> A code audit carried out by FTI Consulting was said to have revealed no causes for concern, with DJI posting the exec summary (but not the full audit) on its website as a PDF. It had access to 20 million lines of source code, according to the summary, with analysis focusing on code concerned with “communication protocols and network activity with host infrastructure”.
DJI can pay for all the audits in the world, if they are not trustworthy they can find a way to spy in spite of the audit. Computer and software systems are just too complex to declare clean with audits.
This is a trust problem that DJI simply cannot change in their present state.
An audit means nothing if you have the ability to send and execute custom code to any device which uses your hardware. No one is going to audit an internet connected Windows 98 machine and say "Yup, no malware on here", and expect that to hold true for even a second after the statement was made.
DJI, Apple, Huawei, Google etc are all in a similar boat where the governments they operate under have publicly and privately pressured them to use their profitable platforms for spying or gathering evidence. This reduces their profitablity as consumers have less confidence the product isn't working against them.
But in the case of DJI and Huawei and TikTok the US is more concerned about how those chinese companies erode US business like boeing, cisco or Facebook. And instead of saying it is primarily economic protectionism they make it a defense issue to try and tamp demand.
In the end the best thing for consumers is if Apple, DJI, etc compete on having privacy preservation and feel compelled to make their products resistant to government influence.
So this new DJI feature is a good thing for consumers it seems.
>But in the case of DJI and Huawei and TikTok the US is more concerned about how those chinese companies erode US business like boeing, cisco or Facebook.
Good joke about Huawei and Cisco. I can tell you the people eating Cisco's lunch are all other domestic companies and even big tech companies making their own network hardware.
Cisco on the other hand is an internal shitshow, they heavily outsource their software development to India resulting in "security patches" that attempt to just block user agents from triggering a exploit. :D
China also primarily uses a national security justification.
And neither the US's nor China's national security claims are unjustified. Election interference, propaganda, and espionage are very real and legitimate concerns that all major world powers have regarding their communication infrastructure.
Trump might talk a big game to his constituents about the outsourcing of jobs -- but his economic agenda has absolutely nothing to do with the national security concerns voiced by US public servants.
China does not primarily use a national security justification. They primarily don’t even bother to justify themselves. They freely ban whatever websites they want without communicating any rationale for the ban or clearly stating what is banned.
Of course they have justifications. They have justifications for their own people in their own legal documents, and they have a party ideology with a clear set of agendas.
"national security" is mentioned literally right at the beginning of the document that mandates the GFW.
> Article 3: The computer management and supervision organization of the Ministry of Public Security is responsible for the security, protection and management of computer information networks and the Internet. The Computer Management and Supervision organization of the Ministry of Public Security should protect the public security of computer information networks and the Internet as well as protect the legal rights of Internet service providing units and individuals as well as the public interest.
> Article 4: No unit or individual may use the Internet to harm national security, disclose state secrets, harm the interests of the State, of society or of a group, the legal rights of citizens, or to take part in criminal activities. [...]
That's just because the U.S. is better at propaganda then China. Probably due to cultural differences. In the west official term for this is "soft power". Propaganda is when China, Russia or other adversarial countries do it.
There is a whole lexicon of alternative doublespeak if you pay attention.
It would be socially destructive if America directly admits free market capitalism wasn't globally competitive after all. They don't have any other option but to hide behind national security justifications.
To those who still think this is about national security and most definitely not protectionist actions: why aren't these companies blanket banned immediately rather than given arbitrary timelines? India has demonstrated it is possible to do so and continues to be a self sustaining democracy.
Free market capitalism is a condition of peace, in the real sense that there's a spectrum from tariffs, to bans, to economic sanctions, leading to outright war.
Unilateral disarmament, where one party allows free access to markets while the other party does not, is actually a valid tactic. It's not always the wrong thing to do.
But choosing a tit-for-tat strategy instead isn't some sort of mark against free market capitalism. It just means that America has gotten tired of China defecting.
I agree that there is a spectrum, and protectionist measures would not deviate from our economic values. Whether tariffs, bans, and economic sanctions are actually effective strategies is a separate discussion entirely.
But clearly there is a notion of free market capitalism one side seems to go to great lengths in protecting - which explains why they have been enforcing it under a separate pretense.
The argument would be that it is not a current threat, but could be used as one in the future, hence the timeline to the ban, giving them time to right their ship, as it were.
And even if this is a tit-for-tat retaliation against China, it isn't indicative of free market capitalism, because the 'tat' would be China closing off its own market and heavy handed government interference in any firm which wants to operate in China.
It isn’t the same at all. China routinely bans American internet companies for no apparent reason. Whereas the vast majority of Chinese companies are allowed to sell into the US. No other country operates like China does, with such drastic anti-foreign policies.
>It isn’t the same at all. China routinely bans American internet companies for no apparent reason.
The reason is the China from the start saw US as a competitor to China's companies (and internal sovereignity, as the US likes to push its political agendas to other nations).
China wasn't seen as a competitor by the US, but as it's outsourced cheap factory - so as they were just that, they were ok. Now that China's companies get increasingly competitive and aim for the global market themselves, the US tries to stop them in various ways from doing business in the US.
("National interests" is a good catch all reason for that, "humans rights" is another good excuse - though when you do business just fine with all kinds of other human rights violator states - not to mention violate human rights left and right yourself -, it's evidently just an excuse).
Same thing when Japan got on the rise and started buying US companies and investing there. There was all kind of nationalistic objections, and in the end they were pressured to sign the Plaza accord, that hurt them to this day.
I think this is a bit of a meme that we keep telling ourselves.
https://lite.cnn.com/en/article/h_7362899f13ec8816e5dee88b26...
According to Lee Kai-Fu who launched Google in China: "Chinese laws are clear about what foreign companies can do to operate in China. In TikTok's case, though, the company was left no choice but to consider a forced sale."
China doesn't routinely ban American internet companies for no apparent reason. The same laws laid in the clear are what the American competitors in China follow. Google proactively made the choice to exit China (it also somewhat didn't. Google ads has a sizable market share in China as does Facebook). This is not to say that I'm suggesting that they should have elected to follow Chinese laws. But it's not arbitrary.
This would be akin to saying the French are savages and routinely ban gun toting Americans from visiting so we should feel justified to ban any French from visiting. Sovereign governments have their own laws.
There’s a very clear reason, they don’t follow Chinese censorship and data laws.
Both Google and Facebook once operated in China, but after the multiple terrorist attacks, they were unwilling (or unable) to comply with Chinese laws.
That’s why Skype and iMessage are available in China, they comply with Chinese laws.
If you are naive enough to believe that the Chinese government sensors foreign internet companies so that they can protect their citizens from “terrorism”, I have a bridge to sell you.....
Let’s be real, the Chinese government only wants to allow internet companies that will allow them to monitor all communication and traffic between Chinese citizens so that they can stamp out any dissent. But dissent and disagreement is not terrorism. It’s both creepy and Orwellian.
'Terrorist attacks' from who exactly? When French or Polish resistance members assassinated Germans, I bet the Nazis thought that was 'terrorism.' The Chinese government likes to cry and moans about 'terrorism' from Tibetans and Uyghurs, but the CCP are the real terrorists in these situations. Any American company that cooperates with them are abetting genocide.
It's easy to let people criticize when their criticism has no real impact, and they're gonna have to vote between the same two parties anyways...
The main difference is that the Chinese only have one party -- which means they don't have to pretend their votes matter which might even be seen as an improvement (at least honesty wise).
Closing it's own as in? With the exception of internet giants, everything else seemed to be well represented in China.
name a western brand of physical good that's not available in China. Granted that our lives are more software oriented in this forum, majority of the trade in this planet is decidedly not.
If you are an average Chinese citizen you cannot access most of the internet due to the Firewall. It's a modern day protectionism at an extreme level given that increasingly large parts of the economy are digital services nowadays.
Excepting circumstances where China could be affecting regional shared resources (e.g. damming a river -> drought in neighboring country, for example) is this not just based on willing participation?
I don't understand what exactly it is that is being 'allowed' that should be forbidden.. if China exports to foreign customers is it against moral sense to not allow in foreign business?
Also, I know of a certain country that relies heavily on its ability to sanction countries from effective participation in the entire global market..
>Currently China wants all the perks of the open global market, while closing it's own. I don't understand how this is allowed.
Because that's the equilibrium between the countries. Each side tries to negotiate whatever is most to their advantage and that's that. China wants more control over companies, the US wants access to what is going to be the world's largest market and source of qualified labour.
Each side can say no and walk away. For many US companies however that'd represent a significant loss, so they accept the conditions. Same reason people give Apple a 30% cut on their store.
I truly hate Trump, but the one thing I agree with him on is taking on China via a trade war. We really do need to use economic pressure to force them to act in a fair way especially with trade and stealing company secrets. I don't think any other president would be dumb enough to attempt this, but even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Foreign companies manufacturing goods in China that is... its hard to believe anything else given China’s $500b yearly trade surplus and tech transfer requirements. Also, report feels to have a bunch of speculative stats and projections.
While I'd say it should no longer be allowed, especially given China's relative place in the world compared to (say) 20 years ago, can you blame them for the initial desire?
China's market is not closed to foreign companies. This isn't 1990 anymore.
American brands are everywhere in China, from Teslas, to iPhones, to McDonalds, to Starbucks, to the NBA, to the list goes on and on and on. Google, Facebook, Apple each make billions of dollars from China, every year.
Calling that a closed market is... Not at all accurate. It's by no means a fully[1] open market, but it's not a closed one.
[1] The definition of fully also varies from country to country. Is Canada a fully open market? No. For example, there's a lot of government protectionism surrounding media, and media infrastructure. Is the US a fully open market? No - again, not in the case of media infrastructure. Neither is an open market when it comes to food, or medical drugs. (For good reason, in my opinion - but that's just that - a political opinion. Other people have different opinions on this subject.)
Try walking into China with a popular video game you own and selling it there. If it's big enough to get on anyone's radar, then it won't happen. You will be required to "partner" with a Chinese-owned company who will take a bunch of cash, a bunch of your ongoing revenues, maybe a little equity, and keep things humming with the local government. (And if you think that's implying something, it is.) That gets you initial access to the market. If you want to keep that access, you'll need to toe the line. (Expect the line to move.)
One example: NetEase doesn't operate Blizzard's games in China just because Blizzard thought it'd be a nice idea to share a piece of the pie.[0]
Western rules around media infrastructure ownership or food production, where almost all of the regulatory business is conducted out in the open, have no comparison here.
A company doesn't have to sell things to the local population to do business there. There are many companies in China which wish to access the user base that FB has. Here is an article from NYT talking about the $5B that FB made from China during 2018: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/technology/facebook-china...
Also, as others might point out that "Way into China is to abide by their rules and regulations" - which is not true when the restrictions imposed are to gut out the business and establish a CCP-controlled branch that serves only Chinese people. For example, Wikpedia is blocked, how is Wikipedia supposed to even enter the "market" (I know its a non-profit org).
The truth is that China doesn't want western information, knowledge and values. This stance hides behind "rules and regulations".
You forget; users are not Facebook customers. The advertisers are Facebook customers. Facebook may not be selling ads targeted to users in China, but it's sure as heck selling ads to Chinese companies.
Facebook: you're not the customer, you're the product.
You're mentioning the largest American Brands, which do not represent the bulk of businesses. In fact they have different channels to setup their businesses and lobby their way around.
When I made that comment I was referring to SME, which is also the bulk of let's say, Chinese sellers on Amazon US.
Try to do what Chinese people do on Amazon, but on a Chinese platform as a SME, to sell products in China.
Your SME will be about as successful at operating in a Chinese market, as a Croatian SME will be successful at operating in an American market. That is to say, you'd need a pretty exceptional product, that is significantly better then local alternatives to get anywhere, because you're not going to be able to compete on price, or on brand recognition.
The reason Chinese SMEs are punching above their weight in foreign markets is because of their low cost of labour.
People often think it's labour, but it's much more than that. Low cost of everything. Transportation, production machinery, raw materials. And short lead times.
Try buying something like a coil winder, an induction heater, a spot welder, or a heat sealer. Even in the US, you're much more likely to find Chinese equipment more competitive and more readily available. Especially for an SME.
>Your SME will be about as successful at operating in a Chinese market, as a Croatian SME will be successful at operating in an American market
Well I guess that's depends on your definition of "successful", no?
Nothing stops a Croatian SME to enter the US market.
>That is to say, you'd need a pretty exceptional product, that is significantly better then local alternatives to get anywhere, because you're not going to be able to compete on price, or on brand recognition.
Even this is arguable because one of the biggest problems of Amazon US is the flood of low quality products, yet that doesn't stop them from being successful.
> Nothing stops a Croatian SME to enter the US market.
Then why aren't there any Croatian SMEs in the US market?
Is it because Croatians are bad at business? Bad at building things? Or do you think there may be other reasons for why they aren't successful?
> Even this is arguable because one of the biggest problems of Amazon US is the flood of low quality products, yet that doesn't stop them from being successful.
When you can't compete on quality, you have to compete on price.
>But in the case of DJI and Huawei and TikTok the US is more concerned about how those chinese companies erode US business like boeing, cisco or Facebook
DJI makes consumer grade products and Boeing is a military contractor? How exactly does DJI impact Boeing's bottom line?
Boeing does have UAV programs afaict. And from the article:
> “The US Congress is considering banning the US federal government from using foreign-made drones as part of its 2021 National Defense Authorization Act,” reported Flight. A junior US defence minister, Ellen Lord, in charge of procurement, added to the aerospace magazine: “We looked at the fact that basically DJI from China had decimated our industrial base for small UAVs, quadcopters and so forth, through pricing that was sub-cost and so forth.”
Boeing drones are things like the MQ-25 [0]. They don't compete with DJI. I'm a researcher (US government contractor) in the aerospace field, and they've been trying to ban us from using DJI drones for years. They keep pushing it back and making exceptions because it has been incredibly hard for us to find anything comparable that's made by a US company (and even then the hardware is all Chinese, it's just assembled in the US and presumably running software that phones home to a server in the US rather than one in China.)
Let’s say there are navy sailors making Tik Tom videos on their ballistic subs, an app could in theory use its inertial sensor to record the path of the sub. Once the phone and it’s sailor has surfaced, it could upload the data.
Not that I need a drone.. but I've thought about one in the past.. and having to not only use their app but have it connected to the internet has been a big deterrent and thus far have not used one.
I have a mini too. I have a samsung ultra that's way too big to fix in the controller so I use a dummy pixel 2 as well. Like you said, works great and I can keep it in my carrying case.
Is that true for the larger drones? The Mini is light enough that it doesn't need approval to fly (in the US). The larger drones require approval to fly, which is often accomplished real-time within the control app. [I don't know if this is the case, just guessing/wondering if it is]
I think the app figures out where you are based on GPS co-ords and lets you fly or not. That's what my mavic mini appears to do when I fly it with no internet connection. It will even pop up warnings like "airport flight restriction nearby" and it does that with no internet...
Yeah it has internal GPS, works without WiFi and SIM and sets automatic height restrictions based on where you are. I live in Brooklyn near an LGA approach vector, surprisingly it tells me the maximum height is 150m, which still feels pretty high considering how low jets pass over on their way to LGA.
I have a DJI Mavic Mini and I was very impressed with the hardware and software overall. My kids and I have had a lot of fun flying this little drone! It does log every flight to the cloud, showing the telemetry logs of exactly where the drone flew and what it sent and received along the way (not full video, just telemetry). I find the logs extremely cool to look over after the fact when analyzing a flight.
Their insurance program saved my butt when I lost radio contact when I flew the drone over to a friend's back yard, and had misconfigured the "return-to-home" altitude too low, so it promptly flew itself into a tree trying to get back to me. $30 to get a full replacement was a huge relief.
It doesn't bother me much that they have a copy of my telemetry logs. I wouldn't want them to have copies of the video or pictures, and as I understand it those never leave the SD card.
It would be nice to have a "local data mode", but on the other hand, their cloud service is also authorizing the flight envelope based on GPS coordinates, and it's important that the device doesn't let itself be flown into air traffic corridors and the like.
Drones are a serious responsibility, and can be misused to cause a lot of damage, I'm totally willing to trade off some amount of tracking for the ability to have off-the-shelf access to this tech.
> I wouldn't want them to have copies of the video or pictures, and as I understand it those never leave the SD card.
I'm sure you know this, but in addition to the imagery being saved on the SD card, it is also streamed to your smartphone, which runs proprietary software and is connected to the internet.
> Drones are a serious responsibility, and can be misused to cause a lot of damage
>I flew the drone over to a friend's back yard, and had misconfigured the "return-to-home" altitude too low
You claim to understand the need for responsible drone ownership, yet in the same comment mention how you crashed your drone (luckily only into a tree) while violating clearly-stated FAA line-of-sight guidelines (and also not having understood the basic flight controls and recovery options). This is some serious cognitive dissonance.
I think it’s possible to both understand that something is a serious responsibility as well as still crash a drone as an inexperienced operator.
There was never danger to people or property (besides the drone itself). I just misjudged the one tall tree in the field between our houses which managed to exceed 30 meters, and somehow was unlucky enough for the drone to decide to fly exactly straight into the very top of it when the link dropped out.
Worth noting that the range of the remote is significantly less than claimed in the marketing materials, which is not really surprising because they claim 4km (!) and it dropped out on me at ~200 meters.
I do think they oversell their “return to home” feature and after spending more time on the forums and reading many similar experiences to my own, it’s much better to configure it to hover-in-place (or go up to a set altitude and hover there) on a lost signal, and then you can go to it instead of having it come to you.
Basically the marketing, training videos, and manual all make “return to home” sound like a better idea than it really is in practice.
Now I know from experience if the drone ever decides to fly itself somewhere you’re probably going to have a bad day. You aren’t going to learn that from reading their manual or watching their video tutorials.
>Worth noting that the range of the remote is significantly less than claimed in the marketing materials, which is not really surprising because they claim 4km (!) and it dropped out on me at ~200 meters.
This isn't really true. While radio links can of course perform poorly or unexpectedly at times, DJI's actually does deliver on their promises. It's quite incredible what they're doing with range of the control & video systems on 2.4 & 5.8Ghz actually. Not sure which model you have but the 2.4Ghz one will perform far better, though 5.8 is plenty fine in decent operating conditions. As you saw though, just because it can go 4km in normal conditions doesn't mean it won't ever hiccup for a variety of reasons (noise floor, obstructions, orientation, etc).
Seriously though, they must have a very high gain antenna to get 4km range at 2.4GHz with streaming video at unlicensed power levels, so there probably is a very specific antenna and controller orientation you are supposed to maintain to achieve that range.
I got it to go 2.5 km away on a very long beach, so it always had line-of-sight. It didn't lose control, so I imagine it could have gone farther (but probably wouldn't have enough battery to come back).
What is the real cognitive dissonance is how "flew the drone over to a friend's back yard" is interpreted as some violation rule about line-of-sight guidelines -- or whatever this has to do with "not having understood the basic flight controls and recovery options".
> Drones are a serious responsibility, and can be misused to cause a lot of damage, I'm totally willing to trade off some amount of tracking for the ability to have off-the-shelf access to this tech.
Depends how big your house is, but in the UK (in the US you're OK I think) you would probably be flying the drone illegally. Here unless you have prior permission, you're not supposed to fly a drone within 150m of a "built up area". For most people your house is out because your street is not controlled by you, even if you only fly in your garden. Parks also count as built up areas.
"Fun with the kids" is a use-case with a very low need for confidentiality, integrity, and availability, and a very low risk of targeted attacks. The US federal government use-cases are obviously very different. Note that the "ban" in the article is not for consumers it is for the federal government.
For personal confidentiality, sure. For an enemy state, having the ability to have eyes on the ground at a mass scale is pretty useful though. Want to know what’s happening right now at xyz cords? No problem, someone’s flying their drone there right now because it’s “fun with the kids”
"A junior US defence minister, Ellen Lord, in charge of procurement, added to the aerospace magazine: “We looked at the fact that basically DJI from China had decimated our industrial base for small UAVs, quadcopters and so forth, through pricing that was sub-cost and so forth.”"
This is so wrong headed. DJI is the Apple of small drones and basically created the category. I've used all competitors over the years including 3DR and Parrot and I suggest as an analogy that they are all Nokia style 'feature phones' compared to DJI's iphone line.
That said, there is a healthy ecosystem of larger custom drones for industry as well as FPV drone companies that exist, again as analogy perhaps like the Linux ecosystem exists in the presence of Apple.
it should be of particular concern to drone hobbyists. perhaps things have changed since I got bored of flying drones, but I recall it being very hard to operate a drone completely legally. the rules I knew of were themselves a pain to follow; the worst was the requirement to notify every helipad within five miles or so. at the time, I could use airmap to get a list of numbers for all the helipads in my area, but the listed numbers were often some random person's cell. even when I went through the entire list and dutifully called each number, I'm not 100% sure I fulfilled the legal obligation. I always wondered if I was in violation of any state/local laws I was totally unaware of. it seems pretty rare that any drone laws are actually enforced against hobbyists, but the penalties are pretty stiff. having flight data copied back to a remote server for authorities to pore over later seems like a pretty substantial risk.
I concede they are in a tough and uncertain spot with so much drone regulation still up in the air. still, it's always gross to see a company enthusiastically aiding the prosecution of its own customers.
Even DJI stuff that poses no risk whatsoever to health or safety, like their Osmo Pocket 4k gimbal camera, or their Osmo Action gopro-clone, require that you “activate” them, iPhone style, which logs at the very least your OS + IP (and thus rough location) + serial number to DJI.
It’s bullshit. These are not internet-attached devices, they shouldn’t be spying on us. I’d love to see similar approaches to even domestically-made and domestically-hosted manufacturers and collection APIs.
It's like we have a new Colonial Era, where tech from various powers wants to loot the data of people around the world. This time it is different though, because unlike gold, you can duplicate data for free. So, in the end if everyone has everyone's data, is that valuable at all?
The headline here is clearly misleading some of the people in the comments. The proposed ban is on US federal government purchases of DJI drones.
> “The US Congress is considering banning the US federal government from using foreign-made drones as part of its 2021 National Defense Authorization Act,”
This new change is actually good for consumers though. One of the things that US government previously wanted was internet being necessary whenever you fly a drone.
This data was also supposed to be sent to a third party picked by the government and they would hold this data for months. I think it was on the lines of remote id or something.
DJI can pay for all the audits in the world, if they are not trustworthy they can find a way to spy in spite of the audit. Computer and software systems are just too complex to declare clean with audits.
This is a trust problem that DJI simply cannot change in their present state.