• potatopotato@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    101
    ·
    10 months ago

    I’m adjacent to the industry. This is dumb but I understand the reasoning. We’re getting left behind in the electronics world. Nobody is creating hardware startups because every few months there’s a viral blog post with a “hardware is hard” title on HN and none of the VC assholes want to fund anything but web based surveillance capitalism ad tech because it’s a surefire way to make money. Even if you do get funded and you’re US based you’re absolutely doing all your manufacturing in China if you’re remotely consumer facing (b2big-b has different rules). That means Chinese companies get all the benefits of all the labor from your highly trained engineers when they get the design files. If you try to build anything at volume in the US you have strikingly few options for boards and parts. Everything is whole number multiples of fucking PCBway and half the time it’s lower quality unless you’re paying aero-defense prices which is the only business anyone wants.

    • sudo@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      52
      ·
      10 months ago

      We let almost all manufacturing jobs go overseas just to cut labor costs and now we’re suffering the consequences and our government completely incapable of doing what’s necessary to bring that manufacturing capability back to the US. At this point basic Keynesians economic policy is tantamount to heresy for anyone but the far left. Its like we’ve adopted the economic policies we forced on third world nations, and found ourselves with a third world economy.

      Being able to produce cheap drones as good as DJIs is far more important for national security than whatever espionage risk they pose. Cheap, easy to use, drones like the dji phantom are omnipresent in current wars. Banning them prevents us from learning via competition or basic reverse engineering.

      • potatopotato@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        22
        ·
        10 months ago

        Its like we’ve adopted the economic policies we forced on third world nations, and found ourselves with a third world economy

        Foucault’s boomerang at work, just like US counter insurgency tactics now being employed by US police.

    • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      10 months ago

      People shit on China all the goddamn time here but they’ve done a prolific job becoming the tech and manufacturing leader in a handful of decades.

      Blame it on tech espionage if you want but there’s a reason the US is deadset on targeting Chinese imports, and it’s hardly for any of the security reasons they might be tempted to claim it to be. The US is about to be left behind and it’s noones fault but our own.

      • RaoulDook@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        10 months ago

        Tech espionage is a pretty big problem though, not something anyone should hand-wave away as irrelevant.

        • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.social
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          10 months ago

          Maybe in a particular light, but I’m personally of the opinion that intellectual property and patent law is antithetical to good social policy… so idk. Ideally we’d all benefit from the knowledge and ingenuity of all mankind but in a capitalist economic world-view there’s no place for egalitarianism so…

          If they can take the same tech and make it better/produce it cheaper then I think that’s great, go nuts.

          But that’s obviously just me.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      10 months ago

      But why do we need to build stuff here? If it’s cheaper elsewhere, let them build it and we’ll do the higher paying work.

      I guess there are national security concerns, but that sounds like we just need to make more friends and fewer enemies, as well as have redundancy in our supply chain (i.e. invest in other inexpensive labor markets, like LATAM, Africa, and India). The issue isn’t that the US isn’t making it, it’s that China is making most of it. Diversify and the problem mostly goes away.

      • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        10 months ago

        China has a bunch of the world by the balls thanks to the world using Chinese manufacturing for everything from chips to medication. That alone is a national security problem. Sure, it maintains some stability due to economic ties, but the flip side is that we can only exert so much pressure on China before it will bite us in the ass, and we’re fucked if all-out war started and we got cut off.

          • fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            10 months ago

            Honestly. This is why fair trade cert or taa compliant or just know trusted country is ok with me when I buy things.

            I just don’t want to be complict in known slavery. I don’t want to support oppressive regimes. Etc, etc, etc.

      • bastion@feddit.nl
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        10 months ago

        Without a foundation, you have no foundation.

        Effectively, China has been acquiring a monopoly on manufacturing, which is an absolute necessity for modern life. We have been acquiring the higher-paid, but less numerous and less critical industries.

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          10 months ago

          Sure, but it doesn’t need to happen here. If we get into a WW3 situation, we need to be able to protect our supply lines, and that can happen with friendly countries. We’re unlikely to get into a situation where our navy is outmatched, so I don’t think it’s totally urgent to bring production back here.

          That said, we do have a lot of critical manufacturing capacity. Intel has chip fabs, we produce lots of oil, we build cars, etc. We import a lot more than we used to, but we could probably make it through a major war with only domestic production, provided it doesn’t drag on too long until we can reestablish supply lines.

          I’ll only get worried when China catches up in tech. That’s certainly happening faster than I’d like, but I don’t think China is ready to compete head to head on tech just yet. If they’re at parity, that’s when we need to worry about domestic production. Ideally we can improve diplomatic ties by then.

        • pop@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          10 months ago

          hey, don’t invade other countries mkay?

          Considering recent history, you’d better say that to US more, don’t you think? or is it that your country is free to invade other countries but others doing the same is where you start considering human rights?

          Talk about hypocrisy. fuckin hell, read a history book.