alt.hn

6/28/2026 at 7:07:49 PM

The US Used to Demand the Best Tech. Now We Ban It

 https://www.pcmag.com/opinions/the-us-used-to-demand-the-best-tech-now-we-ban-it

by mwexler

6/28/2026 at 9:07:28 PM

Cars and solar panels get hit the hardest with tariffs and restrictions.

Solar panels: [1]

Cars: [2]

More devices are being hit by US digital sovereignty rules. Most US talk about this revolves around the EU not allowing processing of data about EU citizens outside the EU. It's now a big issue for US customers, too. The US is applying it to many classes of devices. For cars, there's the “Connected Vehicles Rule”.[3] Cars can't phone home to China or some other countries. New models of DJI drones are not allowed to be imported into the US, as mentioned in the article.[4] WiFi-equipped routers have even tighter restrictions.[5]

Will this be extended to phones? "Smart" TVs? That's going to be interesting.

[1] https://www.peacocktariffconsulting.com/solar-panel-imports/

[2] https://motorwatt.com/ev-blog/howtos/importing-a-chinese-ele...

[3] https://www.hoganlovells.com/en/publications/us-bis-final-ru...

[4] https://uavcoach.com/dji-ban/

[5] https://www.fcc.gov/faqs-recent-updates-fcc-covered-list-reg...

by Animats

6/28/2026 at 8:57:35 PM

US bans are based on the incorrect idea that we have control over AI. But the ban only reduces the most advanced model available from US companies. Models from other countries continue development. It's as if the US decided to hit pause on competing on AI and we're just going to let someone else win it.

The US could be using these models to fix bugs and defend out systems.. but instead, we're all waiting for open source models to exceed the best unbanned model available in the US(0), and then we can all watch while attackers -- who can use any available open source model, including banned models -- to attack every US company on the internet.

US bans are a choice: a choice to lose to China; a choice to leave US companies defenseless; a choice to reduce competitiveness of the US in software. Every time a US person or company watches someone use models they are prohibited from using to achieve something US models can't, they create opposition to this ban. I can't imagine this is a sustainable policy.

0. Currently open source models are included in consideration for the "best model in the US" -- but if they're willing to ban the best from Anthropic/OpenAI, I wouldn't necessarily assume that all open source models will always be available within the US.

by rgbrenner

6/28/2026 at 9:06:53 PM

[dead]

by vjvjvjvjghv

6/28/2026 at 8:16:03 PM

>Americans watch the rest of the world getting better, cheaper, ...

If we wanted cheap cars, there needs to be demand to justify building giga factories of EVs.

There just wasnt sufficient consumer demand to justify the giga factory investments

China CAN generate demand for EVs because they have the political ability to

1) force gas restricted cars to only drive on certain days of the week

2) create a brutal lottery to get a license plate to legally drive a gas car

3) provide a bunch of subsidies

The US has only done option 3.

Out govt system literally doesnt have the political will to do these brutal but effective policy changes

by JimsonYang

6/28/2026 at 8:34:42 PM

If we ignore the cultural issues with Americans where some places buying an EV is considered "gay" (because that is inheritently negative to them) then we can easily point to the hostile lobbying tactics and government capitulation via bought congressmen. Go look at the historical hostilities Tesla faced when first trying to take off.

If I still lived in the US, I'd be hesitant to buy an EV because the infrastructure state to state to support charging wasn't great when I was last there. In Europe, you can road trip with your EV no problem.

Let's not entirely blame consumers for not being incentivised enough. Let's face it the US has been actively against EVs. You mention subsidies, haven't those even seen regressions in EV and solar panel subsidies? It's ridiculous.

by dannersy

6/28/2026 at 9:08:02 PM

"Americans where some places buying an EV is considered "gay""

They would jump on EVs in heartbeat if Trump told them to.

by vjvjvjvjghv

6/28/2026 at 8:26:19 PM

New car sales in Europe in 2026 are approaching 50% EV with essentially none of the above. Europe has had generous EV subsidies in the past, but in 2026 those are mostly (but not completely) gone.

by bryanlarsen

6/28/2026 at 8:53:19 PM

Youre right, i forgot to add

4) europeans are environemtally conscious

Americans however like their gas guzzling F150s.

The reason I did the original comment was I know for a time the major car companies did a huge push into EVs.

Like the ford 150 lightning, chevy bolt and mustang mach E. But they stopped manufacturing them due to weakened sales and profitability.

Its a vicious feedback loop of consumer adoption, high car prices, and capital investment which makes us feel stuck

*edit this is based on what I heard from a GM exec during a lecture visit while at UofM

by JimsonYang

6/28/2026 at 9:21:49 PM

> Americans however like their gas guzzling F150s.

Pickup trucks have always made up between 10% and 20% of vehicles on the road in America; it's the SUV that has picked up from next to nothing in 1980 to almost half of all new vehicles now, while the sedan has plunged from 80% to about 25% of new vehicles today.

A big part of that transition to larger SUVs (which are not F150s) was the CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) Standards, which sought to make cars more fuel efficient. They regulated based on the size of the vehicle, so larger vehicles (including both the SUV and the F150) became cheaper to manufacture, while smaller cars were squeezed out of the market as meeting CAFE became too expensive. Larger cars also perform better on safety tests and have an easier time passing onerous safety regulations. Had environmental and safety regulations been handled differently, or if there weren't any, Americans might well be driving more fuel-efficient smaller coupes and sedans.

That said, the Chevy Bolt and Mustang Mach-E are, in fact, being manufactured—the Bolt was recently brought back, and the Mustang Mach-E was never discontinued. The Ford F150 Lightning has been discontinued. Tesla outsells all of them by far.

by Telemakhos

6/28/2026 at 8:58:27 PM

The major US car companies pulled back some on EVs mostly because of hostility toward EVs from the Trump administration.

by tzs

6/28/2026 at 8:43:51 PM

4) add taxes to effectively double price of gasoline

by yobbo

6/28/2026 at 8:48:22 PM

The price of electricity in Europe is also approximately double that of the US.

by bryanlarsen

6/28/2026 at 9:04:43 PM

Hum... Announcing you will completely outlaw combustion cars soon is missing from the GP's options.

by marcosdumay

6/28/2026 at 9:14:09 PM

AFAICT, that increases sales. "I better buy it now, it's going to be banned soon". Just ask the American gun manufacturers. They love announcements of bans because it provides a huge immediate boost in sales. And then in the end the ban ends up being watered down/removed, just like the European bans of combustion vehicles have been.

by bryanlarsen

6/28/2026 at 9:14:52 PM

They don't have the political will because doing (1) and (2) would result in the removal of whatever politicians approved it.

by ronsor

6/28/2026 at 8:19:26 PM

*after further research it seems option 1 is really limited to tier 1 and tier 2 cities(1/3) of the population

by JimsonYang

6/28/2026 at 8:33:37 PM

4) People in China want to save money on gas, while America prefers to bitch about gas prices, while doing nothing to switch away from gas-guzzling ICE land yachts.

by vkou

6/28/2026 at 8:40:10 PM

You've cracked the code on this one, it's not the fact that someone realized they could use labor arbitrage 50 years ago to get rich while selling the American people down the river. Treason in the name of profit.

by Avicebron

6/28/2026 at 9:08:23 PM

Labor arbitrage as treason is a very interesting idea. It's a major reason why China is as developed as it is now.

by matheusmoreira

6/28/2026 at 8:38:59 PM

> Out govt system literally doesnt have the political will to do these brutal but effective policy changes

I agree our country needs to really have some sort of revolution for the good of all humanity to force this change and overcome the entrenched interests of these greedy corporations.

Maybe we come up with a plan to drastically solve our energy and industry problems, overcome all obstacles and bring about a wonderful utopia, I bet we could do it inside of 5 years if we just gave enough power to the right people.

We could call it a 5 year plan, and listen we need broad sweeping powers to do it, otherwise malicious actors would try and subvert it. Some people wouldn't like it but that's because they aren't brave enough to do what needs to be done for the good of the workers and the proletariat. Rise up comrade let us implement the glorious 5 year plan that will free us forever from the capitalist shackles.

by gustavus

6/28/2026 at 8:54:45 PM

I don't understand the surprise in this article. This particular story is absolutely nothing new—the Germans and Japanese did it first to the US car market, which is inefficient, stuck in a bygone era, and propped up by government protectionism. Nearly all* American cars have been backwards in all metrics since about the 1970s.

In general, if you wanted...

Reliability: Japanese. Value: Korean, French, Japanese. Performance: German, Italian, maybe every now and then British. Luxury: German, Italian, British, and depending on marque, Japanese.

And today, Chinese marques are eating everyone's lunch on every metric in the EV sector because they have seen how everyone else builds cars, lorries, and buses for a while, learnt how to do it themselves, got rid of the ICE, popped a battery in them, and have been massively undercutting the market for a while now.

* I should qualify this properly to pre-emptively stave off the ooh-rah crowd: every now and then there has been a decent A-to-B car out of the US, like the Fiesta. Additionally there are models sold purely in Europe like the Ford Mondeo.

by delta_p_delta_x

6/28/2026 at 9:32:08 PM

The EV-only companies build much better EVs than companies that also build ICE cars. It took Tesla to get EVs going in the US.

It will be interesting to see if Slate's little electric pickup truck really ships at the promised price point. They're advertising and taking pre-orders. Delivery dates are vague. "Q4 2026" probably means "a few demo units". Maybe in 2027.

Incidentally, the Donut Labs solid-state battery appears to have been a scam.[1] They were supposed to ship electric motorcycles with it in Q1 2026, and we're almost into Q3. "$25 million raised from 1,300+ small investors", says Electrek. Their "solid state" battery seems to be an ordinary pouch type lithium-ion battery, no better than a good lithium-ion battery.

CATL's CEO says that they're at level 4 (Component/breadboard validation in lab) of 9 in terms of technology maturity. That's worse than expected at this point. There are lots of announcements of "breakthroughs", and at least two test vehicles on the road (Mercedes and Ducati), but nobody has volume manufacturing working yet.

[1] https://electrek.co/2026/06/08/donut-lab-solid-state-battery...

[2] https://electrek.co/2026/06/25/catl-solid-state-battery-leve...

by Animats

6/28/2026 at 9:03:00 PM

US only loves free market if they're the winners.

by matheusmoreira

6/28/2026 at 9:21:48 PM

So does China. E.g.,

China goes beyond protectionism and even threatens other countries from doing their own strategy.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/renewables/chi...

https://sccei.fsi.stanford.edu/china-briefs/chinas-use-unoff...

> The authors conclude that non-tariff barriers were a primary instrument used by China in the U.S.-China trade war, with implications for China’s trade conflicts with other countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_ma...

So does the EU

https://ahdb.org.uk/europe-market-access-and-barriers-to-tra...

Interestingly, champions of free trade come out only when the US puts in any place the tiniest of restrictions.

by thesmtsolver2

6/28/2026 at 8:33:37 PM

I've been thinking for a while that some part of the ebullience towards AI among the American decision-maker class is that it is a good way to stick our heads in the sand and pretend like super-intelligent AI will make up for not being able to build competitive cars and drones. It has the feeling of an easy-to-digest explanation but I'm worried that it's probably wrong.

by codekansas

6/28/2026 at 8:54:10 PM

I’d wager you’re more right than wrong.

by grebc

6/28/2026 at 8:53:26 PM

It's far from ebullience. It's the fear of a younger and more competent workforce.

by sublinear

6/28/2026 at 8:05:58 PM

The WTO was a mistake. We should return to a GATT style trade policy where free trade is allowed (mostly) between open democratic nations with aligned security interests and goals.

by lokar

6/28/2026 at 9:06:37 PM

I've said this before and I will say it again. I don't see any problem in allowing Chinese cars in the US if China manufactures them here under a 49:51 joint venture with an American company.

Also, I'm not sure how long CCP will keep on bankrolling their car companies. They are now competing with each other pushing the profits lower. Over the last year BYD stock is down 40%. Take a look at their auto manufacturers index. It peaked in November 2021 losing about 47% since then (https://www.solactive.com/index/DE000SLA0CA9/)

by malshe

6/28/2026 at 9:27:22 PM

The administration disagrees with you, having just banned the made in South Carolina PoleStar vehicles

by bryanlarsen

6/28/2026 at 8:51:47 PM

> China increasingly resembles the competitive capitalist system Americans were taught to admire, while the US appears to embrace the controlled “kickback” economy we were told to fear.

Spot on

by malshe

6/28/2026 at 9:11:43 PM

Still the best place for Clean, Beautiful, Coal. Can't argue with that.

by actionfromafar

6/28/2026 at 8:29:47 PM

Opening the way for foreign competition.

by wewewedxfgdf

6/28/2026 at 8:02:46 PM

To play devil's advocate, there is some logic to banning Chinese cars, which is that their firmware risks sending telemetry to China, also disabling/malfunctioning the car if China were to have a military engagement with the US. I suggest a middle road which is that the entire telemetry surface and firmware updates must be domestically managed, with no room for a closed-source foreign entity to manipulate it.

An EV really shouldn't be needing to send telemetry at all. It's not a self-driving car. It would be better if the user could reliably and permanently disable it even when one's phone is connected.

The vehicle would also have to be tested to ensure that no covert or p2p radio signals can be sent to it that can signal it to shutdown or malfunction. This is very difficult to assert. There would have to exist domestic personnel who take responsibility for it.

Frankly though, Israel scares me more than China, as Israel is known to actually add remotely detonated explosives to exported consumer products.

by OutOfHere

6/28/2026 at 8:38:26 PM

At this point, for me it's equally scary that the US government can do that. If I can't control the firmware then I don't really care for which government my car is spying for. It's all bad

by gonzalohm

6/28/2026 at 8:07:14 PM

> I suggest a middle road which is that the entire telemetry surface and firmware updates must be domestically managed, with no room for a closed-source foreign entity to manipulate it.

Seems fair? What about manufacturing as well, I'm sure the US can hold these Chinese car design and manufacturing techniques with the same copyright and IP protection that China gives the US's stuff.

by Avicebron

6/28/2026 at 9:13:47 PM

I'm sure China is going to be yearning for those sweet traffic pattern data during a war. They'll know which Walmarts they need to bomb first.

It's not like there are satellites that can get high-res pictures of most of the US every few hours. Or millions of phones running all kinds of software.

Even the US-made cars have dozens of computers that run very crude C-based code, full of bugs and overflows. Security was never a priority for this code. There are so many routes of ingress that it's not even funny.

by cyberax

6/28/2026 at 8:24:45 PM

Then make a regulation that every firmware that runs on car needs to be open sourced.

Banning isn't a good solution, we should create healthy competition.

by cute_boi

6/28/2026 at 7:37:58 PM

It’s been like this for a while. Take a technology, call it a weapon and control it. Same playbook.

by rasengan

6/28/2026 at 7:54:05 PM

denying my godgiven right to recreational nukes is blatant infringement on my rights!

by Chu4eeno

6/28/2026 at 8:16:18 PM

Software would be equated to nukes if companies and people put more time and energy into the security aspects. They cut costs for a long time by not spending on certain aspects. The does not make AI a nuclear bomb equivalent in my mind. Banning the best models makes that harder to rectify. State level hackers will have access to this technology regardless.

Unlike nukes, AI is being used in the cyber warfare realm daily, as both an offensive and defensive tool.

by verdverm

6/28/2026 at 8:14:12 PM

Umm not when the adversary is using heavy government subsidies to undercut prices and essentially take over the industry. Look at what’s happening to the European car industry, with more job losses planned by VW just this week

by nxm

6/28/2026 at 8:28:05 PM

This argument doesn't stand up to much scrutiny.

- The Polestar vehicles most recently banned are made in Charleston SC

- Fossil fuel industries in the US receive huge subsidies

- Non-Chinese brands (Hyundai/ Kia) produce models with similar pricing

by bashtoni

6/28/2026 at 8:17:12 PM

This is a tired argument. When China does it it’s subsidies, when other countries do it it’s called industrial policy.

by _aavaa_

6/28/2026 at 8:29:08 PM

The irony is that China is actually good at effectively using this and getting more out of reach unit of money put in. Perhaps that is why we feel the need to label them differently, though I would also venture it is more a cultural thing. Americans tend to view subsidies as handouts and industrial policy in the Puritan values lens.

by verdverm

6/28/2026 at 8:54:46 PM

Effective Chinese subsidy per vehicle is lower than the $7000 per vehicle the US had in place.

by bryanlarsen

6/28/2026 at 9:13:11 PM

Is that even knowable? The Chinese economy is very opaque.

by actionfromafar

6/28/2026 at 8:36:46 PM

Isn't that the market strategy of silicon valley companies? Sell at a loss, capture the whole market and then inflate prices

by gonzalohm

6/28/2026 at 9:10:06 PM

Why does it matter whether the subsidies come from a government, from venture capitalists, or from private equity?

by antonvs