This literally happened with one ex-ASML Sr-level engineer who got lured into joining a U.S. based EUVL startup. Came in on B1/B2 (business) visa, was waiting months for an H1B (worker) visa to get processed. Got stopped by ICE in great state of Texas, divulged who he is, and what he is doing; got promptly detained and deported back to Nederland shortly.
Well I guess it wasn’t just Skydio
- Thread starter 4 inch pistons
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Yet we still are not energy independent. While we don't rely on the Saudis as much as we once did, it is unlikely they will play those games with us again.
As far as all this Nat. Sec. stuff as it pertains to domestic manufacturing, I've said it before. That ship sailed long ago and is not coming back, at least not in the type of capacity that a company like DJI or other chinese manufacturers are able to bring to the table. China has literally perfected the large scale/assembly line manufacturing process and we will never be able to do what they do over there for a variety of reasons that range from a lack of will to the various labor laws and employment unions that exist here.
I highly doubt there will be any consumer drones available here in the U.S. that are manufactured here and are at a level of quality that is on par with DJI and at a similar price point. It just isn't going to happen.
What we will have are smaller companies like Skydio that operate on a scale that is probably 1/10th ( if that ) of what DJI does, cost 5-10x more, and are far inferior.
Over the past decades we basically sold ourselves out when it comes to manufacturing ability to foreign nations that could supply us with goods that were made at half the cost of less of what it would take to make them here. You can probably thank those same labor laws and unions I mentioned above for a lot of that.
It is what it is and it is unfortunate.
A socialist country ran by the commies have beaten the cradle of industrial mass-production and modern capitalism. Still, some blame our unions and labor laws for this defeat? Amazing, amazing....
thank about what the labor practices are probably like in China.
There is a reason why they have beaten us at manufacturing and our labor laws and the stranglehold unions have here have played a role whether you want to believe it or not. I am not saying its the sole reason, nor am I saying those things are entirely negative, but to deny the fact that they have impacted the way things are done here is just foolish.
I beg to elaborate which specifically labor laws we are to blame? OSHA? Min. wage? Health coverage?
FYI, most high-tech manufacturing in U.S. is not unionized.
FYI, most high-tech manufacturing in U.S. is not unionized.
It's an oversimplification probably, but all of them combined ( OHSA, min wage, H.C. ) are what will prohibit manufacturing here on the scale it exists in China and will allow things to be delivered at a comparable price point to what can be made there. I am not saying any of those things we have here in the States that protect workers are bad, but they are a hurdle to us becoming manufacturing giant in the way China is. If they were not a hurdle, we would be seeing a lot more manufacturing of electronics take place here, and I'd even say those regulations are part of what drove companies overseas. It's not rocket science.
Than there is the fact that they ( China ) have cities that are basically designed and built around factories. Entire towns/small cities that house and proved the basic needs of the people that work in those factories.
The bottom line is China is not the U.S., and we just are not going to be able to match what they have done in terms of the scale of their manufacturing prowess.
We may end up with the odd factory run by Apple or Samsung, but at the end of the day I think any tech manufacturing that occurs here will be smaller companies that employ workers that number in the dozens instead of the hundreds ( and its probably thousands and not hundreds ).
Look at these videos and tell me we can or will be able to do whats shown here.
These videos do make me feel somewhat bad for companies like Skydio or Brinc because there is just simply no way they can compete with DJI when you consider that DJI most likely has a large factory like one of the ones shown, but I still think those companies are pieces of poop for their part in banning them.
There is also the fact that there are not many places in the U.S. that will welcome a large scale manufacturing facility like the ones shown in those videos.
Like I said...it is what it is. The time to address all this was decades ago by doing things to keep manufacturers here in the states.
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FWIW China has stricter labor laws and O.S. regulations than we have here. (1st hand knowledge from personal experience.)
They also have universal healthcare for industrial labor, free preschool care, colleges that cost ~1K/year, housing that costs like 1/3 cheaper than here, and many more..
Bottom line is, when leaders love their workforce, then labor is productive.
On the countrary, treat labor as disposable garbage, hate them, suppress unions, squeeze every cent through taxes and rents and C.C. usury, then all that get us where we are atm.
For love is reciprocal, just like hate.
anotherlab
Well-Known Member
Manufacturing consumer electronics in China has an advantage because the parts are made close to the factories. Even if you factor out the labor costs, parts are cheaper because they don't have to be shipped over large distances.
If you want to make a drone completely in the US, you need to ramp up production on batteries, processing/memory chips, glass for camera lenses, etc.
If you want to make a drone completely in the US, you need to ramp up production on batteries, processing/memory chips, glass for camera lenses, etc.
b/c no tarriffs over there, maybe?
yeah, Juche all the way, as I said earlier.
Adam Smith was 100% wrong, and "Wealth of Nations" is utter heresy.
Droning on and on...
Well-Known Member
Labor as an issue is a rathole. You apparently aren't familiar with level of automation DJI has implemented in their factories.
The human labor per unit is very, very low.
While neither a major fan nor critic of unions, it is a fact that unions are slowing the adoption of greater efficiency in manufacturing in the US. From their perspective, quite understandably.
The human labor per unit is very, very low.
While neither a major fan nor critic of unions, it is a fact that unions are slowing the adoption of greater efficiency in manufacturing in the US. From their perspective, quite understandably.
By this argument, China having 44% workforce unionization rate compared to mere 10% in U.S. should be trailing us far behind.
Transportation dollars on average are relatively small compared to the overall cost of building a product. The main advantage of having suppliers near you is to minimize production interruptions due to material shortages.
While labor cost is a major consideration for the US when outsourcing to other low cost regions, it is only a portion of why American manufacturing is so expensive. Manufacturing in the US is costly because of all of the entities that contribute to overhead costs such as insurance, capital equipment, taxes, employee benefits, real estate/leases, regulatory requirements, safety, lawsuits, etc. not to mention all of the inefficiencies built into the American production culture. Because of all of these costs together, it is significantly cheaper to build products in Mexico (as an example) compared to the US although I am not sure how the new tariffs have affected things.
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Droning on and on...
Well-Known Member
No point in discussing if you think unions in China resemble those in the US in terms of political and bargaining power, which the above seems to indicate.
Kind of like arguing that Maduro is the legitimate president of Venezuela, after all they had a public election, and Venezuela tallied him the winner.
Declaring Maduro illegitimate prez, stealing his oil, eventually invading Vietnam Cuba Afghanistan Venezuela, and getting beaten there by conscripts armed with Chinese fpv fiber-optic drones actually may help restarting domestic drone production. Sounds like a plan. Great plan, ingeneous, like a fn Swiss watch.
On paper they may have stricter labor laws, but I work with many Chinese nationals and from what I gather enforcement is spotty.
As for as UHC, college, etc...of course they have all of that. They are Communists/Socialists so just about everything is subsidized, and 1k a year colleges sound great but you also have to ask yourself why so many Chinese nationals come here to the States to be educated.
I don't disagree with you that well compensated workers who are treated well will potentially perform better, but the fact remains that we will never match China in terms of manufacturing ability with our existing infrastructure, labor laws, labor unions, and the myriad of government regulations that exist here. At least not in my lifetime.
Watch the videos I posted, watch others that come up on YouTube. The scale and scope of what they have done over there is amazing and as someone else pointed out much of it is automated in an impressive manner.
Also, as I said before I think one of the biggest hurdles involved in getting that type of mass production going here is push back from communities. For as large a country as the U.S. is, space for that type of operation is really pretty limited. No one is going to want a large manufacturing facility and the increased traffic it would bring in their neighborhood, people would fight it. Someone wanting to build a large scale manufacturing facility would almost certainly have to place it in an existing industrial park or a decommissioned air/military base.
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