[henvic]

DJI is, by far, the best drone equipment brand for photography, industrial usage, etc.

It's disheartening to witness the US embracing protectionism for high-tech. If the United States does this, it might as well join the European Union's decadence in killing tech startups by stifling the competitiveness of their market...

[chme]

Most hardware has no reason to require direct internet access or an account with the manufacturer to work. If some device requires internet access, then it cannot be trusted to not transmit personal data, therefore it should be possible to replace the software on that device, so that something that is trusted by the consumer can be installed.

While DJI here might create good hardware, their internet and account requirement makes it uncontrollable by the consumer, so I do understand that some consumers or, the possible more security aware US, will not trust it. But for the same reason China and other countries might not trust Apple or similar.

Trust is something that needs to be earned and which has to go both ways, if a company doesn't trust their users, and prevents people using their bought products however they like, then why should their users trust the company and let their uncontrollable software record their private lives and possible report back to them?

[segasaturn]

While I agree with you, I doubt banning Chinese tech will remedy this problem. My experience is that American brands are much, much more aggressive about making you connect to the internet, install our apps, create an account, subscribe to our newsletter etc.

Look at the difference between iRobot and Chinese robot vacuums on Amazon - the difference is night and day.

[hatsix]

Depends on what you consider the "problem". As Congress sees it, the problem is two-fold... You have no control over your data. The company that does have control over your data is beholden to a foreign country not currently considered "a close ally".

[chme]

True.

I was just talking about my experience with DJI. Where you buy a product, can use it for a bit, and then it stops working, because you haven't connected it to the internet or created an account.

It is often the 'market leaders' that are so afraid to loose customers and their market position to implement customer hostile processes into their products.

[tw04]

And yet the US government isn't worried about a US company leaking photos of sensitive information to the US government.

The same cannot be said of the Chinese government who may be happy to get extensive drone footage of everyday US infrastructure which can be used in a future war.

Meanwhile, China won't even let Google provide a valid map of the country... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps#Google_Maps_in_Chi...

But tell us all more about how we should be more concerned about a US company requiring an internet login.

[makeitdouble]

This is always an interesting read for the rest of us neither in the US nor China.

On one hand I understand we'll need to move to more insular and protective policies and basically ban foreign technology in so many places, on the other hand I don't want a gov like Ethiopia to have the choice between having no technology or being spied to the bone by all of its tech providers. The EU would be the only place with a one in a million chance to pull it off, there sure must be another way ?

[lmm]

The US government is right to be worried about China. Individuals, especially but not exclusively those of us who aren't US citizens, might well have more to fear from the US.

[mike_d]

> American brands are much, much more aggressive about making you connect to the internet, install our apps, create an account

This whataboutism ignores one very important point.

When you connect a device to an American company they might do things that we consider privacy violations, while still staying generally within the bounds of the law. We like to joke about data going to the NSA or something, but in the extremely limited cases where it does protections exist with oversight.

Contrast this to Chinese companies where by law every company is part-owned by the government itself. The Ministry of State Security literally has employees who show up to these companies every day like normal workers, but their job is to find and exploit intelligence on foreign individuals and businesses.

[ziddoap]

I agree with most of your point but.

>data going to the NSA or something, but in the extremely limited cases where it does protections exist with oversight.

They didn't build the Utah Data Center because of their extremely limited amount of data.

We all like to joke about our data going to the NSA because our data has been repeatedly been caught going to the NSA.

[mike_d]

> They didn't build the Utah Data Center because of their extremely limited amount of data.

I love that people point to one of the smallest NSA data centers as if its going to prove some sort of point.

Regardless, this is exactly the kind of whataboutism that I am talking about. Every government collects all the data it can. The difference is that the NSA targets foreign governments and terror organizations. The Chinese government targets the same but also goes after their citizens, foreign citizens, foreign corporations, etc.

[ziddoap]

>The difference is that the NSA targets foreign governments and terror organizations. The Chinese government targets the same but also goes after their citizens, foreign citizens, foreign corporations, etc.

Thanks for the laugh, this was one of the funnier things I've read in awhile.

[segasaturn]

>The difference is that the NSA targets foreign governments and terror organizations

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_global_surveillance_discl...

Sorry, but you seem a little naive. I recommend reading up on the US domestic surveillance program that the government was caught red handed engaging in.

[monkpit]

Yeah, it’s not a joke…

[ethbr1]

The idea of running any internet-connected software with a push-update mechanism, built and controlled by a company in a country without a strong independent rule of law, should terrify far more people than it apparently does.

This is one of those 'It's not a problem until it is a problem, and then it's a big fucking problem' scenarios.

[peoplefromibiza]

It's pretty obvious that this is not a problem at all, the only problem right now it's fabricating a narrative where someone is bad "because" while everyone allied with us (the west) it's not "because not".

You seem to be worried that an unfair judicial system poses a threat to everyone connected to the internet, well I got some news for you: Uber received $3.5 billion from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund and they are planning now to invest $40 billion on AI. Why are US companies accepting money from a bloodthirsty dictatorship then? A dictatorship where the actual dictator, Bin Salman, among other things, detained three members of the royal family (his family) for unexplained reasons, ordered the assassination of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi and that, even more worrisome, had spies in Twitter and McKinsey that helped him track down dissidents and silence critics. McKinsey and Twitter are still actively working with the Saudis and nobody has nothing to say about it... Not surprisingly the Saudi Prince Alwaleed is the second largest investor in twitter ATM through the Kingdom Holding.

Maybe we should refocus our priorities on the issues at large, not just those issues that are beneficial to the US in their war for the global supremacy.

[ethbr1]

A pile of facts is not an argument.

I understand this is how modern pro-wrestling news addresses issues, but assembling a mass of emotionally-inflammatory things doesn't buttress your point.

Specific countries have greater or lesser individual rights and adherence to law.

Why doesn't it make sense to take that into account when extending trust to specific pieces of software running on your device?

[FactKnower69]

>a country without a strong independent rule of law

I'd really like you to try and define this term in a way that doesn't exclude the US

[seanmcdirmid]

I'm not sure what you are getting at, but judicial independence is one thing that the USA has (in some quantity) that China has none of. There is no such thing as judicial review in China, if the official class decides to ignore China's constitutional freedoms of speech, religion, and press, then there is no recourse for a court to come in and say, "no, that's not right." Vs. the USA, where the Supreme court comes in all the time and tells presidents and congress what they can't do.

The Chinese government has said multiple times that it believes rule of law is a western imperialistic concept, so it isn't like this is even a goal for them.

[ethbr1]

If anyone wants to point to US FISA laws and use that to equate the US justice system with China's, I'm all ears...

[peoplefromibiza]

> This whataboutism ignores one very important point.

Reverse whataboutism is still whataboutism.

For example this predicate

> while still staying generally within the bounds of the law.

Completely ignores the fact that US companies have been found lying and deceiving to circumvent the barriers posed by the law.

But not only US companies, remember the diesel gate?

This other predicate

> (In China) by law every company is part-owned by the government itself

It's completely false, while this one

> The Ministry of State Security literally has employees who show up to these companies every day like normal workers

It's pure intellectual dishonesty . Every sufficiently advanced intelligence agency has spies. With the USA agencies being the largest employers for spies on the entire Planet.

[khazhoux]

> While I agree with you, I doubt banning Chinese tech will remedy this problem.

I don't mean this as a political issue, but in your comment I see one of the reasons Trump appeals to people. He promotes a mindset of "stop handwringing and just fix the damn problem."

Here we know the following:

1) DJI devices have an always-on connection

2) Chinese government is unfriendly to US and exerts strong control over Chinese companies

3) China regularly blocks US companies for whatever reason they decide.

So yeah, we can say "but banning DJI won't solve the general problem of bad companies; we shouldn't just focus on China; is a ban really fair? etc etc. Or, we can just say "screw it -- China treats US companies like shit and we're not gonna just hand over all our drone info"

[segasaturn]

I'm not sure how that would actually "fix the damn problem"? My point is that American tech companies are just as data-hungry as DJI, probably more, and Chinese tech products are more likely to let users control their devices off-line than American brands. You're right though that creating a boogeyman and attacking it while ignoring the much larger and more complicated problems is great politics (and always has been)

[khazhoux]

See, that's exactly what I mean.

Here [1], CISA assesses China-made drones as a national security risk. That is a non-partisan agency. But your response is:

* American tech companies are just as data-hungry, if not more. -> irrelevant, this is about foreign cyberattacks or foreign data mining

* China produces more user-controllable devices than American brands. -> irrelevant

* Boogeyman -> Scare word

* Ignoring the much larger and complicated problem -> Deflects and says we can't do /anything/ unless we consider all angles and do /everthing/

This leads to endless handwringing, and is one of the reasons the left has support of only 50% of Americans, when it should be (in my opinion) a huge majority. Because we're endlessly caught up in the attitude of "nope, we really can't do anything in the face of obviously problematic issues." Gosh, it feels racist to ban a Chinese tech company (even though the Chinese government does actually target our cyber infrastructure). Gosh, what about the bad American companies?

[1] https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24362988/cybersecurit...

[jpgvm]

> direct internet access or an account with the manufacturer to work

Unfortunately this is required by regulators in many countries. In Thailand you can't fly a drone without a license. You need to obtain the license before activating the drone and provide your information and the license number at time of activation (which is tied to drone serial number).

It sucks but it's the law here.

[kragen]

shitty laws in thailand are no excuse for human rights infringements in the other 99% of the world

[cruffle_duffle]

Requiring an account to use a DJI drone is a human rights violation?

[kragen]

yes, extorting your personal data including things like high-resolution geolocation of where you are, that's a human rights violation. it strips you of your right to privacy. it's also a national security threat, and it's still a national security threat even if the company that's extorting it is domestic

dji having access to cameras also strips anyone the drone can see of their human right to privacy

[euroderf]

I would like to see a requirement that any drone sold in (or imported to) the US (or EU) has to be flashable - without having to desolder components, or any other such nonsense. Press some buttons and load new software.

An accompanying requirement would be to document interfaces to hardware subsystems (chip spec sheets would suffice).

With drones, the potential for mischief is too great to let malware be smuggled in.

Is this a politically and technically realistic goal ? Or am I talkin' thru my hat ?

[AdamJacobMuller]

Impossible, especially for drones, because it would allow people to trivially flash firmware to drones which can bypass restrictions like no-fly zones and reporting requirements which allow the FAA or other LE to answer questions like "who was flying a drone playing chicken with a low-flying Cessna"

[chipt4]

Err, while it takes a little more technical know-how and some electronics experience, this already exists and is still extremely easy to do..

https://betaflight.com/

or

https://github.com/iNavFlight/inav

or

https://ardupilot.org/

among others

[snypher]

I hope they don't start asking questions about where the px4s are made!

[euroderf]

I figured geofencing might be a dealbreaker.

[greenavocado]

Back before the war it was possible to obtain hacked DJI ROMs from the Russians that disabled all of these connections and restrictions including no-fly zones.

[kragen]

i agree, but we shouldn't require all firmware to be open-source and user-replaceable on only chinese devices; we should require it for everything, perhaps with narrow exceptions for things like pos terminals and certain kinds of industrial equipment

[beloch]

Speaking as a Canadian, U.S. trade protectionism is nothing new. It happens all the time and frequently targets allies like Canada rather than rivals like China. What U.S. citizens should watch out for is when U.S. protectionism winds up hurting the U.S.'s own economy. e.g. Tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber may have helped out a few U.S. softwood lumber producers with good lobbyists (and Jimmy Carter), but the increase in lumber prices had a much larger negative impact on the U.S. economy as a whole due to higher costs of building materials impacting pretty much everyone.

[nostrademons]

That's a large part of the issue, though. The narrative 10 years ago was that we were preventing Chinese from dumping low-cost crap on the U.S. market. Okay, fair enough, keep the crap out. But recent U.S. protectionism has been targeting very high-quality, best-in-class Chinese manufacturers that honestly outcompete anything their U.S. competitors bring to market. Without that competition, there's no incentive for U.S. makers to raise their technological game, and the sector just stagnates and falls behind the rest of the world.

North America has the benefit of two oceans for national defense, but the risk associated with that is one of insularity and stagnation. Ask an indigenous person (if you can find one) how well being a couple hundred years behind European technological development worked out once hostile colonists are on your shores.

[MonkeyClub]

I don't think they were just

> a couple hundred years behind

[otabdeveloper4]

They were, 16th century muskets aren't much better than bows and arrows.

[jltsiren]

They were at least 2000 years behind Europe in weapons and armor technology. Some cultures had bronze weapons, but no iron smelting or steel.

Even before muskets started becoming common, European professional infantry had largely abandoned shields. Mass produced plate armor provided sufficient protection from arrows, and two-handed pikes were better than a pike and a shield.

On the other hand, bows became more effective again as muskets improved. When a musket could penetrate any reasonable armor, personal protection became less important.

[ethbr1]

Protectionism, like industry subsidies, is a double-edged sword.

- On the one hand, as SE Asia is intimately familiar with, it can create space to create globally competitive industries.

- On the other hand, it can also remove the incentive for local industries to invest and become technically competitive.

IMHO, what I'd like to see would be a stricter link between protection measures and R&D investment.

If an industry is protected, then it is required to prove it's improving itself + limit returns to shareholders.

E.g. steadily increasing CAFE fuel efficiency standards, requirements to demonstrate decreasing costs of production (lumber and/or steel), etc.

Too often, protection measures are implemented, the excess benefits are skimmed and go directly to shareholders, and the company doesn't increase its global competitiveness (e.g. US Steel).

[freedomben]

Indeed, and we never seem to learn. Lumber prices in the US during Covid were eye-watering and wreaked havoc through the whole economy that is still being felt today, and it was almost entirely due to US protectionism of lumber.

[bityard]

I'm not a fan of protectionism either, but that particular example is not true at all.

Lumber prices rose because at the start of the pandemic, the industry predicted a housing crash and took drastic steps to downsize and then the exact opposite happened. And we were left with a garden-variety supply vs demand situation.

If it was just protectionism, prices in Canada would not have had sharply increased lumber prices at the exact same time: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/lumber-prices-covid-19-cost...

[mrguyorama]

Yes, Trump's tariffs were exceptionally bad, stupid, poorly thought out, and poorly implemented, like the vast majority of the things he did.

But the fact that goofus fails at doing X doesn't make doing X always the wrong choice.

[WheatMillington]

The US is the most protected "free trade" economy in the world, by far.

[acchow]

A la "chicken tax" (A 25% tariff on light trucks)

[lawlessone]

>If the United States does this, it might as well join the European Union's decadence in killing tech startups by stifling the competitiveness of their market...

I can still buy a DJI drone here in Europe. What stifling are you referring to?

[freedomben]

I think the situation is far more nuanced than what will be debateable here, but I've had friends that tried to do tech startups in Europe and ended up moving to the US and doing it here. This is surely not a representative sample so take with a grain of salt, but generally speaking this is their (paraphrased) analysis:

In Europe it just takes a lot more capital investment to get started. You can't do it as a side-gig with a hope/dream working nights and weekends like you can in the US. The process to MVP is just way more complicated because there's a ton of compliance/legal stuff that has to be there at launch. The actual product might take 60 hours of work to build, but then there's another 200 hours of compliance to do which doesn't add any product value at all. You also typically have to hire an expert to help at least consult, because trying to do it all yourself just requires you to have a ton of expertise that no single person ever has. Hiring is also a mixed bag. Market salaries in Europe are a lot less which helps, but firing a bad fit is also way harder so there's big risk. You also can't offer stock-based comp as much in Europe as you can in the US, which all serves to make it harder to get launched.

Once you reach a certain scale, Europe can be just as friendly or more-so than the US, but that scale acts as a great filter for people that don't already have the deep pockets to fund things on their own to get to that point, and most investors won't take that kind of risk without validating product-market fit. The European culture of more longevity also makes it easier in some ways to keep a young company stable because people aren't constantly leaving and you aren't constantly in bidding wars for talent. Overall it's just a mixed bag, but that early filter is why you don't see as many working-class people doing a tech startup in Europe and making it big. On the flip side, when companies make it through that filter, they tend to be a lot healthier and more viable, and quality tends to be higher. Again these are generalities.

[permo-w]

I suspect you're over-egging the amount of compliance that needs to be done and under-egging the filter of the existing big players mostly being American, who buy up competitors in order to maintain market dominance

[henvic]

I'm not talking about drone legislation here in Europe, but state overreach in tech in general + bad scene for startups compared to the US (for now...) due to politics.

[chme]

Any concrete examples you are referring to?

[lukeramsden]

Can start with the number of unicorns in USA vs Europe, especially when you take population in to account https://www.failory.com/unicorns

[chme]

That isn't a concrete example of a regulations that hinder innovation.

[wyager]

What do you think the cause is? Unwashed eggs?

[troupo]

How many of those unicorns are financial black holes never expecting to turn a profit?

And the inclusion of so many cryptocurrency "unicorns" in that list is also quite telling.

[sofixa]

So Estonia is better than the US?

[JumpCrisscross]

> Any concrete examples you are referring to?

Entity formation time; time and capital required to hire the first N employees; number, cost and time of licensing required before first sale can be made. Each are higher in Europe. Combine that with the multiple languages and regulators which inhibits scale and you get the present situation.

Which, I will note, is fine. It’s optimised for stability, not wealth. On the other hand, it naturally means having to choose between American and Chinese tech giants.

[sofixa]

> Entity formation time; time and capital required to hire the first N employees; number, cost and time of licensing required before first sale can be made. Each are higher in Europe.

Which Europe? All of those can be done online with minimal effort or upfront investment in many EU countries. Do you mean Belarus?

> Combine that with the multiple languages and regulators which inhibits scale and you get the present situation.

This is true, because the EU is composed of 20+ different countries, each with different languages, cultures, histories, priorities. It's impossible to remove that boundary.

[JumpCrisscross]

> All of those can be done online with minimal effort or upfront investment in many EU countries. Do you mean Belarus?

Each of them can be done online in most countries. All, very few. I think only Estonia comes to mind. (At least one form in that process requires visiting a notary in most of Western Europe.)

The cost of terminating an employee is also a unique risk that European firms have to capitalise for which American start-ups do not. Again, I understand why one would choose this stability. But it comes with a cost.

> It's impossible to remove that boundary

It's absolutely possible by mandating a lingua franca. But it would cause irreparable damage to those cultures, which is why the EU--sensibly, in my opinoin--has chosen to preserve them. But this is a choice and it comes with costs.

[SSLy]

The bi annual push for chat control (key „escrow”)

[mrguyorama]

The US had an entire decade of war on cryptography that was literally required to safely transact on the internet, and yet the 90s had plenty of online store startups.

[chme]

Granted the chat control issue, is unfortunate on the privacy front, however I wouldn't call it a hindrance on innovation.

IMO, often innovation happens because it is motivated to work around rules and regulations. So in many cases regulation and rules are what drives innovation. People want to hack the system and thus have to innovate. A completely hacked and open system doesn't really inspire new ideas, because the old ones just work fine already.

[arjvik]

You're talking about innovations in "working around the system." These are often orthogonal to innovations in actual tech.

[rallyforthesun]

That someone can buy new DJI drones in europe is right, but only the latest releases. You cannot use any of the drones you might have purchased over the last years anymore in europe because of the new regulations.

[coldtea]

I don't think that's true. You just need some new firmware or something, no?

[mrtksn]

It's a meme on Twitter, essentially libertarians are pushing the idea that EU killed its tech industry through heavy reagulation and by tech they mean online advertisement.

They keep posting graphs of market capitalisation claiming that Europe must be failing because doesn't have speculative public trading stocks. There's also the top-list theme, making list of top-10 companies by market cap, claiming that if your country doesn't have monopolistic speculative giant public companies you must be failing.

It's very annoying because its very repetitive, I guess they are trying the Goebbles' propaganda technique of keep repeating something until people believe in it.

Someone really really wants to turn the European economy into this short term high growth long term who cares casino that the US has become.

[asenna]

I recently moved to Spain, after having lived in the US for a decade. It's only been a month for me and I definitely see the over-reaching over-regulation of EVERYTHING in the EU.

It's so much that it literally pushes young people to have a non-risk taking mindset. I have a friend who has some knife sharpening and tooling skills and she's been figuring how to do something with this (some kind of a business). I suggested why not get a garage and get the machinery you want and get started. She listed down all the regulations and how even thinking about it is not allowed.

Starting a business/startups is hard. The EU just adds 10-20 more hurdles to cross to get even with the US startup ecosystem. At least that's been my observation in the few weeks.

[mrtksn]

That's probably not an EU thing, you should consider an EU country more suitable to your line of business. Or you know, just do your thing don't bother with the regulations and pay a fine if it becomes a problem some time in the future?

Apparently Spaniards like it this way, they live long healthy lives in the system they set up for themselves.

[influx]

What's the counter examples to highlight Europe's tech successes? Skype? Nokia? Soundcloud? Spotify?

[mrtksn]

Define success. If it's high stock market cap calculated by multiplying the number of shares with the last trade price Europe doesn't have many of those.

[simplyluke]

I’d flip the question and ask you by what metrics Europes tech sector is performing comparatively well. Employment? Average salary? ARR? I struggle to think of a metric that’s a positive outlier.

[mrtksn]

Longevity, happiness, health, leisure, life satisfaction. Companies are there to make these possible, not to maximise the stock trading price. Some achieve that by making EUV lithography machines, others do chemicals or pharmaceuticals.

Are you aware that you can use the developer tools in your browser to set the price of the stock or your bank account balance to anything you like? You don't have to crumble your infrastructure, run from the mentally ill homeless people or bankrupt sick people to see those numbers.

If you insist on extra steps, you can sell a stock to your friend at ridiculous price and say that that this company is now bigger than the worlds' economy combined.

[kube-system]

Vacation time.

[NicoJuicy]

I bet the hardware you're running on wants to have a word.

Wether if it's from Samsung, Apple, Google, Microsoft, NVIDIA or AMD. And lately, Intel too.

ASML

[freedomben]

Aren't those American companies (other than Samsung)? I mean, they're all global/multi-national like most big corps, so it's not as clean as that. But it seems like you're actually agreeing with the parent...

[NicoJuicy]

Except Intel, all the hardware is produced in Taiwan or abroad at TSMC.

Samsung and Intel ( + all others) buy their fabs at ASML.

Cars: my preference is still German ( and Toyota). Tesla is really low build quality and it's claims for FSD ( as it's "technological innovation") is a joke. But, Waymo is ahead though.

Planes: Well, Airbus, duh.

[quentindemetz]

Adyen

Revolut

GoCardless

Shift

Vinted

…

[gruez]

>Adyen

>Revolut

Those have 1% of the revenue compared to the top American tech companies (individual, not combined). The rest are private and I suspect have even less revenue. If those are the best examples of "tech successes" you can think of, you're proving the parent commenter's point.

[bmurphy1976]

I don't know why the parent is calling out those companies, strange list.

Europe has plenty of very successful, influential, and tech heavy organizations. ARM and AirBus come immediately to mind. Car manufacturers such as VW or BMW. Software companies such as SAP. Some of the largest banks and fossil fuel companies in the world.

[grumpyprole]

I had always assumed that the UK killed it's tech industry by selling it all off for short term gain. That needs regulation to prevent.

[mrtksn]

IMHO it has nothing to do with the governments, in Europe there's no that kind of money and the investor mentality is very different than the Americans and the European culture is much less accommodating to failure.

It's the European way to roll, the Brits are trying to be a bit more like the Americans but its worlds apart. The American spirit is something else, I wish we had it in Europe but maybe its not compatible at all with the European way of life. So, if you feel adventurous, motivated and ambitious you go to USA to make it big.

[gruez]

>They keep posting graphs of market capitalisation claiming that Europe must be failing because doesn't have speculative public trading stocks.

Say all you want about "speculative public trading stocks", but I trust public markets' pricing more than private markets[1] or the government[2].

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-02-26/what-h...

[2] https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/05/25/c...

[mrtksn]

Obsession with pricing the stock is not healthy.

According to western reports, China is at least 15 years ahead of US in Nuclear for example: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-many-15-years-beh...

Or public infrastructure, or transportation, or electric cars etc.

US is stil ahead in some stuff but the list is getting smaller as the market caps getting bigger and people "richer".

[gruez]

>Obsession with pricing the stock is not healthy.

I'm not claiming it is, just that it's far more objective and far less fudgeable than the alternatives.

>According to western reports, China is at least 15 years ahead of US in Nuclear for example: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-many-15-years-beh...

>Or public infrastructure, or transportation, or electric cars etc.

Arguably all of those is more due to government intervention than the companies themselves. Nuclear is impossible to build in the US due to overburdensome regulations, infrastructure/transportation is impossible to build due to NIMBY-friendly planning rules, electric cars are massively subsidized by the Chinese government.

[seanmcdirmid]

The economic case for nuclear is mostly what keeps it from being built in the USA. The USA built a lot of nuclear power plants in the 70s/80s, and they didn't really pay off even with the government providing free insurance coverage. Likewise, today it is even harder to make the case for a new nuclear power plant since renewables are much cheaper on a kW basis.

Chinese regulation is neither too high nor too low. It would be impossible to build a nuclear plant if the government didn't firmly back it, otherwise there are no barriers that it can't ignore.

[troupo]

> it's far more objective and far less fudgeable than the alternatives.

It's not objective in the least. Stock markets are pure speculation.

[mrtksn]

Right, China achieve all this thanks to its libertarian low touch low regulation small government and only if the stock prices of the American companies go a bit higher and the government is a tad less regulated they will do even better than the Chinese.

[mardifoufs]

There's no speculative stocks in Europe? Seriously? I guess if you ignore all the stock markets in Europe, sure?

Also, it's funny that you mention Goebels. It's ironic even when you repeat the same tropes about the US and how it's supposedly beholden to the capital markets and speculators.

Europe has its giants. Europe usually does not attack its giants. That's why you get megacorps like Maersk or Airbus or Volkswagen. The entire point is that it only attacks other giants (ie, not homegrown giants), hence the focus on legislation that mostly affects them but leaves European corporations mostly unscathed. Or why green legislation curiously doesn't affect German coal extraction (what a coincidence!) that much. Or all the other double standards Europe and some Europeans love so much.

The delusion here is this weird narrative of good, noble Europeans who are somehow only guilty of not being greedy.

[mrtksn]

Europe is far from noble, just different mentality and expectations from life. VW keep saying that next year VW Golf robotaxis are coming and not delivering wouldn't fly, therefore we don't have crazy stock prices.

Airbus keeps making good quality planes that don't fall from the skies, selling those then flying around. It's alright, I don't know why the government should attack Airbus but maybe the US government should have kept Boeing in check.

Europeans have their ways and Americans have theirs. Let's keep it like that and not put all the eggs in the same basket, as it appears that Chinese came up with another hugely successful economy model.

[mardifoufs]

Sure but that wasn't the main thrust of what I was replying to. Also, I guess it only has its own Wireguards or (if we want to talk about inflated promises instead of outright fraud) hundreds of start up like Qwant that promised to challenge the big American man in (2) more weeks or just a few more subsidies.

The only difference is that we hear a lot more about American success and failures as they are sadly utterly dominant in media presence way beyond their own borders. And Europe seems much more likely to just keep its skeletons hidden in its closet, and tries to talk about them as little as possible.

(For example,see how the German regulators dealt with Wireguard by going after the journalists that sounded the alarm for years. Or how Europeans love to discuss American issues like racism while ignoring how much worse the issue can be in their own backyard. Or the commenters here that recoil at any criticism of the EU and invent some conspiracy where said criticism obviously comes from. I never see any American accuse Europeans of being behind sentiment that is critical of the US.)

Americans love to be very loud about their issues, for better or for worse.

[mardifoufs]

Late correction: I meant wirecard, not wireguard!

[csomar]

The current conflict with China has the benefit that it dropped all of them masks off. You'd be labeled a conspiracy theorist if you suggested otherwise to the narrative of the free trading liberal west.

Now that the emperor is fully naked; colonialism never ceased to exist, it just took a different form. The next decade is going to be very interesting, and not in a good way.

[unethical_ban]

I've heard offhand here that the ease of starting a business in general is easier in the US and that funding for tech startups is more available in the US due to policy.

Totally hearsay from me.

[kuschku]

Regulation isn't going to stop innovation that much, or the tech industry wouldn't be in california. The primary difference is that the US is one homogenous, huge market.

If I build something in California, to California's laws, and it becomes a success, I can immediately sell it across the entire rest of the US, and I can expand across the US, using the same employment contracts as in california, same lawyers as in california, etc.

Sure, later on I can save money by making the Delaware version of my product with more cancerous chemicals, or have stricter NDAs in my Florida contracts.

But if I start with California regulations, I can expand to the entire US with a small team of employees.

There's nothing like that in Europe. If my product works in Germany, I'll need a french, spanish, italian translation to sell it in these countries. I can't just hire people from these countries either — they've got different holidays, different work hours, different unions I'll have to deal with. Different tax codes and agencies. And often these are conflicting with one another.

In the US, I need one or two support shifts in one or two languages. In the EU I need 27. In the US, I need one version of the product, with one plug. In the EU, unless I'm okay with 10A and a plastic chassis, I need a dozen different versions.

And even if the product can be used universally, European culture is significantly more diverse than US culture.

Is a phone call at 7am or 8pm more appropriate? Depends on whether you're in Germany or Spain. When a job applicant includes a photo of themselves and lists their parents' degrees and jobs on their own CV, is that appropriate or not? In Germany, that's often expected, in many other regions, a huge no-go.

To be successful in the US, I need to build one company. To be successful in the EU, I need to build a multinational corporation with 27 local branches.

[nostrademons]

California's tech industry works because there is a long-established tradition of lawbreaking in California. We pass all these regulations, and then ignore them. Sometimes the more enlightened legislators put in explicit carve-outs for businesses of less than 50 employees or a $B in revenue, so that startups don't have to actually break the law, they can just ignore it. But they're going to ignore it anyway, so the carve outs really serve the law's benefit rather than the startup.

In practice, the way California tech startups work is

  1) Break *all* the laws.
  2) Get customers
  3) Raise capital
  4) Profit!
  5) Hire lawyers to bring the company into compliance with the laws.
  6) Hire lobbyists to bring the laws into compliance with the company.
  7) Try to prevent your employees from doing the same thing you did.

Steps #5-6 aren't limited to a particular state. At that point, you have buckets of money anyway, so you contort your company structure and product into a configuration that is legal in as many jurisdictions as possible, including internationally.

[kuschku]

Sure, but that's not any different in EU. Lobbyism exists here, too.

But the social differences of the two markets remain.

[stephen_g]

You’re discounting the fact that there’s plenty of internal movement in Europe - I worked with a French firm that had a bunch of Italians, some Swiss, an Englishman, two Spaniards and a bunch of Russians working there along with the French people, all living around and working in their Paris office.

It wouldn’t be that hard to find people to translate your app and provide support in the major languages in most large European cities.

[shiroiushi]

In the US, you don't have to find people to translate your app and provide support in other languages at all. It would help if you did this for Spanish though, but that's it.

[drra]

Also since national markets in Europe are relatively big by themselves a lot of companies tend to be satisfied with comfort of a single market success.

[kuschku]

And once you've got control of one EU country, expanding to another EU country is just as complicated as expanding to the US is.

So if you're spending the same effort anyway, expanding to the US with 300 million people is much more profitable than expanding to Germany with 80 million people, or the Netherlands with 20 million people.

Which is why Spotify became available in Sweden, the US, and the rest of the EU in that order.

[troupo]

> Which is why Spotify became available in Sweden, the US, and the rest of the EU in that order.

Which is verifiably false.

Spotify launched in 2006, and expanded into the US in 2011. You truly believe that it never expanded in the EU in the intervening 5 years? How then did it launch in the UK in 2009? Or how did it have a million paying customers in the EU by the time they launched in the US?

[arcanemachiner]

Off the top of my head as a non-European: GDPR, 2-year warranties and other consumer protection laws

[nkrisc]

Oh, those pesky consumers getting in the way of the innovation of the free market with their protections. If only they could be fully exploited for maximum value extraction without interference.

[wyager]

This attitude is why EU countries are mostly quite poor compared to the US and have relatively unproductive and low-tech economies. You bring it upon yourself.

[HeatrayEnjoyer]

People die from inability to afford something as fundamental as healthcare in the US. You are poorer than any European ever could be.

[wyager]

> You are poorer than any European ever could be

Are you talking about me, personally, or Americans in general? I suppose it doesn't really matter - you'd be wrong in either case. The median person in the poorest US state is richer than the median person in the UK, for example.

Most Americans grumble about paying for healthcare, and we are getting ripped off, but it's also very rare for someone to actually die because they can't afford it. Anyone in the top, say, 80% of American society has some form of employer-subsidized insurance.

[sofixa]

> This attitude is why EU countries are mostly quite poor compared to the US and have relatively unproductive and low-tech economies.

Source? Are you adjusting for cost of living, per capita, and using the median?

[wyager]

> Source?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...

> Are you adjusting for cost of living, per capita, and using the median?

Yes, yes, and no (irrelevant because it barely shifts the result)

[nkrisc]

I’m an American. I wish we had these protections.

[coldtea]

And the above attitude is why the US is a joke with people who can't afford education, healthcare, or a home, 70+ yo still working their ass off in McJobs, crumbling public infrastructure, homeless and billionaires laughing all the way to the bank...

Then you're comparing countries with better distributed quality of life based on GDP or the presence of billionaires and unicorns, as if between you, Zuck, and Musk you have an average wealth of $500B. There are much poorer GDP-wise countries where people live better and are happier than the US :)

[wyager]

> And the above attitude is why the US is a joke with people who can't afford education, healthcare, or a home

The median American has all of these things better than the median European, except maybe healthcare. That's tough to compare. Some countries like the UK clearly have worse healthcare than the US.

Most of the top colleges are American. American homes tend to be much larger and nice than European homes.

> Then you're comparing countries with better distributed quality of life based on GDP

The distribution is really not that skewed. In most states, median income is within 40% of mean income.

Whether you compare median or mean, Americans reliably come out ahead, except for a few small Euro countries (mostly tax havens for American companies).

[csomar]

Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe...

US ranks 3 by mean but 15 by median. It's ahead of most European by mean but by median most West European are ahead. And this doesn't adjust for property prices.

[marcinzm]

Billionaires making more money sure helps pay my hospital bills.

[stavros]

That's exactly what I think when I read one of these "EU stifles innovation" comments. It sounds to me like the equivalent of not wanting socialized healthcare because "the poors" might get it, not caring about the fact that you're the one who will benefit.

This is the "everyone in the US is a temporarily embarrassed millionaire" of consumer rights. Everyone in the US is a temporarily embarrassed capitalist overlord.

[danem]

The resistance to socialized healthcare in America can be easily understood without resorting to bizarre strawmen about hating poor people. Healthcare is of course a huge part of our economy and lives. Many (most?) people are satisfied with the status quo and are hesitant to see (what they consider to be) a huge increase in government power, spending, and general involvement in their lives. It's the same impulse that motivates people to oppose new housing -- people are loss averse and hate change.

[stavros]

Will it be a huge increase in spending? Isn't it estimated to reduce costs by a lot?

[newfriend]

This is a strawman.

"Rich" people don't want socialized healthcare because of perceived or real disadvantages of that system. Not because "the poors might get it".

Also the "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" is another strawman, used by those who dislike capitalism. People can and do support a variety of causes and policies without they themselves benefitting from them.

[stavros]

> "Rich" people don't want socialized healthcare because of perceived or real disadvantages of that system. Not because "the poors might get it".

That's fair, I should have said "because the poors might benefit". Rich people don't like socialized healthcare because they, by definition, will pay for people who can't afford it.

The problem is when people who will benefit from this identify with people who will lose from it.

> People can and do support a variety of causes and policies without they themselves benefitting from them.

They do, but here we're talking about the opposite: People being against policies they benefit from, because they identify with the group that will not.

P.S. I liked your comment, it was a reasoned reply that furthers the debate, thank you.

[glitchcrab]

What an utterly ridiculous response. In your eyes, businesses should be able to run roughshod over the consumer? Yes, maybe the laws could have been more polished or have been implemented in a better way, but the underlying idea of protecting the consumer is the important takeaway from these laws.

[lawlessone]

>What an utterly ridiculous response.

To be fair to them, i think it was sarcasm.

[glitchcrab]

You may well be right, or at least I hope you are anyway.

[ok_dad]

On HN, you can be sure there are several people who literally believe the world would be better without any regulations or laws forcing businesses to do anything. This place is the pinnacle of anarcho-capitalism.

[permo-w]

at least here there's a spectrum of views that largely get by peacefully, and the entire place isn't focused on that conflict, a la twitter. yes there are lot of right-wing headcases entirely taken up by their own bottom-line, and yes the place itself is broadly funded and owned by people who think like, or at the very least, act like anarcho-capitalists, but they only really float to the surface when a post about regulation comes up, and even then, the discussion stays mostly civil. it could be a lot worse

[cratermoon]

Poe's Law applies

[blantonl]

to also be fair, I just recently returned from Europe and I was shocked at how maddeningly frustrating it was to simply use the Web. Between shockingly obtrusive GDPR consent forms and outright blocks on Websites from EU consumers, it was a wild look at what Europeans have to go through under the guise of consumer protections.

Like, the pendulum swung WAY too far in the other direction.

[caseyy]

Not under the guise. They are consumer protections. As a European, I like them very much.

It surfaces which websites use stronger tactics to track you, and which allow consumer friendly opt-outs. There are even many websites that don’t need the notices as they don’t use cookies for tracking a natural person (their cookies are not associated with personally identifiable information).

So we can choose what we use because we are informed.

[blantonl]

It surfaces which websites use stronger tactics to track you, and which allow consumer friendly opt-outs.

The problem is I didn't see a single web site that I visited where this was apparent. It was a mess of opt-in pop-ups and settings and whatnot that completely overwhelmed me with actionable things I had to do before I could interact with a site, and often many companies clearly just said F it and blocked anyone from Europe.

[chme]

AFAIK many cookie consent banners are actually against the law. IIUC denying any non-essential cookies should always be as easy as accepting all cookies. This is something many cookie banners have not managed.

So to me this seems more like the tech-companies and websites being annoying at implementing an easy solution, in order to rebel against the laws and make people angry at it for the inconvenience, then the law itself being bad.

(https://measuredcollective.com/why-your-cookie-banner-is-pro...)

[surfingdino]

How about not allowing "1579 partners" to track every click on your website?

[wizzwizz4]

> Between shockingly obtrusive GDPR consent forms and outright blocks on Websites from EU consumers,

None of which are required by GDPR. In fact, those obtrusive "consent" forms are usually violations of GDPR.

[glitchcrab]

As much as the idea of GDPR (and specifically cookie consent) is well intentioned, the actual laws themselves aren't great. Cookie consent is especially frustrating because it encourages the creators of the consent popups to use dark patterns to try and trick people into just accepting them.

[dghlsakjg]

Cookie consent only apply to non-necessary cookies.

The laws are great because every cookie consent form is essentially saying, "we as a company want you to accept a cookie that is unnecessary."

If you don't install unnecessary cookies, you don't need to have a consent form.

[troupo]

> Between shockingly obtrusive GDPR consent forms

Imagine if companies didn't collect copious amounts of user data and didn't try to use every trick in the book and all known dark patterns to make you give up that data.

"We care about privacy by selling your data to 2765 'partners' and are blaming GDPR for this"

[andy_ppp]

GDPR is really sensible legislation that largely only applies to companies who should be treating your personal data as sensitive data. I built a GDPR complaint system and was really happy about the security we put in place that we definitely wouldn’t have thought to do without these laws. Things like having someone you can ask and request personal data from at big companies is also an extremely well thought through idea. I don’t understand the issues people have with it to be honest…

[lupusreal]

Most people have no problem with the GDPR. It only seems otherwise on this forum and similar echo chambers / bubbles where lots of people made their fortunes with adtech.

[ajford]

I love the intention of the law, but it's so... flexible... in implementation that shitty implementers ended up making the browsing experience horrible with intrusive pop-ups and geo blocking.

On mobile every page load ends up with me spending the first minute or so on page dealing with the half-screen "don't sell my info" cookie dance, followed with the ad-block pop-ups.

[troupo]

> but it's so... flexible... in implementation

It usually isn't the law's job to dictate an implementation.

> shitty implementers ended up making the browsing experience horrible with intrusive pop-ups and geo blocking.

How is the law that doesn't even talk about browsers or cookies responsible for this?

[flaminHotSpeedo]

My only complaint with GDPR is when I have to do boring work in the name of GDPR compliance :)

But it's also driven some pretty interesting projects, so I'd probably call it a wash or perhaps a slight positive, even if I were to ignore the major benefits as a consumer

[lawlessone]

:-)

[atif089]

Lol, as a European, thank god that people like you don't make our laws here

[hintymad]

> It's disheartening to witness the US embracing protectionism for high-tech

The US is embracing protectionism because we lost the manufacturing advantage. We lost the advantage because we outsourced our manufacturing to China with the pipe dream that we could keep the "higher end" of the value chain. It's as if we can magically have senior engineers without training junior ones in factories. It's as if the equally ambitious and talented Chinese fellows wouldn't want to climb up the value chain. As a result, we have lost talent. We have lost know-how. We have lost the supply chain. We have lost the intuition of how to optimize or scale manufacturing.

What a shame.

[empath75]

It's definitely economic protectionism but it's mostly protectionism for national security reasons. I assume the US is going to start manufacturing drones for war in large numbers in the near term and they need to be made at home (or at least by allies).

[svachalek]

This seems likely. For those that haven't been following the war in Ukraine, now that all the Cold War munitions have been mostly used up, drones are now the primary weapon of both sides due to literal "bang per buck". It seems clear that drones are the 21st century weapon of choice.

[surfingdino]

> It seems clear that drones are the 21st century weapon of choice.

Only for targeted attacks. The Russian way of prosecuting war is still a shower of shells, rockets, and a mob with guns. Drones are retail, Russians do wholesale.

[zamadatix]

If this were the case I'd expect it to be related to all drones from China though. It also doesn't seem needed given the contracts can just state the requirement without extra hoopla.

[ExoticPearTree]

I don't understand your argument: what has DJI - a manufacturer of personal use drones - with the US military wanting to build weaponized drones in the US?

[kube-system]

The same reason the US props up any other militarily relevant tech, whether or not always used for that purpose. Protectionism of local industry.

See: chipmakers, telecom tech, aerospace tech, etc.

[mardifoufs]

Yeah the thing is that the US always, always justified everything by using the "national security" excuse/narrative. When another country does it to the US and its corporations, which has by far the longest modern history of getting involved in other nations national security, then it suddenly becomes an attack on free trade and pure protectionism.

[nirav72]

>always justified everything by using the "national security"

Is it any different than China wanting data access from U.S companies that attempted to open their business there? I'm not in favor of this ban. I think they should've at least forced DJI to keep the data local before going for an outright ban.

[mardifoufs]

I completely agree but the difference is that we already know China is a totalitarian one party dictatorship. They don't necessarily try to hide it to. That's not the case in the US, but it always sneaks in through dogwhistles like "national security". I mean who wants to be against that, right?

But yes it's obviously better for the US to at least keep the data from going overseas. But that's not really what we've been seeing with this potential ban and tik Tok. It's just outright banning stuff under the same "national security" boogeyman. Again, yes China does the exact same thing but I don't think we want to imitate China out of all nations. The cold war wasn't won by imitating the Soviet Union.

[Tepix]

Those drones will be built for war, how are they competing with DJI who refuses to let their drones be used for war?

[dji4321234]

HAHA. DJI drones are amongst the most popular tools of war in the Ukraine conflict. Sometimes they drop bombs directly, but more commonly they're used as long-ranged lookout stations and RF-repeater "hovering motherships" for bomb-equipped one-way FPV drone operators (as well as just general reconnaissance tasks).

That said, I don't think this law has anything to do with war, just simple economic protectionism driven by Skydio and other US drone lobbyists. Getting rid of DJI's excellent $7,000 enterprise drones lets Skydio sell their $15,000 + cloud-subscription enterprise drones instead.

[Tepix]

Of course DJI drones are used for conflict, however you have to circumvent the measures that DJI has taken to prevent this, DJI is not selling them for use in conflicts.

[bx376]

https://www.skydio.com/solutions/defense

[dji4321234]

Sure, but DJI drones already weren't eligible for procurement in US defense anyway, so there's not a major net change there (barring weird edge case loopholes with third-party modifications). Skydio already got their protectionism in the federal space, this is a step beyond.

[WarOnPrivacy]

> DJI who refuses to let their drones be used for war?

As others point out, DJI can't control what buyers do (a good default).

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say DJI won't manufacture drones for offensive war use. This sharply limits their usefulness to the US Military.

Either way, using US Mil as an excuse doesn't make sense for a ban. They won't be buying gear they have reason to mistrust.

As ever, reasons for the ban seem to be evidence-free speculation. Articles that omit this key part of the story aren't serving their readers.

[Tepix]

DJI can prevent you from flying near airports, they can try the same thing with conflict zones. I assumes they do this already and this check has to be bypassed.

[klipklop]

Except you can totally use a DJI drone for war. I saw a video the other day of such a drone modified to drop airsoft grenades. Does not take much to replace it with the real thing.

[redserk]

Might as well just shut down and ban all RC hobby shops because RC Airplanes can carry heavier payloads than all of DJI's consumer/prosumer lines -- and are much easier to modify.

[mrguyorama]

Ease of piloting is a huge differentiating factor and the entire reason why public drone regulation didn't exist until every tom, dick, and harry could reasonably keep something in the air long enough to bother someone else, despite hobby RC airplanes being around decades before drones.

Non-FPV drone flyers can drop 40mm grenades from 100ft and hit a CEP of like a couple feet, and that's with literally four drops of practice and unsophisticated munitions. Untrained RC plane pilots can NOT do that.

[surfingdino]

It's not hard to find videos of DJI drones dropping real grenades onto Russians, sometimes straight into the open hatch of a Russian tank. It's harder than it looks on video, but when it works the end result is quite irreversible for the Russians.

[Lisdexamfeta]

All Xi has to do is stop barreling towards an invasion of Taiwan.

The U.S., Europe, and Japan need to create and enhance a drone industrial base before China invades Taiwan. By the time it has invaded, creating the industrial base will be too late.

Also, China has created DJI through government-sponsored industrial policy, not via open markets.

[sbarre]

> China has created DJI through government-sponsored industrial policy, not via open markets.

So like Boeing, Intel, Lockheed-Martin, GE, IBM, etc..

That's nothing new, just 50-100 years behind the west...

[Lisdexamfeta]

As you well know the scale and effort to dominate external consumer markets is nothing similar.

[sbarre]

Are you saying these US industries and companies have not dominated external markets?

[nullifidian]

the roots of silicon valley are in the decades of military contracts, initially, i.e. in the "government-sponsored industrial policy" https://youtu.be/ZTC_RxWN_xo?t=3546

[83]

You use protectionism like it's a bad thing, but I'm sure the folks in the military industrial complex see what's going on in Ukraine and realise it wouldn't be a bad thing if the US had some domestic small drone manufacturing capabilities. Banning DJI could both encourage some of that manufacturing, while also stemming the flow of data to China.

We used to spend ludicrous amounts of money to fly spy planes to map hostile countries - now a hostile country has a access to a huge number of drones providing live camera data. These drones are hard to track so the government doesn't always know if they've been flown near sensitive areas. It would be negligent of the government to not try to do something about it.

[cm2012]

The risk of relying on China for anything military related is too high. They have an aggressive, expansionary mindset and threaten war over Taiwan all the time.

[odiroot]

Repeat of Harley Davidson situation?

[throwaway48476]

How can it be protectionism when the US has no consumer drone industry to protect?

[cyrillite]

I’ve just been considering getting into drone photography. Do you have any opinions or resources to share?

[Velofellow]

Other than waiting to see where things shake out with the Senate, perhaps Sony? I can't speak to manufacturer support, and not sure Sony will stay in the drone game in the long term where it would feel like a sound investment.

I've been looking at other commercial-esque options (mainly photogrammetry) and came across Sony's"bring your own DSLR" drone.

https://pro.sony/ue_US/products/professional-drones/ars-s1

[petesergeant]

> It's disheartening to witness the US embracing protectionism for high-tech

Is it? I suspect China has zero regrets in embracing protectionism for social media. The American drone consumer will get squeezed for a few years, until the US develops decent home-grown suppliers in a strategic industry. Hard to think of a better limited use of protectionism tbh.

[rayiner]

Exactly! The Chinese leadership is smarter than America’s leadership: just look at what they do. They embrace protectionism when it makes sense.

[hi-v-rocknroll]

Yep. That's basically what's happening. It's China success envy syndrome. And instead of competing in healthy ways, political concerns roll out crushing policies that harm both investing opportunities and the ability of consumers to choose freely.

[simianparrot]

I disagree with the EU on a lot of things, but when it comes to tech and privacy in particular, they're the gold standard in putting individual people first. As someone deeply involved in my company's compliance with GDPR, it can't be overstated how important it is.

[deciplex]

> It's disheartening to witness the US embracing protectionism for high-tech.

Worth noting that this is a different kind of protectionism than that sometimes practiced by developing nations to build up their local infrastructure and industry. In both cases you end up with higher domestic prices and lower quality of goods (at least at first) but at least in the case of the developing nation you do actually build up some domestic infrastructure and industry in the meantime. (Or, at least, you have the opportunity to do so.)

That's not what's happening here as there is no build-up for us to do. This is just the US government acting on behalf of US companies to shield them from competition so they can soak the domestic market for every cent without interference. There's no way any of this is going to reverse or even slow down the trend of enshittification - in fact, it's going to accelerate it.

[cynicalsecurity]

Okay, but what will happen if US goes to war with China?

This can happen much quicker and easier than you think. Some Chinese delusional leader is going to attack Taiwan and voila, all the import from China will immediately stop at that exact moment.

[balls187]

> Okay, but what will happen if US goes to war with China?

Actual armed conflict? Total annihilation. Neither side wants this. Its why China will not invade Taiwan, and why the US won't put its boot on the neck of the China.

[cynicalsecurity]

Okay, in a few years China senselessly invades Taiwan just because. Not a real scenario?

[_lvbh]

The US literally has troops 6 miles off the coast of China and they haven’t reacted beyond some complaining in press releases. China won’t be fighting either the US or Taiwan anytime soon