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China

China Curbs Drone Exports Over 'National Security Concerns' (cnn.com) 76

Posted by BeauHD from the worsening-tensions dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: China will place export controls on drone and drone equipment in order to "safeguard national security and interests," its commerce ministry announced Monday, in a move that could impact the war in Ukraine. The restrictions on equipment will require vendors to seek permission to export certain drone engines, lasers, imaging, communications and radar gear, and anti-drone systems. Consumer-grade drones with certain specifications are also subject to the controls, which come into effect September 1. All civilian drones not included in the controls are prohibited from being exported for military purposes, an unidentified ministry spokesperson said in an online statement. "China's modest expansion of the scope of drone control this time is an important measure to demonstrate its commitment as a responsible major country to implement global security initiatives and maintain world peace," the statement said, adding that China has "consistently opposed the use of civilian drones for military purposes."

More than 50% of drones sold in the US are made by Shenzhen-based DJI, the world's top drone manufacturer, with DJI models popular among US public safety agencies, according to two US lawmakers. They earlier this year introduced legislation that would restrict the company from operating on US communications infrastructure. The US last year placed sweeping controls banning Chinese companies from buying advanced chips and chip-making equipment without a license. Beijing last month imposed export controls on two elements essential for manufacturing semiconductors. The controls go into effect August 1.

Drones have already figured into US-China tensions. The US added DJI to an investment blacklist in 2021, alleging that the firm played a role in facilitating human rights abuses against China's Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic and religious minorities in the far western region of Xinjiang. The company was already on the US entity list, barring it from buying American technology. DJI denied having done anything to justify being placed on the list. On Tuesday, following the ministry announcement, DJI released a statement on its website saying it has never designed or marketed equipment for military purposes and would "actively cooperate" with the new export control policy.
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China Curbs Drone Exports Over 'National Security Concerns' More

China Curbs Drone Exports Over 'National Security Concerns'

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  • exported for military to Russia will be allowed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Wednesday August 02, 2023 @09:12AM (#63733648)

    exported for military to Russia will be allowed I think till putin is gone

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      I don't think the export will end unless Russia collapses or for some reason becomes considered "unfriendly" because there's suddenly a western-friendly government in Russia.

      But it's probably all about "money" and control. With enough debt to China then the Chinese government can dictate the terms.

    • exported for military to Russia will be allowed I think till putin is gone

      China is objecting to consumer drones being repurposed for military purposes. Of course, selling military drones to Russia is something different. Then again, Russia has been getting military drones from Iran, so none of this affects Russia. I also wonder if Chinese export controls are as porous as US export controls.

  • "Ohhhh fuq... NATO got ahold of a bunch of our debris and has been analyzing it."

    • Re:Read between the lines (Score:4, Informative)

      by Mal-2 ( 675116 ) on Wednesday August 02, 2023 @09:44AM (#63733762) Homepage Journal

      Why would NATO need debris when they can order intact units as easily as anyone else? It's a lot easier to reverse engineer them before they crash or get blown up.

      • Re:Read between the lines (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Plugh ( 27537 ) on Wednesday August 02, 2023 @10:17AM (#63733930) Homepage
        Debris is proof of which manufacturers have product in the weapons being used -- knowingly or not -- in attacks targeted at civilians by the Russian Ministry of Defense. Those manufacturers need to work to minimize the chances they are involved in the war crimes currently taking place on a massive scale.
        • It goes both ways. If there is DJI debris after an explosion in Moscow, that isn't good for China either. China maintains important relationships with every world power there is. Of COURSE they want to stay out of it. No country is required to take sides in other country's military adventures. That is the very definition of World War. I, for one, am thankful for their restraint in the face of enormous pressure from all sides.
    • You can tell they are DJI drones being used. When they drop their grenades or what not, they are toggling the down facing spotlight which pops up on the screen. My Air2S has the same feature and the indication on the screen looks EXACTLY like the one on mine when I turn on the bottom light (minus the russian/ukraine spelling)

  • State department (Score:5, Interesting)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Wednesday August 02, 2023 @09:41AM (#63733754) Journal
    The US state department has been trying to move supply lines outside of China and build alternative supply lines in other countries. Every time China adds sanctions or export controls, it makes the US state department happy, because it makes their job easier.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by skam240 ( 789197 )

      Yes and no or yes in the long term and no in the short term.

      In the long term this will help the state department reroute their supplies as you say but in the short term this is going to be a real bitch for Ukraine.

      • Ukraine has a domestic drone production program, and they get drones from the US and UK and other places, so it's not clear what the effect will be.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by skam240 ( 789197 )

          Smaller supply for the West to buy from means higher prices and less availability until production ramps up on our end. It's just how things work.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Plugh ( 27537 )
      All living things are related. All men are my brothers. Some of my brothers are war criminals that do not belong on the outside.

  • End result will be nuclear war. We have to figure out how to de-escalate with diplomacy or using the CIA.

    • The CIA never deescalated anything, all they have ever done is kick the can down the road and actually make the eventual blowup worse

      • Doesn't mean it can't be made to work. Lots of things failed the first few tries. And besides it has a lot of success we don't know about. It has been nearly 80 years since the first atomic bomb and we've never had it used in combat since Nagasaki. Furthermore, communism is nearly dead except in a handful of countries (China doesn't count because they are more capitalist than most of the EU.)

        • It has been nearly 80 years since the first atomic bomb and we've never had it used in combat since Nagasaki.

          That's not because of the CIA. That's because Eisenhower was smart enough to not listen to the CIA.

      • The CIA is probably the most incompetent government agency the US has. It's run by a bunch of Ivy League frat boys. Any time someone says, "Let the CIA do it," the best outcome is the CIA will do nothing. A more likely outcome is the CIA blows up a friendly embassy or something.

    • Re:Spiral of suspicion (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Plugh ( 27537 ) on Wednesday August 02, 2023 @10:22AM (#63733954) Homepage
      If Vlad was going to use a nuke, he would have. He has already proven he will blow up dams causing massive ecological and humanitarian disaster. He is happy to mine the ZNPP nuclear facility and likely would have already perpetrated a false flag with explosions on the roof there if Western intelligence had not loudly publicized what was up. But Vlad knows that even one tactical nuke means that China joins EU and USA in eliminating the Black Sea Fleet, instantly kneecapping Russia. Not gonna happen.

      • Uh, why would China join the EU and USA on that? Most likely they'll issue a sternly worded letter. That goes for EU and USA .. nobody's eliminating Russia's Black Sea Fleet. That's a guaranteed global nuclear war.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        It depends how the war ends. If it looks like Putin might end up at the Hague for war crimes trials, or if Moscow is seriously threatened, or if he is about to lose his grip on power in Russia, he might try nuclear weapons as a last resort.

        Basically if it gets to the point where he has nothing to lose, the only people stopping him are the generals that he appointed.

        We will probably have to settle for Russia's military being defeated, and it may be that Ukraine can't get back all its land. A lot of it is cov

      • If Vlad was going to use a nuke, he would have.

        That's not fair because it's situation dependent. There are some situations where Russia has absolutely asserted that they would use nukes.

    • I am curious, why do you think that it is "us" who needs to de-escalate? It we keep de-escalating we will have to give up everything to the bully. Is this the right approach?

      • Hence why I said CIA. Or do you have a suggestion that both satisfies your indignance and doesn’t end with billions of deaths?

        • “You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war.' - To Neville Chamberlain” Winston Churchill

          If they do not care about millions of death, no matter what we do it will happen anyways.

  • Serious setback for Ukraine (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sinij ( 911942 ) on Wednesday August 02, 2023 @09:51AM (#63733790)
    Ukrainians heavily rely on Chinese-made commercially-available drones in the war effort, CCP putting export controls on this technology is comparable to putting sanctions on Ukraine.

    • Ah, that explains it.

      DJI is pretty expensive. What's the best platform these days for open source hacking?

      Those virtual fireworks displays kinda intrigue me and would make a fun experiment. I'd also like to do daily property surveys. 20 min runtime over one to two miles but I'd rather have redundancy than top quality.

      • RaspberryPi drones are the next frontier
        • Right. And Linux is going to take over the desktop any day now. Don't get me wrong - I love the open source ethos and all the fun stuff people are doing. But no-one in that space is remotely capable of producing anything close to the sophistication of what DJI makes. I really would like better competition in this space, but IMO the answer is not kneecapping the competition, but instead making the necessary investments in R&D so that the US has the engineering talent to be better. Is there a linux k
          • As someone who builds FPV drones i can tell you that you are wrong. Go look up Betaflight, Ardupilot, iNAV and that just 3 of the most popular firmware available and guess what? they are all open source. Then go look up the most popular software used on radio controllers OpenTX and its fork EdgeTX, With advanced features such as being able to run LUA scripts on your radio and fully programmable logic switches, numerous channels etc, Far more advanced than anything DJI can put out. Yep both are open so
            • Correct. And if you like engineering your own drones, that is great. But no-one in the US has come close the commercialization success of DJI. OF COURSE you can do really advanced things with open source. I know first hand. I also know that no-one in the US has delivered a commercially competitive alternative to what DJI produces. I have run BLFS, I can run PostgreSQL clusters on Linux like no-one's business. But guess what, I don't run BLFS on a Thinkpad anymore, I use a Mac. Because I honestly hav
            • I truly appreciate all of the info you just dumped. Coopting /. for a private convo, haha... Here's my take on why this is amazing but also fatal to widespread commercial adoption. It's what Steve Jobs said. To paraphrase - every feature you leave out is a feature you don't have to support. I.e. commercial success requires great features, yes of course. But it also requires a tremendous amount of painful triage. As you say, DJI comes no-where near the feature set of building something yourself. But
          • I was joking
        • Nope. As someone who builds FPV drones..no that was the last frontier

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Marful ( 861873 )
        DJI already stated that they are banning exports to Ukraine / Russia.

        All that this has done is increase the price as the shipments now have to divert through third parties.

        I'm wondering if this is the next level in attempting to stop Ukraine from getting DJI's.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ras ( 84108 )

      Believe it or not, Ukrainians also rely on drones made in Australia [popularmechanics.com]. Which must prove just about anybody can make a low cost drone, because with a minimum wages of AUD$23/hr the one thing Australia ain't is a low cost manufacturer. Yet, these are low cost drones.

      One reason they are low cost is they are made out of cardboard, and shipped as a flatpak. It's almost as it if they aren't expected to survive their maiden flight. 75 mile range though, compared to 4.5 mile for DIJ.

      Somehow, I don't think the Uk

  • Maybe there are some US drone makers that can take up the slack.

    https://www.modalai.com/pages/... [modalai.com]

    • Clearly some consolidation is needed. That list is WAY too long. Incidentally, I just looked at the Parrot website. Front page highlights 32x zoom capability with a picture of jack-booted military cops with rifles terrorizing somebody who looks like a tourist. Maybe these folks should try appealing to somebody other than the police-state surveillance crowd.

      Honestly, I worry a lot more about the surveillance aspirations of my own country than I am about DJI sending my photos to China. I honestly think t

      • The article was about China curbing exports of the drones, not import restrictions.

        My guess is that Ukraine has been buying up DJI drones by the thousands and using them in the war with fair success. China is Russia's ally, and this move is intended to make it harder for Ukraine to get those drones. Very possible that Russia will have no trouble.

    • Ukraine has a long weapons manufacturing history, and they've been building drones domestically for a while and are ramping up production:

      https://www.reuters.com/world/... [reuters.com]
      https://www.forbes.com/sites/d... [forbes.com]
      https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/03... [cnn.com]
  • Russia big mad.
    Well, the military probably wants drones that actually work so cutting off Chinese ones will probably help.

  • "The US added DJI to an investment blacklist in 2021, alleging that the firm played a role in facilitating human rights abuses against China's Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic and religious minorities in the far western region of Xinjiang."

    Everytime is read something like that, I wonder is there was some kind of fair judgement before the sanctions or if it was just decided without any hearing of the implicated parts. What is the procedure?

  • oh no (Score:3)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Wednesday August 02, 2023 @10:17AM (#63733928) Homepage Journal

    Oh no, I can't get DJI drones that phone home every time you use them in the name of updating geofencing data that I do not want

    • maybe you don't want it, but everyone else wants you to stay in your lane. we don't need a world full of asshats who don't think they should comply with airspace regulations.
      • I think the point is, geolocating drones aren't the best option for combat.
        • That may be true, but I don't think that was the point at all. "I want to do whatever I want" seemed to be the point.

          • The geofencing doesn't know if you have permission to fly somewhere they have recorded as off limits. For instance they have the entire zones around airports fenced. But you do not even have to ask permission to fly in most of that airspace, you only have to NOTIFY the airport that you will be flying nearby. In most cases only a tight zone right around the literally fenced area is prohibited. If you want to pay to be told you can't do things you are allowed to do, that's up to you, but I'm not spending my m

  • Seriously. Lies, lies and more lies on both sides. Obviously, on the sanction side, the US threw the first stone...

  • What a joke. The US has suspected China of co-opting DJI for a few years now. Now China wants to restrict things on their end.

    • That's the story you hear. "China is spying on us! Oh noes!" That is not the problem. The problem is that when you buy a drone from China, that was not made in the US, then the US government can't easily backdoor it. They are mad because DJI makes it difficult for the US military industrial complex to do the spying. It is the same reason they hate TikTok. It has nothing to do with Chinese spying. It is about US oligarchs not controlling the message.
  • So... who makes the other 50%??

  • US sanctions on DJI are irresponsible and stupid. They make the best product, period. Denying operators the use of the best equipment is insane. The US has had plenty of time to make something better, or even comparable, and has failed.

    The prohibition on the use of communication networks is particularly ill-considered. This is the only way possible to operate beyond radio range, which is essential for search-and-rescue and other important operations, not to mention delivery services.

    If the US is worried

    • That said, I DO support China's concerns about the indiscriminate use of their drone technology in warfare. Their T40 for example is easily capable of hauling a large payload, ie easily converted into a very large flying bomb. As long as their restrictions are unilateral, I think they are simply trying to remain a neutral player in the world of never ending conflict that the United States enjoys occupying so much. They are not part of NATO. They do not share our geopolitical ambitions or worldview. Tha

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