DJI couldn't confirm or deny it disguised this drone to evade a US ban

https://www.theverge.com/report/714103/dji-skyrover-x1-evade-ban-amazon

by sea-gold • 12 months ago

58 35 12 months ago

roenxi2• 12 months ago

On the one hand, pretty easy to see why the US would be looking for ways to stop Chinese drones getting in. Various US-backed entities have demonstrated that sleeper cells of drones are a pretty reasonable attack vector and the Chinese would be crazy not to try and prepare some sort of latent drone attack force in the US given that they are probably next on the chopping block after the US is done with Russia. Plus drones are very militarily strategic and China appears to have achieved an overwhelming dominance in the market which bodes well for them. US leadership must be quite unhappy about that and looking to try and salvage what they can of their local capabilities.

On the other hand, I doubt they can really stop China and it is amazing watching the US first position themselves to reject manufacturing as an undesirable industry, then start blocking imports from the globe's foremost industrial superpower as they realise that industrial capacity wins wars. There is a level of incoherence here - how does the US intend to run an advanced industrial society if it won't accept local pollution and won't accept goods from the places pollution is outsourced to?

Depending always on how misleading the Chinese figures are, the US doesn't have the globe's preeminent economy any more. They appear to be #2 or very close to becoming it. They're going to have to re-learn how to engage with a larger more industrially successful power and keep on good terms with people through diplomacy.

imglorp• 12 months ago

sleeper cells of drones are a pretty reasonable attack vector

What exactly is the attack vector here? If we're talking about sleeper agents sure but these restrictions are focused on importing commercial products by citizens here: crop dusters and photography etc. sure they have a cloud service and might exfiltrate some aerial photography, but then anybody can see the same on Google Earth.

I think this is just a negotiating tactic and a little bit of red scare to amp up the defense story

unsnap_biceps• 12 months ago

Ukraine's attack on Russian airfields via drones positioned near the airfields hidden in trucks was extremely successful.

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

defrost2• 12 months ago

DJI drones are not arriving in the US strapped with explosives and ready to swarm an airbase taking out bombers and jets.

A more realistic "danger" is DJI drones taking over the market (more than they have already) and:

* backdooring usage patterns back to China - that gives a lot of info via traffic analysis especially if adopted by law enforcement and military,

* suddenly proving useless in a crunch (when used by military or paramilitary for observation or weapons delivery against forces China favours) due to backdoor control.

msgodel2• 12 months ago

Mandate open source firmware.

This should have been done long ago but now it's creating problems even for the government. There is no legitimate reason for non-free firmware.

freeopinion• 12 months ago

Would you say the same about OHV firmware? Airplane firmware? Cubesat firmware? Amateur rocketry firmware? Starship firmware? Speedgun firmware? BGP router firmware? Consumer Wifi router firmware? Any wifi firmware? iPhone firmware? GPU firmware?

That's a long way to ask if you mean all firmware, or if you think some devices are more public security sensitive.

hopelite• 12 months ago

There is nothing reasonable about “drone sleeper cells”. That’s the noon of paranoid fantasy that fuels the “think tanks”. The stuff they fantasize like they’re suffering from fever delusions is really astonishing. They always make for a good laugh, reading their position papers and analysis. Unfortunately for us all, they often persuade all the clowns in Congress and the Pentagon.

esseph• 12 months ago

The US used to run Green Light teams and had small tactical nuclear weapons all over NATO and Warsaw pact countries for 20 years.

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

Are you sure supply chain sabotage is really that unusual in 2025?

Didn't a bunch of pagers just explode?

4gotunameagain• 12 months ago

They're going to have to re-learn how to engage with a larger more industrially successful power and keep on good terms with people through diplomacy

This will take decades, if it ever happens. The entire political and power system of the US is rife in arrogance and the thought that they can do whatever they want. Because they could, for quite a while. Look at all the coups, all the meddling.

dmd• 12 months ago

won’t accept local pollution

Oh, don’t worry, we’re fixing that! :/

nirui2• 12 months ago

US first position themselves to reject manufacturing as an undesirable industry

I'm a Chinese let me just point out the obvious here: it's not that US "rejected" manufacturing, it's simply that the US at that time needed to get itself into a more profitable service economy, and by doing that it raised the living standard in the US so slowly more and more US citizens stopped seeing manufacturing jobs as an attractive option.

In fact, I don't really think Americans can be attracted to the manufacturing industry again (least not in this form), unless of course if you want to work in a sweat factory and handle heavy metal such as lead and lithium-ion while have full knowledge that doing such work will shorten your lifespan by 10% or more. Even China is upgrading it's manufacturing capability/technology because (guess what?) the Chinese also stopped wanting these dirty jobs.

The DJI bomb conspiracy is stupid because it assumes that the CBP of the US is dumb enough to not screening for explosives while doing their inspection. If smuggling this massive amount of bombs into the US can be this easy, then I'm afraid you are in much bigger trouble than this.

roenxi2• 12 months ago

The DJI bomb conspiracy is stupid...

Given that we seem to be in an ongoing escalation spiral towards WWIII I'm amazed at how little interest people take. The Ukrainians pulled an attack like this off literally last month, and it was widely publicised how they did it. If the Chinese military wanted to pull something similar off they'd ship components in and assemble them inside the States. And then probably make an attempt to recruit other Chinese drones act as decoys in a large swarm to overwhelm any anti-drone defences.

The more obvious counterargument to the idea that is relevant to the DJI restrictions is that there is likely no special need to use DJI drones, arguing that out would require a better knowledge of exactly what anti-drone defences the US has then I possess. But the feasibility of the style of attack isn't in question.

And it may well be that easy to smuggle a massive amount of bombs into the US, their border sounds pretty porous. Based on the stats theoretically an army could have walked in to the US over the last couple of years and they might not have noticed. Around 11 million people are in the States after bypassing the official checks and at its height the Eastern front in WWII was only around 10 million soldiers at any one time if we add the Germans and Russians both.

AndrewKemendo• 12 months ago

Kevin is an old acquaintance of mine and I would trust anything he says on the topic

pseudo0• 12 months ago

https://archive.ph/RC7wx

bastard_op• 12 months ago

Same as 99% of Chinese sellers on amazon - make a bad product, just rename, and have deepseek make you a new random short-as-possible company name with random characters and as human as possible.

ncann• 12 months ago

DJI drones are nowhere near "bad", they're the best and nothing else comes close. It's a shame how they're sanctioned given there's no viable alternative. I always wonder why there's no Western company that has the same product offerings.

tmerc• 12 months ago

DJI drones are the industry standard because they are very good and typically cost significantly less than non Chinese manufactured drones. I can't currently substantiate this claim with data, but I would be shocked if less than 80% of commercial drone flights in America used DJI. I think the actual number is going to be in the 90%+ range.

There is one American company making comparable products, https://www.anzurobotics.com/. If I understand correctly, these are basically DJI hardware with American software. I don't know if they use DJI control boards or manufacturer their own but their FAQ does mention they license tech from DJI.

lxgr• 12 months ago

The reason for these odd names is Amazon requiring a registered trademark: https://www.slashgear.com/1336325/reason-amazon-sellers-have...

As for the quality, I’ve ordered a few products under some pretty outlandish names and I can’t say that quality was any worse than that of most other no-(real)-name things sold on Amazon.

coldtea3• 12 months ago

In most electronic peripheral categories, like USB hubs, the "expensive" US stuff you buy for $100 and $150 are the same Chinese internals you get for $20.

SSLy• 12 months ago

Do you know any thunderbolt hubs like that?

JKCalhoun3• 12 months ago

So there's no open source drone (and I mean quadcopter in this case) already? 3D printers (using lightweight filament), motors, ESCs, a microcontroller running some open code....?

abracadaniel• 12 months ago

I’ve mostly seen the diy drones in the fpv community. Lots of options and kits out there.

sarlalian• 12 months ago

There are plenty of open designs where you can buy parts off the shelf and build your own drone. Nothing has the software that DJI produces to go on top of the drone. Not specifically a good or bad thing, learning to fly on your own has a lot of value. But you will have more crashes.

Maxious• 12 months ago

ArduPilot exists. And was used in the attacks on russian air bases https://www.reddit.com/r/ardupilot/comments/1l0pdg9/sbu_appa...

The hardware typically runs https://pixhawk.org/ on 3d printed airframes https://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/ukraine-s-drone-air-for... or to OP's point, DJI drones flashed with custom firmware

DJI couldn't confirm or deny it disguised this drone to evade a US ban

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