Comment by Robotbeat
11 hours ago
GoPro is a US company designed in U.S. with manufacturing in Thailand, China, and Mexico.
Insta360 is a Chinese company designed in Shenzhen and built there, too.
People think this doesn’t matter, but GoPros are used all over in aerospace. If we replaced the brand with Insta360, that puts a big attack vector all over the place.
A similar pattern happened with drones with DJI, intentionally killing all non-Chinese drone brands. And with BambuLabs (founded by ex-DJI) with 3D printers (the only good non-Chinese printer that doesn’t cost 10-100x as much is Prusa, and they’re facing extremely strong headwinds).
Legitimately better Chinese products (incredible engineering) that have massive industrial policy support, probably industrial espionage support (as in the case of DJI for certain), massive influencer marketing campaigns, and near zero cost of capital. When China wants to deindustrialize non-Chinese industries for strategic and/or natsec reasons, they are incredibly good at it. (And note it’s not US-only, China targets basically ANY brand that isn’t Chinese. China absolutely does this to Europe as well… and you can see them doing it in real-time with automotive.)
The only surprising thing to me is how people just act like it’s not happening. I guess for people who don’t have any experience working on federal government adjacent aerospace stuff, the idea of natsec considerations for IT hardware seems entirely abstract, but it’s incredibly real if you do.
If your country’s industrial and defense policy relies on individual consumers making choices that are worse for them on almost all metrics, it’s time to think about on worse payroll your politicians are.
Absolutely true. But China’s industrial dominance is also the government immiserating its people, just in a different way. Domestic consumption in China is famously low, work culture is famously bad (996,etc). And this is because of what their government, not the people of China, have chosen to do.
>But China’s industrial dominance is also the government immiserating its people
Didn't they bring hundreds of millions out of poverty, and built amazing cities and facilities in the past 30 years?
>Domestic consumption in China is famously low
Compared to what, the US? Compared to China is at a historical high, isn't it? And they're doing quite well even compared to like 70% of the world and rising.
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Work Culture is famously bad? Look I get 996. The Youth seem like they are either next level burned out or on a treadmill that never ends(due to the 25% youth unemployment, the deflation happening and the extreme overabundance of educated professionals). Both are not good. But the original comment listed stellar companies and products that wipe the floor with American made junk. You don't get that without some extensive hard work. Stealing only takes to so far, you gotta do a lot more on top of that.
Consumption is not just low, it’s intentionally suppressed.
> who’s payroll your politicians are on
It doesn’t even have to be foreign - it can just be corrupt self interest.
What other explanation is there for attacking Venezuela and Iran?
You’re getting downvoted for this which is crazy.
Its more like lack of policy. To be clear, we are talking about China winning IoT hardware industry in this case. That’s not a policy.
You could ban Chinese IoT devices. Or spur local industry. But we aren’t talking about the military relying on Chinese hardware or something.
This is the idea behind a tariff
The "idea" of Trump's tariffs (if there ever was one) is to subvert the US constitution which places taxation under the control of congress, not the president.
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Reads to me like it's free market doing its job, if you think of countries as companies. US just needs to step up its game.
It's not really a free market when one country is heavily subsidizing it's industries
It is not as though other countries could not choose do the same.
It seem to me that China choosing to subsidize industry it is not so different than the US choosing to subsidize Roads, Autos and OIL.
In both cases it does seem to work splendidly as intended.
Other than political inertia (or economic reasons far beyond my ability to fathom) there is nothing to stop the US from following suit.
I accept "free market" is a term of art probably from before global trade reality and could be narrowly redefined to mean whatever one wants (or wanted when it was coined) but in my ignorance I see it simply as free to choose actions and responses.
But I am far far away from opinions I am qualified to hold, think I will shut up now.
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So ridiculous. So a bit of subsidy is ok, but no more than the US does? As a country that’s suffered from the US subsidising its own industries, my sympathy is zero.
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and the US famously never subsidizes any of its industries...
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It's not much more of a free market when giant corporations do.
Every country including the US does that.
This particular complaint is tripple hypocritical. US whole deal is to sell under price until competition dies and only then bring up prices or remove offering.
It winner takes all econony is literally based on destroying the competition as such.
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Successful Chinese industries tend to be subsidized at the level of cities and regions. This creates fierce intra national rivalry that forces rapid evolution and excellence. Electric vehicles are an example.
Anything the federal government pumps money into tends not to do as well.
Does it matter? When has capitalism cared about fair or free
Or when one country can print endless money while threatening the rest of the world with all kinds of punishment if they stop using it as a reserve currency.
Stop crying already. US subsidizes a boatload of things.
Perhaps a huge tell about national strategy is the fact that the owner has $10s of millions to loan to the company? US economic structure in post WWII era has increasingly focused on return on capital (and value extraction). How can that compete in long term with an economy which prioritizes reinvestment *in industry*?
One would presume that the founder is investing their money into something, probably equities, that is an investment in industry. They could be either selling those equities for a loan here or taking a loan against those equities to loan to GoPro (if the cost of capital is lower for them than GoPro, which seems plausible.)
I generally agree with your point about value extraction vs. re-investment.
Equities aren't investment in industry except when there's an IPO or SPO. The rest of the time, it's zero-sum.
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People know it’s happening. What do you expect an average consumer to do about it? Pay more out of pocket due to the potential national security risks?
You can't pay more to get a better drone than DJI's. You can pay more (although it's difficult) to get a worse drone. Much worse.
Right, because in an actual free market where DHI was not heavily subsidized, DJI drones would cost MUCH more, and the other drones would be competitive.
Same for BYD vs Tesla and every other car. It is easy to win in the "free market" when you give away your product.
Same for Uber and Lyft for many years — subsidized by VCs until they gained massive scale, effectively killed all the other competition, and now the prices have gone up when they have a lock on the market, a large moat, and the VCs want a return. In my area, what was a $30 ride to the airport a few years ago, far cheaper than any airport service, is now $89.
The entire concept of a "free market" is idealized to the point of fiction.
Next year you'll have a fair old choice of drones from Ukrainian manufacturers though, when they're no longer needed to defeat Putin.
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I would pay more to have a product the US doesn’t have its hands in.
In today's environment people can't even make the choice to pay more. The productn are just priced out of reach!
> GoPros are used all over in aerospace. If we replaced the brand with Insta360, that puts a big attack vector all over the place.
What would the attack vector be? I’m not saying there isn’t any, I don’t know much about aerospace and this sounds interesting.
> What would the attack vector be?
The cameras. But quite how, I don’t know.
Any backdoored camera with wireless networking can take pictures remotely.
Cameras need to connect somewhere, somehow to offload their videos/photos. Whether that's network, USB, SD card, those are all attack vectors. Hell, even the files themselves can act as payloads.
they don't do that while flying though.
What percent of GoPro sales are used by aerospace? My guess: It is tiny. Not enough to keep GoPro alive.
Also on Avinox motors on e-mtn bikes. Originally made by DJI, then spun off into their own company, and they are starting to eat the competition on all e-mtn bikes at this point. Bosch, TQ, Shimano, et al just can't compete, especially because Avinox is iterating at startup pace and all the rest are iterating at bike pace (slowly).
This is the key though: it’s not just supposed subsidies, because the Chinese companies are fundamentally just faster and more efficient
I would argue the real answer is world class supply chain for high tech manufacturing. And that supply chain is heavily subsidised.
Simon Wardley has been shouting this from the rooftops, including detailed per industry timelines when China will take over, in 2015.
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> the only good non-Chinese printer that doesn’t cost 10-100x as much is Prusa
They hardly have time to compete, busy as they are with foot-shooting practice.
Not sure what you mean. Had a mk 4 or what the last one was - excellent. Now on core one (or what the name is for the enclosed one), also great.
Dunno, Prusa seems to have mostly forgotten about consumers as their industrial business is booming.
Stuff like this: https://sensofusion.com/dronefactory/
This is of course beyond stupid considering the pace of 3d printer vs one PET bottle blow molding machine that can produce same shape shells at thousand units /hour.
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100%. It would strongly behoove the US to encourage domestic 3d printer manufacture (or friendly countries like Japan), to the point of bannning Bambu and Chinese companies. Obviously we are doing fine for industrial 3d printers, but the small scale consumer stuff is very important too.
If and when AI commiditizes professional services, it would be good to have modern industry to fall back on. With 3d printing the gap isnt insurmountable yet.
However, our country is run by lawyers, not engineers, so I dont have too much hope. At least a lot of our billionaires started out as engineers...
The cost of your proposed policies to consumers, to the Americans who can create because of cheap great Chinese printers and wouldn't be able to create under your policy... is much greater than the abstract industrial policy benefit.
I'm not sure what stops some of these industries from essentially being more nationalist like China, but more centrist as a company like Palantir. If these risks are as big as you claim, a centralized authority should reverse engineer the things that work done in China or where-ever and use open source/build a better software stack that supplants what's out on the market currently.
I think the engineering is actually pretty irrelevant in terms of the competitiveness
> China wants to deindustrialize non-Chinese industries for strategic and/or natsec reasons,
No. Not even close
China wants its place at the table.
With Erope and USA
People seem to think a developed China is a threat. But they are not staying in rural poverty for ever for our sake. That is not a threat.
They are not trying to "deindustrialise" anybody, just finding a place amongst equals
The western countries deindustrialized themselves though. That's just capitalism chasing ever increasing profits and moving production to where it's cheaper, i.e.from west to China. In fact this was cherished because it increased share holder profits.
If you’ve spent a life and the market being supreme then it’s a shock. China’s economic system is wiping the floor with the west.
The U.K. has just nationalised a steel plant which had been bought by China to stop it from being destroyed, and of course the economic right wing hate this as steel is far cheaper to import.
Britain is on a hell of a trajectory. First Brexit then the rise of Reform.
If that scam of a man wins the next election, it’ll be quite the show.
It's basically the same past trajectory of Germany, no? Many countries are on it right now.
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Reform reached 31% in the polls and have slipped to 26%. there’s a (slim) chance Farage will be beaten by a comedian in a bin.
Trump reached 55% and became president. Twice.
Pot. Kettle.
You're not wrong.
But unlike the USA, at least Britons realized Brexit was a mistake. And that Johnson was corrupt and a liar.
I am a citizen of both the UK and USA.
It is astonishing to me that Trump could be voted back in after attempting a coup.
As someone with both an Insta360 camera and a Bambu printer, I feel it, would love to buy GoPro and Prusa, but the value just isn't there.
For one, I had a GoPro whose sensor broke after about 20 minutes of recorded. I ended up getting 3 different replacements, all of which also broke. In the end I just forgot about it when my home burnt down in a wildfire. I got an Insta360 with better picture quality that's also been more reliable for a similar cost.
And I would have loved to buy a Prusa printer but I got a Bambu P1S combo for $600, an equivalent Prusa plus the $300 shipping to Canada would have been ~$2500 CAD. For making trinkets for my 3 year old son plus the few random other things I'd make it's not worth it to pay 4x the money.
Maybe it'll forever be this way due to the differences in cost of living but I do feel as though there's a million barriers to entry to building a business in North America, at least a business that's not fully online.
Unless Canadian prices are much much higher than US, the only Prusa that costs that much is a Core One L or a Prusa XL.
Neither one of those are equivalent to a P1S. They’re 2 tiers above it. Equivalent Bambu printers sell for about the same price.
I have printers from both companies. There are tradeoffs for each, but Prusa isn’t 4x more for an equivalent printer.
Core One+ is $1899 CAD, the MMU3 for the Core One+ is $579 CAD and shipping was quoted over $300 since they ship from Europe and not the US to Canada. Just put these into their shopping cart on their site, right now quoting $2887 (including shipping and duties).
I did get a particularly good deal on the P1S combo apparently, the price on their website already higher than what I paid and it's significantly less in Canada than the US with exchange rate. Are they exactly equivalent, dunno, but both are the cheapest Core XY models with enclosure + colour changer that either sell.
Prusa is also cheaper in the US and EU than Canada.
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Lol your country and your capitalism helped build China.
Wasn't that the thing like ~30 years ago? All the western companies pushing manufacturing into China for increased profit?
Capitalism and the west gave all that power away :), you deindustrialised yourselves.
If GoPro is manufactured in China then it’s no more secure than Insta360.
China does not want to deindustrialize any country. Why do you think of everything in terms of war and domination ? China has built a industry capable of taking any product and make it better and cheaper. There is no psycho strategy behind it. They will do it till every chinese will live a comfortable life equal to an american. At that point america will be able to compete again.
The CCP has publicly explained that their strategy is indeed to dominate key sectors via gov subsidies, de-industrialize other nations and gain strategic leverage in the process.
Why doesn't America do that too? It seems to work really really well.
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government first intervened in British Steel last year to prevent its then-owner, the Chinese company Jingye Group, from shutting it down https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/16/business/britain-national...
boo hoo china bad, buy my more expensive and shitty american product
The biggest attack vector against the world is is Israel and Zionism, not China. Stop bashing China. Its getting silly and infantile.
>People think this doesn’t matter, but GoPros are used all over in aerospace. If we replaced the brand with Insta360, that puts a big attack vector all over the place.
In what way exactly? The camera will magically communicate to the mothership?