Trump Administration Bans New Chinese Humanoid Robots (bbc.com) 146
The Trump administration has banned newly authorized foreign-made humanoid and four-legged robots, along with power inverters, citing "unacceptable risks" to the country's national security. FCC chairman Brendan Carr said the agency was doing its part "to secure America's critical supply chains." The BBC reports: The FCC has added the items to its Covered List -- a register of goods and services that are deemed a risk to US national security. The ban applies to new foreign-produced advanced robotic devices and power inverters and does not prevent the sale or import of any existing models that had been previously authorized by the FCC.
The FCC cited concerns that the use of foreign-made inverters could allow overseas firms to turn them off, steal data, facilitate remote access and surveillance by "foreign government actors, or be otherwise exploited through a cyberattack." It added that the use of robots made outside the US could allow "malign actors to surveil Americans, enhance the capabilities of foreign intelligence services, or to remotely commandeer the robots."
The FCC cited concerns that the use of foreign-made inverters could allow overseas firms to turn them off, steal data, facilitate remote access and surveillance by "foreign government actors, or be otherwise exploited through a cyberattack." It added that the use of robots made outside the US could allow "malign actors to surveil Americans, enhance the capabilities of foreign intelligence services, or to remotely commandeer the robots."
Enron Husk desperate to stop the stock freefall (Score:5, Funny)
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Also, it's a real shame it's impossible to design a power inverter without any complex logic or arbitrary data links. I imagine they can't flip those electrons back and forth without maintaining a lively chat with the mothership.
True, but the esp32 microcontroller chip that's at the root of all this costs only a dollar or two, so no MBA is going to approve funding a redesign.
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ESP32 is not cheaper than a full-featured dedicated three phase inverter IC from TI.
And there's less engineering hours involved in that sort of design.
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Re: Enron Husk desperate to stop the stock freefal (Score:3)
RTFS "along with power inverters"
Re: Enron Husk desperate to stop the stock freefal (Score:2)
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That was 2025. Now they're an AI company.
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Apparently they still make cars too.
Re:Enron Husk desperate to stop the stock freefall (Score:5, Insightful)
So you have somehow missed all the hype around the Tesla Optimus humanoid robot? And how China is basically causing it to be unmarketable at their hinted pricing by massively undercutting it? https://economy.ac/news/2026/0... [economy.ac]
Also, Tesla makes solar panels. Solar panels create DC voltage, which needs to go through an inverter to be used on an AC system. You think that this ban of cheaper inverters doesn't help Tesla, who makes their own inverters?
Good lord, dude.
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1) anything with both a battery and a brushless motor has an inverter
2) Inverter is being discussed because it's in the document announcing the rule, on the line right before "robots," with a link to the whole explanation about the importance of the power grid. The key sentence in that document is probably, "The lack of a secure U.S. supply chain for inverters and the continuous inflow of foreign-produced or controlled inverters and inverter components poses threats to U.S. economic and national security."
I
Re: Enron Husk desperate to stop the stock freefal (Score:2)
"The US is basically invasion proof"
Tell us you have learned literally nothing from the Russian invasion of Ukraine without telling us.
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There is virtually no parallel between an invasion of Ukraine or Ukraine's response which parallels a potential invasion of the US beyond the word 'invasion.'
If anything I'd say the US thwarting a Russian invasion by proxy with a half-hearted effort in Ukraine says a great deal about how ridiculous it would be to suggest anyone is likely to be able to invade the US mainland.
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There is virtually no parallel between an invasion of Ukraine or Ukraine's response which parallels a potential invasion of the US beyond the word 'invasion.'
Wars of the future will, like wars of the past, be settled by manufacturing capacity. And it's capacity to manufacture drones. Which country do you think is most capable of that today? It sure as shit isn't the USA.
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ROFL are you suggesting China? China can't even invade a small island directly off its own coast that the US wants. Which is smart, the US is the only nation which has successfully projected power across the oceans in the modern world. It's a daunting logistics problem that only the US has solved and the US was able to do it and slaughter the Chinese more than 20-1 with just 1950s technology.
"Wars of the future will, like wars of the past"
Wars of the past have not all been settled by manufacturing capacity.
Please let in one last batch ... (Score:5, Insightful)
to replace Trump and his cronies. It would be very hard for them to do a worse job.
Good luck (Score:2)
Re:Good luck (Score:4, Insightful)
The Trump regime is not connected to reality. See, for example, the doubling down on the tariffs that are absolutely devastating for the US economy. Or the "short" Iran war that they still have not found a way out of.
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The Trump regime is connected to the reality of sabotaging the USA.
It really doesn't matter why or for who, although it's Putin ofc.
Re: Good luck (Score:2)
specialized equipment is always better at sufficient volume. But it's also usually wildly expensive. Either Becuase its produced by a low volume specialist company or because you built it in house - either way you typically have massive embedded engineering costs and, to prevent those costs being even higher, you significant over specified all the individual components.
Programming a generic robot to do the same thing could be easier. Superficially it seems like the p
Re: Good luck (Score:2)
You have it backwards when it comes to robotics. Making a humanoid general purpose robot means it's crap at everything, not good at everything, because robot dexterity is crap compared to ours, and so is latency. People have thought they could fix this in software since the seventies, they were wrong then, they are wrong now.
Chinese robots (Score:3, Funny)
Do they have a robot that resembles an elderly, overweight man with a comb-over and who keeps nodding off in important meetings and at events?
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Does your whataboutism help you to sleep at night?
Does it change a single thing, anywhere?
Do you always equivocate and justify currently terrible people by pointing at past people that are no longer relevant to anything?
Please answer, for posterity, what bringing up Biden does for you, when the current president and his administration:
- are shielding child sex traffickers and pedos
- are starting new forever wars in the middle east, after saying he wanted to stop them
- is causing more inflation and price hik
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It's not a forever war if they can't even prioritize targets and conserve needed munitions. They're already getting to the point of finding that out.
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Oh, so it's perfectly fine for the "no more wars" guy to start illegal wars of choice without Congress's consent, as long as it doesn't last "forever."
Never mind that he said it would be days, and it's now been 5 months with no end in sight. Sure.
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Biden right now, today as we speak, is more cognitively coherent than Trump.
Here's the challenge: Submit a video clip of Donald Trump discussing a topic, policy or issue and demonstrating a cohesive understanding of it, where he shows he's done the reading, absorbed the information and speak about it in an intelligent manner.
Anything at all, please submit. Should be easy right, he's the President.
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Wow, I can't decide. Either you're remarkably ignorant about the Middle East in general and Iranian society in particular, or you're an Usrael troll. Congratulations!
The Power Inverters are coming for us! (Score:3)
Weâ(TM)re all going to die!
Seriously, how can power inverters be any kind of threat, and what does the fcc have to do with them, beyond measuring potential em interference?
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The term is specifically targeting solar and large-scale battery (like a whole home or grid-scale) inverters:
https://www.fcc.gov/covered-li... [fcc.gov]
* Device has to be bi-directional DC<->AC.
* Device has to support wireless remote management.
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I can get a 5kW hybrid inverter for ~50v battery systems for around 500 euros, with a backup port. So you can put a couple important circuits on the backup port cheaply without a whole house transfer switch. Everything has wireless.
Basically all foreign hybrid inverters are gone now, but you can still get enphase for 10x the cost.
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Weâ(TM)re all going to die!
Seriously, how can power inverters be any kind of threat, and what does the fcc have to do with them, beyond measuring potential em interference?
It's about the ESP32 microcontroller chip that's in everything.
Already discussed at length on slashdot
https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]
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And the main criticism is still valid: How would anybody access that from a distance? You cannot do ground-to-orbit on these things. Do they envision the Chinese driving vans though the streets to switch off solar inverters?
Re:The Power Inverters are coming for us! (Score:5, Interesting)
https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/power-inverter-fcc-determination.pdf
https://content.striderintel.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Strider-Report-In-Broad-Daylight-2025.pdf
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And that is a different problem. This is about Internet-connected inverters, not regular small solar inverters.
Minimal insight into the matter required.
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This. Most solar inverters, batter inverters, and anything else used in home or even larger scales require the customer to buy an additional thing to actually make them internet connected.
Sensible legislation targets a problem. Trump legislation targets a nation. There's nothing wrong Chinese inverters, there's no security risk there either. There may however be good reason to regulate the use of inverters that don't have online connectivity as a 100% optional feature.
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Most solar inverters, batter inverters, and anything else used in home or even larger scales require the customer to buy an additional thing to actually make them internet connected.
False. Typically they require payment, after which they push the "allowed" command to the already-actually-connected device.
It is exceptionally rare for modern devices to even have expansion slots for additional hardware.
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If you are incompetent and paranoid enough, everything becomes a threat and actual evidence is not required anymore.
In the case at hand, they probably completely mistake what an ESP32's communication capabilities and reach are.
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Why do you accept that the reasons he give mean anything?
He wants to get rid of the power inverters. His excuses are just whatever sounds good at the moment. (That he wants to do it to cripple solar power sounds plausible, but I don't really believe it. That someone asked him to do it sounds more likely.)
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My take is that the ESP32 in there is the reason the power inverters even came to his attention. Some flimsy justification for the dumb. We have seen that fake argument in Europe as well, but after a brief panic, nobody cares now and things continue as before.
Obviously, he wants to kill solar and wind and keep the US dependent on the oil from the middle east. People there gave him shiny toys and he is hoping for more.
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Nearly all power inverters of the type they are targeting are always connected to the interview for reporting and logging purposes. Of course you don't have to connect them but it's helpful if they are. Many can be integrated with third party dash boards. I don't know if anyone with home solar that doesn't look at their inverter dashboard regularly to see how they are doing with power generation and consumption.
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In the age of llms you'd think Google's Android keyboard could do more context analyst and stop sucking so badly but apparently not. Should have been "Internet" not "interview."
Re: The Power Inverters are coming for us! (Score:2)
If it makes you feel any better, apples is still terrible too, I tried doing some swiping on my work iPhone recently and it was tragic
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Hang up and drive!!!
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Calling B.S. on Trumps ban, however...
They could be made to destroy themselves or the equipment that they are powering. The malware could modify the switching waveforms to overvolt the power busses and cause fires elsewhere.
Your Answer With Track Record (Score:3)
It has been found that many inverters, commercial and residential, unexpectedly contained cellular network modems. These could be used to surreptitiously access/control inverters remotely. For instance the Chinese government decides to turn off U.S. power. There's also the concern about unknown firmware and what not. Some might consider this ridiculous or fear mongering. But, we have examples to demonstrate that the threat can be very real.
In the below example, a Chinese inverter company(Deye) shutdown/bric
It's called "Galapagosing" (Score:3, Insightful)
Galapagosing: when a country cuts itself off from foreign products, and develops weird, inefficient, local stuff that wouldn't survive in the global market.
America did it years ago with cars (American cars are rubbish and no-one else buys them). Now they're doing it with drones and robots.
One days tourists might visit America to gawk at their over-priced steampunk robots.
Re: It's called "Galapagosing" (Score:2)
Did you coin this? I googled and found zilch.
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It's variously called "galapagosization", "Galapagos syndrome", "Galapagos-ka" in Japanese, or "island gigantism". The GP probably didn't read it properly.
I love Gundam (Score:2)
The only place humanoid robots might make sense is if you're trying to replace the emotional connection with humans because you don't want to have to pay humans to do work.
So for example a School district tried to replace a teacher with a robot because they
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America did it years ago with cars (American cars are rubbish and no-one else buys them).
This was nonsense until China started putting out cheap EVs below cost. American automakers had huge overseas sales.
Re: It's called "Galapagosing" (Score:2)
Re: It's called "Galapagosing" (Score:2)
Mercedes makes European muscle cars.
Germans are probably the Europeans most resembling Americans. Most of their cars are automatics now, and lots of them are fat, and... You know...
Lots of those cars were indeed designed for Europe, but some weren't. The F-Series still sells well in other countries with wide roads. Others were designed to be international, like Focus.
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It happened first when the Japanese started selling cheap cars to the US. Then the trade barriers came up, and the Japanese opened US factories. I don't count US-made Toyotas and Hondas as "American".
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Ford and GM both build a lot of cars overseas. And then there's Stellantis, not sure what to say about that. HTH, HAND.
what we really need to ban (Score:2)
What we really need to ban are humanoid politicians. There's no reason they need to look like humans since they are nothing more than vending machines.
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BJs (Score:2)
Re:BJs (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: BJs (Score:3)
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See: Tesla Optimus, a humanoid robot product they are looking to get into the market if they can ever make it work without humans behind the curtain.
See Also: Tesla Energy, which installs a lot of solar panels and inverters.
This is Elon Musk.
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"where he's famously internally sidelined to keep away from important things."
That's not famous at all... in fact I've never heard of such a thing. Musk is heavily involved in SpaceX. Citations needed.
The latest products...
you're cherry picking. To be successful, you have to be prepared to fail and real success more often than not leads a trail of failure, not always visible, behind it.
Little by little... (Score:4, Informative)
...we are losing access to the best technology in the world while demonizing experts.
There was once a time when the best and brightest came here to invent and create, now we arrest them.
Welcome to the moronosphere.
Hmm (Score:2)
War on Energy (Score:2)
Their War on Energy has to be about depopulation at this point. They've destroyed 20% of world oil, sulfur, helium, fertilizer, natgas, and now they're going after the building blocks of home solar installs that could help people cope.
At the same time the RFP for Draft Management Software closed today.
Even Alex Jones is calling for impeachment. They've gone totally off the deep end.
Robo recall (Score:2)
The FCC has no such authority to ban inverters or robots or anything else. What this is really about is targeting of radios in such devices that require FCC approval and denying approval not based on technical characteristics of the hardware but politics. This is the same covered list trick as the "router ban" which also bans radios not routers.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/cf... [cornell.edu]
And of course just like the router ban it comes with an arbitrary shakedown regime:
"The Executive Branch interagency body has esta
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That's not how he's protecting Americans. He is sucking up all the graft he can to protect his fellow Americans from it.
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See Nazi Germany and see how well your philosophy worked out for them. Too ancient, try N. Korea.
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BEEP BOOP, MR ROBOTO.
Re:Trump is RIGHT. Wake up, you Communists (Score:5, Interesting)
Are you real ? You sound fucking demented.
Try this in your pipe.
Americans are not free. Most are shackled to debt in hope of buying happiness, working jobs they don't want to. They work longer hours, have less holidays and earn less than many countries in the western world. Many Americans are poorly educated, obese and unwell, they suffer a variety of addictions drugs, alcohol, food, social media. They have no public healthcare provision, disregard for the environment and their lifespan is reducing. Half of Americans hate the other half, because they are led by the most selfish, greedy and ruthless who are respected like peasants respect a king, the other half are trying to protect themselves from the other half. Americans have been engaged in some kind of war somewhere since their country's formation and when not fighting overseas they often shoot each other, kids included.
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All true, but this will not pierce this OP cretins reality-exclusion-bubble. The people that scream "WAKE UP" are typically those deepest in delusion. Those that have some actual observations also have some actual facts and arguments. And the rarely scream.
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For the longest time, Americans have judged their freedom based upon how hostile they can treat their enemies. As long as they don't have to bake the cake for a gay couple, the "freedom lovers" are perfectly fine with militarized police marching on the streets, a broken arm sending them to bankruptcy court, or usury eventually leading to garnished wages and homelessness.
It's also how they justify having the most expensive military in the world just to drone overseas residential areas, bomb schools full of c
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You would probably be really shocked to learn that most of the cake shops in the US are totally gay.
You let a bunch of right-wing media companies trick you into believing a lot of false narratives. It's sad, it's almost like you were replaced by a shitty robot that does your thinking for you.
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The Strait of Hormuz consists entirely of Iranian and Omani coastal waters, no international waters there. They have every bit as much right to decide what happens in the Strait of Hormuz as the US and Canada have to decide what happens in the Strait of Juan de Fuca that enters into Puget Sound.
Re: Trump is RIGHT. Wake up, you Communists (Score:2)
Americans are fed propaganda all their lives, so they go a little nutso when their own lying eyes disagree with Big Brother. One coping mechanism is to be an absolute zealot to the cause so that your social groups still respect you as a True Patriot.
Sad that this guy has shitty friends, and sad that he feels the need to put on a little performance in order to feel accepted by them.
It's an AI chatbot (Score:2, Offtopic)
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While this is true, I'm pretty sure that you can replace "Americans" with almost any modern country and 80% of this statement will apply. Almost everywhere people are working jobs that they hate, consuming food and drink that they probably shouldn't be having frequently, are saddled by crippling debt, and wasting their time on divisive social media that's trying to convince them that all of the world's problems are the Other Party's fault.
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And don’t forget they still use Imperial. And tipping culture. And voting on tuesdays
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You sound like exactly the sort of person who would cause a spaceship to crash because you didn't know that units are important.
Or somebody that would program a robot to fall over because you thought the US used "imperial" and looked up the wrong value for a ton.
We don't use "imperial." We use United States Customary Units, aka "American standard units."
Fun fact: American engineers are better at unit conversion than European engineers, and less likely to accidentally use a millimeter value when the units ar
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Americans are not free. Most are shackled to debt in hope of buying happiness, working jobs they don't want to. They work longer hours, have less holidays and earn less than many countries in the western world. Many Americans are poorly educated, obese and unwell, they suffer a variety of addictions drugs, alcohol, food, social media. They have no public healthcare provision, disregard for the environment and their lifespan is reducing. Half of Americans hate the other half, because they are led by the most selfish, greedy and ruthless who are respected like peasants respect a king, the other half are trying to protect themselves from the other half. Americans have been engaged in some kind of war somewhere since their country's formation and when not fighting overseas they often shoot each other, kids included.
Aside from all of that, USA is still the best. Ra ra ra! USA! USA! USA! (vomit)
You failed to mention the worst part: Rule of Law is a thing of the past.
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Re: Trump is RIGHT. Wake up, you Communists (Score:2)
Hate's a strong word but I don't think it's far off from accurate for me. I think it's mostly because they are so full of bullshit. Everything they say is false and they repeat it with the confidence of a LLM. Which is why I hate talking to LLMs, in fact.
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[...] that desecration of Homer in the cinemas, with Trans and gays [...]
Totally. Absolutely no homosexuality in Greek antiquity. Had to be added in by woke Hollywood. History has been rewritten.
For sure, when your "just-a-friend dies", you will also refuse to eat, bathe, and request your bones to be mixed in the same urn as his.
--
Fascism is not LEFT wing, and never was. (You're delusional.)
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Indeed. There is quote a bit wrong with the movie, but depiction of homosexuality is probably at least somewhat historically accurate. I remember a quote from History class about ancient Greece that went something like "A woman to found a family, a man as a lover".
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Be nice. It's got to be rough finding out that the glorified founding myth of your entire civilization conflicts with a line some guys slipped into your childhood cultural conditioning materials in the 1950s.
Fortunately all the Google results for Homer are from the Simpsons.
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If you ever actually read Homer you'll find that it's mostly glorified founding myths, repeated again and again by comparison with the protagonists.
You clearly meant well, though. It's about as horrid, amoral, and boring as reading 1950s propaganda.
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Sorry, I'm not sure what you're trying to say.
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Sure, but it's a little late. US support got them into the WTO. Now the US wants ASML to cut it's own wrists to the tune of 10 Billion, while EU countries aren't allowed to sell inverters to the US either.
Decoupling from China is one thing, but the US is just fucking everyone without a reach around at this point.
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It doesn't say the stupid thing you're imagining, it says "unless you get a waiver." European companies usually have an easy time getting wavers, in the rare events that they actually manufacture something. (For example, past telecommunications restrictions had exceptions for both the European companies making covered products)
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Until Enphase wines and dines the right person and Victron inverters start getting a years delay for conditional approvement.
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Re:Trump is RIGHT. Wake up, you Communists (Score:5, Insightful)
China is Socialist, there are NO freedoms there, a Hell.
If you ever realize that that everything you thought was black and white in this world is actually shades of grey, you're going to have your worst and best day at the same time.
Re: Trump is RIGHT. Wake up, you Communists (Score:2)
China cannot become a superpower any more than America can become peopled half of more with know nothing idiots, and for the same reason.
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can become peopled half of more with know nothing idiots
Drink!
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I'm not going to spend a lot of effort making sure that google's "AI" keyboard correctly predicted what I was trying to write on this site where the "editors" put zero effort into... well, anything at all, in fact.
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China learned almost a thousand years ago that attempting to conquer and occupy foreign territory against the wishes of its populace was unsustainable, while trade links and mutual interests could last centuries. Unfortunately the US does not have the history to have learned that, nor the ability to learn from other cultures.
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China learned almost a thousand years ago that attempting to conquer and occupy foreign territory against the wishes of its populace was unsustainable,
Do you even own a history book? You're matching the bottom half of your sig here.
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Do you bathe in right-wing kool-aid or something?
Trump is FUCKING UP every single thing he touches. Name one single thing he's done in the last two years that directly benefits you. Just one.
I won't wait for your answer, because I'll go ahead and name a small collection of things he's done to harm you greatly. It is nowhere near a complete list:
1. illegal war of choice in Iran, driving all prices higher due to energy shocks and unavailability of core inputs like fertilizer
2. illegal and stupid tariffs, d
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Re: Good.. (Score:3, Informative)