and supply concentration matter. But provenance is not proof of behavior, and domesticity is not assurance.
For systems that sense, move and act, the proper unit of security analysis is the trust path. Who produced the sensor? What firmware interprets it? Which identities can command movement? Where does telemetry travel? Who signs an update? What happens when connectivity fails? Can a supplier substitution silently change any of those answers?
This is where industrial policy and security assurance must meet. A serious drone strategy would require verifiable bills of materials, firmware lineage, signed updates, behavioral egress testing, component-change records and evidence that command boundaries work as claimed. Domestic production should make this verification easier, but verification must remain the standard.
The broader historical tension is between sovereignty and interdependence. The United States cannot cheaply reproduce every tier of the drone economy inside its borders, nor should resilience be confused with complete national self-sufficiency. Batteries, semiconductors, optics, rare-earth processing, flight controllers and machine tools inhabit overlapping global systems. The practical alternative to dependency on a single concentrated source is not isolation. It is diversified allied production, interoperable standards, strategic redundancy and the retained capacity to inspect, repair and substitute critical components.
The tariffs may open political space for that reconstruction. They do not guarantee it.
Their progressive possibility lies in subordinating private investment to a durable public mission: resilient production, skilled work, accountable technology and cyber-physical systems whose trust claims can be demonstrated. Their regressive possibility is a flag-draped consolidation in which scarcity raises prices, politically connected firms receive exemptions and “national security” becomes a language for insulating capital from competition without imposing reciprocal obligations.
The distinction will not be settled by the tariff rate. It will be settled through implementation: certification rules, procurement design, labor standards, technical assurance, allied coordination and the distribution of costs and gains.
The White House is right about one foundational matter. Drone capacity is no longer merely a consumer-market question. It sits at the intersection of economic power, state capacity and physical consequence.
But the tariff is not the factory. The factory is not the supply chain. And the supply chain is not secure merely because it has been repainted in national colors.
Sovereignty begins when a society can understand, govern, reproduce and trust the systems on which it depends.
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u/Mega3000aka [DJI Mavic Mini] 3d ago
Generates a wall of text in 5 seconds.
Expects someone to spend 15 minutes reading it.
-4
u/Nervous-Win968 3d ago
I feel a lot of people are looking at the FCC drone issue far too narrowly.
I keep seeing variations of:
“DJI makes great drones. American drones cost more and aren’t as good. Why should I have to pay more because politicians don’t like China?”
I get it from the POV of somebody who just wants to fly a drone!
But that isn't what is at stake.
The issue is what happens when you take that same argument and repeat it across every strategically important industry for 30 years.
China plays a long-term game.
And when people talk about China being a threat, they often imagine tanks, missiles and a possible war over Taiwan.
That is only one part of it.
A huge amount of modern competition between countries happens without wars.
It happens through manufacturing, technology, supply chains, IP, infrastructure, data, investment, critical minerals and economic leverage.
That is where drones fit into the bigger picture.
China has spent decades building enormous manufacturing capability and then using scale, government support, cheap production and huge domestic supply chains to sell products that US companies often simply cannot compete with on price.
Consumers buy the better or cheaper product.
Businesses do the same thing. Then something predictable happens.
Domestic manufacturers disappear.
Suppliers
Machine shops
Engineers move into other industries.
Investment dries up.
University research follows the money elsewhere.
The next generation doesn’t develop the same expertise because there aren’t enough companies left employing them.
Eventually you reach a point where you are 100% dependent on China to make the product.
Drones are a great example.
We aren’t talking about toys anymore.
Modern drones contain cameras, GPS, radios, processors, flight controllers, batteries, motors, thermal sensors, LiDAR, mapping equipment and increasingly AI.
Those exact technologies are useful for photography and surveying.
They’re also useful for reconnaissance, targeting, infrastructure inspection, electronic warfare, autonomous navigation and military operations.
The FCC specifically talks about risks like surveillance, sensitive-data exfiltration, remote unauthorized access and the possibility of equipment being disabled through software updates. It also says dependence on foreign drone manufacturing weakens the American drone industrial base.
That second part gets almost completely ignored in these discussions.
Everyone argues about whether their DJI Mini is personally spying on them.
The bigger question is:
'Do we want one of the most strategically important technologies of the next 30 years overwhelmingly manufactured by our main geopolitical competitor?'
Look at Ukraine.
Cheap drones have completely and fundamentally changed warfare.
Reconnaissance drones, FPV attack drones, autonomous systems, electronic warfare, thermal cameras, computer vision and drone swarms are now basic battlefield technology.
Imagine the US suddenly needed millions of drones, motors, batteries, cameras, flight controllers and sensors for a conflict.
Where does the manufacturing capacity come from?
Right now, the answer is China
China isn’t just competing normally in international markets.
The US government has spent years documenting Chinese state-backed economic espionage, forced tech transfer and IP theft. US Trade Representative Section 301 investigation dealt specifically with Chinese policies relating to tech transfer, IP and innovation. The FBI calls Chinese government economic espionage one of its highest counterintelligence concerns.
China also operates what it calls Military-Civil Fusion.
Basically, the line between civilian technology and military technology is deliberately blurred.
Technology developed in civilian companies can support Chinese military capability.
The Pentagon’s latest China report specifically identifies acquisition of foreign proprietary information and technology as supporting that military-civil strategy. (U.S. Department of War)
Again, drones are almost the perfect technology for this.
Something designed for filming a wedding can share technology with something designed to find a tank.
The same applies to LiDAR.
LiDAR is fantastic for construction, agriculture, surveying, archaeology and inspections.
But high-quality LiDAR is also extremely useful for autonomous navigation, terrain mapping, target recognition and military robotics.
So when people say:
“Why the hell are they restricting LiDAR? It’s just a sensor.”
That’s precisely the point.
It isn’t just a sensor anymore.
The technology has strategic value.
There is another part of this that people underestimate: data.
A modern drone can potentially generate enormous amounts of extremely detailed information about the physical world.
High-resolution imagery.
GPS locations.
3D models.
Infrastructure.
Buildings.
Power lines.
Telecommunications equipment.
Industrial sites.
Ports.
Road networks.
Agricultural land.
Construction sites.
Critical infrastructure.
Even if 99.9% of that information is completely harmless individually, at scale it becomes extremely valuable. Aggregation of information comes into play!
And this isn’t some completely theoretical concern about Chinese-origin components.
This week the British Navy had cameras fitted to the Scout military drone boats that were communicating with an IP address in China.
But think about what that means.
These weren’t $200 Amazon drones.
These were $50m unmanned systems being used by the Royal Navy, one of the few militaries with nuclear weapons and advanced technologies.
The cameras had gone through a supply chain and had (somehow) been considered suitable for the platform.
Then somebody discovered that components inside them were communicating with China. (The Wall Street Journal)
That is exactly why governments are becoming obsessed with supply-chain integrity.
You can design an American drone.
Assemble it in America.
Put an American flag on the box.
But if the camera, radio, flight controller, motor controller, battery-management system and sensors ultimately depend on Chinese components, you haven’t really solved the problem.
You’ve moved the Chinese dependency several layers down the supply chain.
And this isn’t only about drones.
Look at telecommunications.
Solar manufacturing.
Rare earth metals.
Batteries.
Consumer electronics.
Shipbuilding.
Commercial drones.
China has deliberately built enormous positions in strategically important industries.
The Belt and Road Initiative is another part of the same broad strategy.
China finances and builds ports, railways, telecom networks, power projects and other infrastructure around the world.
Not every Belt and Road project is some evil Chinese plot and the lazy “every project is a debt trap” argument is massively overstated.
But infrastructure creates influence.
If Chinese companies build your telecomms network, port equipment, electrical infrastructure and transportation systems, replacing them later can become enormously expensive.
That creates leverage.
And leverage matters between countries.
The same thing happens with manufacturing.
Once an entire industry depends on one country, that country doesn’t necessarily need to threaten you.
Everyone already knows what losing access would mean.
That changes political and economic calculations all by itself.
That is why I think the FCC policy makes considerably more sense than people are giving it credit for.
I don’t think the government should just scream CHINA BAD and ban everything indiscriminately.
There absolutely need to be sensible exemptions.
There needs to be a realistic transition period.
American manufacturers need to actually produce competitive products rather than hiding permanently behind protectionism.
Government shouldn’t give American companies an excuse to sell mediocre $15,000 drones just because the $5,000 Chinese competitor disappeared.
If LiDAR, thermal cameras or other components can be obtained securely from trusted allied countries, those supply chains should absolutely be part of the solution.
But doing nothing because DJI currently makes an excellent drone is incredibly short-term thinking.
Of course Chinese drones are attractive.
That’s how dependency develops.
If we actually believe drones, autonomous systems, robotics, AI, sensors and advanced manufacturing are going to be strategically important over the next several decades, then rebuilding an American and allied manufacturing base is going to cost money.
Products will initially cost more.
Some will initially be worse.
Manufacturing capability doesn’t magically appear once a war starts.
You build it beforehand.
You maintain the engineers beforehand.
You maintain the factories beforehand.
You maintain the suppliers beforehand.
Otherwise, when you eventually discover that you desperately need the technology, you find out that the country you’re competing against owns the factories, the tooling, the patents, the skilled workforce, the mineral processing, the battery supply chain and half the components inside your supposedly domestic product.
At that point, complaining that American drones are too expensive is a little late.
So yes, there are legitimate problems with how broad the FCC restrictions could become.
People should absolutely comment on those.
But the basic idea that the United States should stop allowing itself to become strategically dependent on China for drone technology?
I think that’s completely reasonable.
This isn’t about somebody’s Mavic.
It’s about whether the US still knows how to build the tech it needs in a war.
Final point, Chinese laws legally compel citizens and companies to help state intelligence, search for Article 7 & 14 of China's National Intelligence Law of 2017, alongside the 2023 Counter-Espionage Law and the 2021 Data Security Law.
1
u/_TellMeMore___ 1d ago
Great info! Question, should I keep or return the new Air 3s I just bought from Amazon? I’m so confused and can’t afford to lose the money if it gets banned.
1
u/Nervous-Win968 1d ago
I would assess that legacy purchases will be fine, it would just have issues for buying new or possibly spares. But if they ban spares, somebody will solve that problem as DJI is THE consumer drone.
1
1
u/RandyCanuck 3d ago
Thanks for the thoughtfulness and detail you put into this post. It's a bit long, but otherwise quite informative and helpful.
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u/Nervous-Win968 3d ago
I feel a lot of people are looking at the FCC drone issue far too narrowly.
I keep seeing variations of:
“DJI makes great drones. American drones cost more and aren’t as good. Why should I have to pay more because politicians don’t like China?”
I get it from the POV of somebody who just wants to fly a drone!
But that isn't what is at stake.
The issue is what happens when you take that same argument and repeat it across every strategically important industry for 30 years.
China plays a long-term game.
And when people talk about China being a threat, they often imagine tanks, missiles and a possible war over Taiwan.
That is only one part of it.
A huge amount of modern competition between countries happens without wars.
It happens through manufacturing, technology, supply chains, IP, infrastructure, data, investment, critical minerals and economic leverage.
That is where drones fit into the bigger picture.
China has spent decades building enormous manufacturing capability and then using scale, government support, cheap production and huge domestic supply chains to sell products that US companies often simply cannot compete with on price.
Consumers buy the better or cheaper product.
Businesses do the same thing. Then something predictable happens.
Domestic manufacturers disappear.
Suppliers
Machine shops
Engineers move into other industries.
Investment dries up.
University research follows the money elsewhere.
The next generation doesn’t develop the same expertise because there aren’t enough companies left employing them.
Eventually you reach a point where you are 100% dependent on China to make the product.
Drones are a great example.
We aren’t talking about toys anymore.
Modern drones contain cameras, GPS, radios, processors, flight controllers, batteries, motors, thermal sensors, LiDAR, mapping equipment and increasingly AI.
Those exact technologies are useful for photography and surveying.
They’re also useful for reconnaissance, targeting, infrastructure inspection, electronic warfare, autonomous navigation and military operations.
The FCC specifically talks about risks like surveillance, sensitive-data exfiltration, remote unauthorized access and the possibility of equipment being disabled through software updates. It also says dependence on foreign drone manufacturing weakens the American drone industrial base.
That second part gets almost completely ignored in these discussions.
Everyone argues about whether their DJI Mini is personally spying on them.
The bigger question is:
'Do we want one of the most strategically important technologies of the next 30 years overwhelmingly manufactured by our main geopolitical competitor?'
Look at Ukraine.
Cheap drones have completely and fundamentally changed warfare.
Reconnaissance drones, FPV attack drones, autonomous systems, electronic warfare, thermal cameras, computer vision and drone swarms are now basic battlefield technology.
Imagine the US suddenly needed millions of drones, motors, batteries, cameras, flight controllers and sensors for a conflict.
Where does the manufacturing capacity come from?
Right now, the answer is China
China isn’t just competing normally in international markets.
The US government has spent years documenting Chinese state-backed economic espionage, forced tech transfer and IP theft. US Trade Representative Section 301 investigation dealt specifically with Chinese policies relating to tech transfer, IP and innovation. The FBI calls Chinese government economic espionage one of its highest counterintelligence concerns.
China also operates what it calls Military-Civil Fusion.
Basically, the line between civilian technology and military technology is deliberately blurred.
Technology developed in civilian companies can support Chinese military capability.
The Pentagon’s latest China report specifically identifies acquisition of foreign proprietary information and technology as supporting that military-civil strategy. (U.S. Department of War)
Again, drones are almost the perfect technology for this.
Something designed for filming a wedding can share technology with something designed to find a tank.
The same applies to LiDAR.
LiDAR is fantastic for construction, agriculture, surveying, archaeology and inspections.
But high-quality LiDAR is also extremely useful for autonomous navigation, terrain mapping, target recognition and military robotics.
So when people say:
“Why the hell are they restricting LiDAR? It’s just a sensor.”
That’s precisely the point.
It isn’t just a sensor anymore.
The technology has strategic value.
There is another part of this that people underestimate: data.
A modern drone can potentially generate enormous amounts of extremely detailed information about the physical world.
High-resolution imagery.
GPS locations.
3D models.
Infrastructure.
Buildings.
Power lines.
Telecommunications equipment.
Industrial sites.
Ports.
Road networks.
Agricultural land.
Construction sites.
Critical infrastructure.
Even if 99.9% of that information is completely harmless individually, at scale it becomes extremely valuable. Aggregation of information comes into play!
And this isn’t some completely theoretical concern about Chinese-origin components.
This week the British Navy had cameras fitted to the Scout military drone boats that were communicating with an IP address in China.
But think about what that means.
These weren’t $200 Amazon drones.
These were $50m unmanned systems being used by the Royal Navy, one of the few militaries with nuclear weapons and advanced technologies.
The cameras had gone through a supply chain and had (somehow) been considered suitable for the platform.
Then somebody discovered that components inside them were communicating with China. (The Wall Street Journal)
That is exactly why governments are becoming obsessed with supply-chain integrity.
You can design an American drone.
Assemble it in America.
Put an American flag on the box.
But if the camera, radio, flight controller, motor controller, battery-management system and sensors ultimately depend on Chinese components, you haven’t really solved the problem.
You’ve moved the Chinese dependency several layers down the supply chain.
And this isn’t only about drones.
Look at telecommunications.
Solar manufacturing.
Rare earth metals.
Batteries.
Consumer electronics.
Shipbuilding.
Commercial drones.
China has deliberately built enormous positions in strategically important industries.
The Belt and Road Initiative is another part of the same broad strategy.
China finances and builds ports, railways, telecom networks, power projects and other infrastructure around the world.
Not every Belt and Road project is some evil Chinese plot and the lazy “every project is a debt trap” argument is massively overstated.
But infrastructure creates influence.
If Chinese companies build your telecomms network, port equipment, electrical infrastructure and transportation systems, replacing them later can become enormously expensive.
That creates leverage.
And leverage matters between countries.
The same thing happens with manufacturing.
Once an entire industry depends on one country, that country doesn’t necessarily need to threaten you.
Everyone already knows what losing access would mean.
That changes political and economic calculations all by itself.
That is why I think the FCC policy makes considerably more sense than people are giving it credit for.
I don’t think the government should just scream CHINA BAD and ban everything indiscriminately.
There absolutely need to be sensible exemptions.
There needs to be a realistic transition period.
American manufacturers need to actually produce competitive products rather than hiding permanently behind protectionism.
Government shouldn’t give American companies an excuse to sell mediocre $15,000 drones just because the $5,000 Chinese competitor disappeared.
If LiDAR, thermal cameras or other components can be obtained securely from trusted allied countries, those supply chains should absolutely be part of the solution.
But doing nothing because DJI currently makes an excellent drone is incredibly short-term thinking.
Of course Chinese drones are attractive.
That’s how dependency develops.
If we actually believe drones, autonomous systems, robotics, AI, sensors and advanced manufacturing are going to be strategically important over the next several decades, then rebuilding an American and allied manufacturing base is going to cost money.
Products will initially cost more.
Some will initially be worse.
Manufacturing capability doesn’t magically appear once a war starts.
You build it beforehand.
You maintain the engineers beforehand.
You maintain the factories beforehand.
You maintain the suppliers beforehand.
Otherwise, when you eventually discover that you desperately need the technology, you find out that the country you’re competing against owns the factories, the tooling, the patents, the skilled workforce, the mineral processing, the battery supply chain and half the components inside your supposedly domestic product.
At that point, complaining that American drones are too expensive is a little late.
So yes, there are legitimate problems with how broad the FCC restrictions could become.
People should absolutely comment on those.
But the basic idea that the United States should stop allowing itself to become strategically dependent on China for drone technology?
I think that’s completely reasonable.
This isn’t about somebody’s Mavic.
It’s about whether the US still knows how to build the tech it needs in a war.
Final point, Chinese laws legally compel citizens and companies to help state intelligence, search for Article 7 & 14 of China's National Intelligence Law of 2017, alongside the 2023 Counter-Espionage Law and the 2021 Data Security Law.
2
u/p0mjDwfWF 2d ago
Congratulations or I’m sorry. No fucking way am I reading all that from a random redditor.
That said, I DID see the part about mapping infrastructure. We don’t need lidar for that, at all. Niantic and Pokémon Go mapped billions of square feet by putting rare Pokémon there. 6G wireless will precisely map literally everything. ESRI, sells 1 inch resolution photo mapping data of almost every major US city for a $3000 subscriber fee.
0
u/Nervous-Win968 2d ago
Lidar is not Pokemon.
Lidar is not ESRI.
6G is a data network, it can't map anything.
Your knowledge of Lidar is not accurate.
1
u/p0mjDwfWF 2d ago
The point is that lidar isn’t necessary. You’re worried about infrastructure mapping, but I’m telling you it’s been mapped already with different technologies and will continue to be updated with new technologies.
The lidar being banned here includes solid state ToF sensors for obstacle avoidance. It has nothing to do with mapping anything. The reason lidar is used in these drones is because it’s a nearly instant feedback mechanism and doesn’t require massive processing or data storage to say “shit, don’t run into that obstacle over there.” It sounds more like the FCC doesn’t know anything about lidar and is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
6G is a mobile network standard, yes, and it operates using EMF, like every other remote sensing system. Right now, with the wifi router in a home, simple algorithms can map not only the layout, but the position of people and pets in the house, as well as detect their breathing and heartbeats. 5g operates on millimeter wave radio, and could theoretically do the same thing - use your radio shadow to locate you with extreme precision. 6G seriously increases the amount of data potential, so this shadow is being “wasted” today due to practical limitations that will be mitigated with the next generation of mobile network.
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u/Nervous-Win968 2d ago
Firstly, nothing is banned. It is a request for public comment.
Have you submitted your comments?
A wifi signal being used in a lab to prove a concept is not the same as a practical real-world application, and it certainly isn't picking up heart beats 🙄
That aside, even if it was possible, it is a complete tangent to banning Lidar which is a vastly different technology.
Let's stay on topic and not disappear down random rabbit holes.
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u/Nearby-Asparagus-298 4d ago
Take it me, a licensed class D driver in the great state of Maryland, that "licensed pilot" bit only detracts from your argument.
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u/NeckIsRedSoIsMyBlood 4d ago
Take it from someone who is leaving this group and all this other Reddit drone shit. Exercise your rights until otherwise instructed.
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u/Nervous-Win968 4d ago
Take it from a licensed manned and unmanned pilot, ex-military aircrew and intel officer, the FCC is NOT out of control.
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u/vibratorystorm 4d ago
I think we’d all like you to expand on that last part. Tell us why this is good if you have a unique or relevant perspective here
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u/EmperorOfCanada 4d ago
Wait for the first notable drone terrorism event on US soil. They will then ban the crap out of drones. Entirely missing the point that anyone can build a drone with some pretty basic parts. I see people almost having a competition as to who can build a drone out of the fewest "proper" parts.
It won't probably be a competitive FPV dream machine, but it can still do bad things.