We've banned TikTok and now we're considering a ban on DJI drones because maybe the Chinese can use them to collect personal information and spy on us:
“DJI presents an unacceptable national security risk, and it is past time that drones made by Communist China are removed from America,” Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York and one of the bill’s primary sponsors, said in an emailed statement this month.
If Stefanik is in favor of this, it's a pretty big clue that it's just bullshit grandstanding. In any case, we're sure building up a big list of Chinese products that are either banned in the US or getting close:
- Huawei and ZTE 5G equipment over fears they provide backdoors into American comms networks.
- ZMPC cranes at US ports over fear that the CCP could take control of our infrastructure.
- TikTok over concerns they are collecting personal information and poisoning teen minds.
- DJI drones over concerns about their access to personal information on cell phones.
- BGI and WuXi biotech over concerns about access to genetic information.
- Chinese EVs over concerns they collect personal data.
- Hytera, Dahua, and Hikvision surveillance equipment.
I dunno. Maybe all this stuff really has been compromised by China. I wouldn't put it past them. Alternatively, China may be just the latest country for us to demonize and panic over. I'm not sure how a layman is supposed to figure this out, though trusting Elise Stefanik's say-so certainly isn't on the list.
There's no question that China makes it all too easy to be suspicious of them. And even if they aren't using this stuff to spy on us, it's still pretty reasonable to ban it as simple retaliation for China's endless bans on US products. Just generally, though, the current panic over China sure seems overwrought. But that's America for you.
Former director of ONI believes China will invade Taiwan within 9 years.
The more we uncouple now the better when the fight comes. So panic or not it serves us well to be less dependent.
I have a personal ban on buying Chinese hardware (by which I mean stuff you’d buy at a hardware store) but that’s because it gives crap a bad name, not for fear of spying.
Totally concur. Taiwan quality is better, generally.
I see it as a little from column A, a little from column B, factor in xenophobic asshats and the long history of business finding an advantage by banning their rivals, and there you are.
I take the Huawai ban very seriously, because if China does the same things with telecom and networking equipment that the US does[1], then China would be able to compromise the entire US phone system and many internet networks.
I take TikTok more seriously than Kevin does. Spies can use psychographic data just as well as marketers, and when you combine it with the dump of the federal personnel database they stole a few years back, you have some excellent targeting data for people to compromise.
That said, yes, there's also a lot of hyperventilating, bad motives and xenophobic grossness here.
[1] US intelligence has been compromising networking gear and other computer systems for decades. A lot of people don't believe this, so I'll just suggest a couple google searches for anyone who is skeptical to get started with: 'Cisco asa jetplow', 'juniper backdoor nsa'. And then start reading the Snowden disclosures.
As Russia taught us, you don't have to collect the data and do the profiles yourself, you just have to buy an ad.
I take it you agree with me about networking equipment, then?
You are talking about the well-known ongoing Russian operation that targets increasing dissent and electoral disruption. That operation doesn't need to turn people (although it does that too), and does not seem to have had a strong recruitment angle after about 2017. That is not their only activity, or reflective of other nations' activity.
China actively recruits. That is much easier if you have dossiers, of the sort you get when you steal a governments personnel records, like China did in 2015. When you can supplement it with data from an app that lets you gauge their reactions to whatever you shove in front of them like a psychological experiment, you have a lot of information about personality, too, and if you don't think that's useful for making an approach, you need to explain why it works so well for marketing but not for getting to know people.
If Stefanik is in favor of this, it's a pretty big clue that it's just bullshit grandstanding.
Yeah, in poker it’s called a “tell.”
I have a friend who runs network security for a defense contractor. He says the technological assaults on the contractor's systems from China are so broad and relentless that it feels like we are war with them. I joked about the DJI drone ban, and he said we should ban everything from China with a chip in it. So I'm sure Congress is getting reports like this from every government agency, defense contractor, and frankly, private business that has any assailable systems critical to our infrastructure and economy. China is on a timeline to take over Taiwan and we are the only thing that might slow them down. So on this one, I'm with the spooks.
I have no skin in the game nor do I care. But there's a lot more to it than what you seem to believe.
DJI is targeted for many reasons, but one is related to potential national security issues. As a 2022 WaPo headline stated, "Drone company DJI obscured ties to Chinese state funding".
The DoD has already blacklisted DJI; Commerce has blocked export licenses of US companies selling components to DJI; Treasury has blacklisted DJI from American investors; and Trump placed a 25% tariff on Chinese drones.
Will DJI's expansion of its manufacturing facilities in the US have any effect, or will Congress ban all sales of DJI drones, effectively shutting down US-based facilities?
DJT is a massive security risk but half the people in the country and probably more than half of the defense and security professionals are happy for him to have access to classified information so I can't get too upset about the risk posed by DJI.
DJT is a massive security risk...
No it isn't.
Yes he is!
Yes he is!
Ha!
Perfect example of the kind of Democrat who considers China to be our competitor and Republicans to be the enemy.
No one mentioned Republicans. Just DJT. And he is indeed an enemy of the US.
I sometimes work on secret government projects, and I was told not to use Lenovo computers (along with some other advice) because Lenovo computers are not secure.
I already assume that my iPhone is reporting to China everything I do and everyone with whom I interact. I'm not paranoid or bent out of shape by this, because we'd do it to them if we could, and maybe we are, but I don't do or say anything on my phone that I don't want the Chinese to know.
I already assume that my iPhone is reporting to China everything I do...
That pretty much says it all right there.
I'm not paranoid
Yeah, I think maybe you are.
For the record, I think it's perfectly plausible that the CCP would just love to have a spying device in the pockets of 130 million Americans*. Why not? We'd do the same in reverse if we could get away with it.
But, as always with these wild-eyed claims, there's seems to be no recognition of the ability of US actors to guard against such activity. Do you honestly think Apple and Foxconn don't have security analysts and engineers? Do you really believe a firm with a couple of trillion bucks wouldn't be willing to spend what's necessary to do the due diligence to ensure it doesn't get a massive PR black eye? And that's to say nothing of our own counterintelligence people: the US gives the national security state nearly one trillion per year. Do you sincerely believe it's never occurred to some of our folks to scan/examine Chinese electronics imports for spyware?
(Of course, if anything were ever found, we wouldn't be allowed to see the evidence. Because reasons.)
*If the Chinese were as all-powerful and technologically advanced as some seem to think, we might as well all start studying Mandarin tomorrow. Fortunately they're not. Far from it, in fact.
China doesn’t make the chips in the iPhone, they just assemble parts sourced from Taiwan, Japan, Europe and/or the US.
Indeed.
Zero day exploits are often found years or decades after software is released, and those are just errors, not deliberately hidden back doors.
The fact that vendors and security consultants do find these bugs again and again in thoroughly tested and analyzed code is clear proof that our current tools for examining software and hardware for exploits are not good enough to find even accidental security holes, never mind deliberate ones.
I know this is way too subtle to influence Big Mainstream Thinking, but my personal take is the Stefanik is 180 degrees wrong. The more the US tries to shut down smart entrepreneurs like the ones who run DJI, the more they make it necessary for average Chinese to take jobs, instead, not with scrappy capitalistic companies, but with big lumbering state run (i.e., "communist") ones. In other words, her huffing and puffing does nothing but HELP communism.
Look up the many (rapturous) reviews on Youtube of the new-iwsh DJI Osmo Pocket 3 (a handheld camera with built-in shakiness stabilization) if you want to know what I'm talking about. It's clearly the kind of company that a strong awareness of how the hypercapitalist consumer markets overseas work.
I'm old enough to remember the days when "Made in Japan" meant "of very poor quality" (believe it or not, youngsters). Similarly, the Chinese people -- the average folks, that is -- have a burning ambition NOT to be known as the place that makes junky stuff, but rather as the place that puts its brains and design and marketing sense to work making good stuff. But this takes time, takes young people going to college overseas, tasting the quality of western stuff, coming back to China and starting companies, etc. Choke off their ability to do that, as Stefanik wants to do, and they have nowhere to turn, but to the communists.
Of course I'm not an idiot. Stefanik is not thinking strategically like this. She's thinking "can I demonize those drone things flying around and annoying the old people who love the GOP, and blame it all on 'communism' somehow so that billionaires give me a lot of money?" Sigh, the answer is yes, it seems, at least for a while.
I think that Chinese government policy swamps any effect of US import/export restrictions. Xi seems to be willing to throttle economic development in order to extend his control over industry. There is little we can do to change that.
DFPaul said:
" takes young people going to college overseas, tasting the quality of western stuff, coming back to China and starting companies, etc. Choke off their ability to do that, as Stefanik wants to do, and they have nowhere to turn, but to the communists.
Of course I'm not an idiot."
You might not be an idiot, but you don't have a good idea of how companies work in China. I've been there twice to negotiate trade deals between a US company and Chinese companies, and there is no important industry in China that isn't controlled by the Party.
There are no capitalist alternatives there. The alternative to working for the Party is not a capitalist entrepreneurial utopia, but rather is unemployment and/or starvation.
Things were opened up a bit a while ago, but that's long since ended.
Yes. Everyone in China understands how things work.
If you get called in to tea and told that your products need to include some specific code you put that code in and you keep your mouth shut. Otherwise you get arrested for anything from tax evasion to murder and you get convicted.
If talented young Chinese all quit the private sector and go work for state-run firms that will NOT help the Chinese Communist Party. State-run firms do not innovate and are horrifically inefficient.
The smartest thing the CCP ever did was encourage the private sector in China. If we can discourage the private sector, that will hurt China.
I know this is way too subtle to influence Big Mainstream Thinking, but my personal take is the Stefanik is 180 degrees wrong.
+1
And Kevin's 100% right. This has all the signs of a panic. Which doesn't mean, mind you, that there's zero basis for any of the fear. (I mean, teenagers probably did start having more sex when rock and roll arrived! lol). A moral panic is when forces who stand to benefit from fear magnify and exaggerate that fear beyond all relationship with reality, for their own, nefarious ends.
To me several classic "tells" are: 1) in most cases domestic players in the US stand to benefit from the lack of competition from China (think META and Youtube aren't happy about the impending demise of TikTok?); 2) in most cases our allies aren't joining us to gallop down this particular rabbit hole; 3) in most cases no actual proof of any of this is provided. Just vibes.
Re 2), quite a few countries restrict TikTok, see. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/13/tiktok-ban-countries-restrictions/#
Ken: many countries indeed place restrictions on the ability of government employees to use TikTok. I doubt it's necessary, but I have no problem with erring on the side of prudence by taking common sense measures. But AFAIK only India, Afghanistan, Nepal and Somalia ban TikTok. And soon the United States. Great company!
The America I grew up in was a decidedly imperfect place. But at least it was generally a very open society, and it usually erred on the side of cosmopolitanism. That rapidly seems to be going out the window. I'd have much less of a problem with this if we weren't a party of one. But increasingly we are: soon we'll be in a situation where marketers and creatives in Britain, Japan, France, Canada, Mexico, Singapore, Denmark, Australia, Germany, Italy, South Korea, New Zealand and Taiwan* will be able to use one of the world's largest platforms. But marketers and creatives in the United States will not.
*Yes, Taiwan. If there's one country that would have good reason to ban TikTok if if were dangerous, it's them! I find it telling they haven't done so. YMMV.
Thus were two generations of Americans treated by their overlords until, in the end, at the word ‘Communism’, there is an orgasmic Pavlovian reflex just as the brain goes dead.
– Gore Vidal
+1
Banning Chinese drones might be a good idea, if for no other reason than doing so would provide a market for US-made drones. We really should be developing this technology through the production stage.
I didn't really appreciate how important drones are to modern warfare until I heard an Iraq veteran say "They are flying IEDs!" He seemed pretty worked up about it, so I assume he thought that they would be extremely dangerous on a battlefield.
if for no other reason than doing so would provide a market for US-made drones.
You really think the Pentagon is buying its droned from China?
It is the 2024 equivalent of the 2016 immigrant caravan. The whole issue will vanish like a summer rain the day after election day.
The China panic has been with us about eight years now, so I kinda doubt it.
I think many of you have good responses to my comments. I do think Xi Jinping is a special case in his desire to merge the state and the businesses that bloomed in the Deng Xiaoping-and-after era.
However, is America really so technically un-adept that it's not possible to stop drones made in China from accessing the internet on their own and sending all that video of the neighbor's pool party back to some poor guy in China who has to watch it and report on it? I'm no tech guy, but is this really that hard?
I still maintain it's better for China -- and thus for us and the world -- if the kind of smart, worldly people who (appear to ) run an outfit like DJI get to prosper. I have spent enough time in China to know that kind of smart, able, open-minded young person (I'm guessing here; I know nothing of DJI's leadership, but I can smell non-state-run a mile away) wants an open, free society.
Stefanik, demogogue that she is, is merely taking advantage of the fact that drones seem kind of scary.
However, is America really so technically un-adept that it's not possible to stop drones made in China from accessing the internet on their own...
If you have to ask questions like that, it just shows you're a CCP cuck.
Hate to break it to you, but almost all drones are designed to access the Internet. You program them and control them over the Internet and they download software and firmware updates over the Internet.
If they are doing that they can also pass information back over the Internet.
Hate to break it to you, but almost all drones are designed to access the Internet.
Hate to break it to you, but the processors that control a drone's interface with networks are physical entities that can be inspected and examined and analyzed in depth by experts using our own, world-leading, sophisticated technology tools. Code can likewise be analyzed
When I was summoned for jury duty last June, I took advantage of a long break in the trial to get a library card at the nearby Bellingham library. The current issue of Forbes had a couple of long articles on the loosening of rules and then Xi's crackdown. Made for nerdy entertainment reading.
One problem seemed to be that China had really not been ready to go wild and didn't have the institutional structures and watchdogs in place to keep businesses in control. This resulted in huge housing developments being started in new cities - but because the buyers had to pay up in advance, the developers would lose interest in actually finishing the buildings and hare off to the next development, leaving buildings unfinished even as people were already moving in. Now there are a lot of decaying and mostly abandoned high-rises in remote areas of the country. Also a lot of people who have lost a big chunk of their savings.
Similar problems were mentioned in the "Silk Road" initiatives. Chinese entrepreneurs were providing funding for ambitious projects in other countries. But the countries being "helped" weren't experienced in negotiating loans and the Chinese bankers weren't all that experienced at judging the credit-worthiness and ability to pay off loans for overly ambitious projects.
stefanik would call for banning chinese restaurants if it could get her a little air time.
Give her time. After all, who's to say where those people get their ingredients?
Kristi Noem recalls warm family story of double homicide,
https://www.rawstory.com/kristi-noem-dog/
Obviously this makes her the ideal wingnut candidate.
I'd be delighted if drones were banned altogether, period. I'm glad I live inside the DC beltway, where they ARE banned.