alt Hacker NewsThat, or to avoid surrendering yet another technology relevant to the future to China. As if them manufacturing the bulk of world's solar panels, wind turbines and heading for EVs isn't bad enough.
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China has been leading in drones since a very long time. It’s not something they took from the US
If we cared enough to be effective, we would be subsidizing / encouraging local manufacture of all of those at a competitive, non-luxury price.
That isn't stopping them from developing LIDAR in any way
Moreover they also have 2 market leaders in that techs
I mean, the rest of the world still exists and is generally happy to buy reasonably priced Chinese tech. American isolationists get rather carried away by geography to the point of assuming the rest of world is in a state of cinematic collapse with a few super enemies stalking the ruins. Trump's comments the other day suggesting he's capable of destroying the Swiss economy overnight demonstrate a sort of socioeconomic myopia predicated on the idea that the US is the only consumer market that matters.
Stopping US import of any of these technologies doesn't suddenly make them disappear. They still exist. You can't "ignore them and they'll go away", this is real life.
And as an American citizen I am always hearing how bad it is for China to have a leg up on us in X, Y or Z, and yet our government is the one that is regularly saber rattling (and starting wars over!) the shifting economic realities of the US clearly being an empire in decline.
These days we also regularly saber rattle our own "allies" for fuck's sake.
Long past time to ask yourself if maybe we're the baddies.
US companies don't even sell consumer drones, so are they going to stay competitive by forcing consumers to buy $4000 enterprise models for their kids to play with?