alt Hacker NewsHow’s a Lidar is a national risk?! (It’s easy to build a lidar based drones in a weekend project) Also, knowing plenty of US based drone manufacturers, most of their stuff are dependent on Chinese parts, the radio communication is on top of that list. If I were DJI, I would make Lidar and similar components modular, so they can still sell these drones while consumers can buy these modules later or DIY it, like literally most of the drones, which will be great for other consumers in the world for the easy repairability.
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> How’s a Lidar is a national risk?!
The anti-flock community believes it's because they can destroy image sensors from a distance. And banning the foreign ones means they can order domestic-made drones to have firmware that prevents them from operating in certain ways or in certain (government) areas, among other things.
The finance community thinks they just don't want competition that might rival or sell better than domestic ones, similar to the ban on Chinese EVs.
The privacy community thinks they only want surveillance to be possible from within, likening it to previous bans on DJI drones and Chinese routers. And the administration is currently working on trying to ban other kinds of networking gear as well as cellular modems from China (which is basically every phone in the country).
Would love to hear other theories. Perspectives are fun.
Steel manning this argument:
Electronic warfare resistant loitering munitions. They would transmit sparse point clouds to the enemy for training.
I don't think it's LiDAR itself that is the risk. The FCC note read more like the cause is trade and supply-chain protectionism. (https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/robots-nsd.pdf)