What smart people are saying about Trump's ban on new Chinese humanoid robots

• The Trump administration has announced a ban on new Chinese humanoid robots entering the US.
• The FCC said the robots pose “unacceptable safety risks” to national security.
• Some policy pundits have voiced full-throated approval for the ban. Others worry it will harm US companies.

Justin Lopas, founder of Base Power”So lets say I want to start a humanoid company, making brains/software (American competitive advantage). What exactly are my options in the USA, now?” wrote the former Meta and Nvidia researcher.

Deedy Das, partner at Menlo Ventures

In an episode of the “This Week in Startups” podcast released on Wednesday, Das said the US should subject robotics to far more scrutiny than it does AI models.

“The kind of damage vectors on language models are far more restrictive than what can happen with robotics,” he said.

The VC added that it is quite difficult for the US to manufacture robots at the prices Chinese companies are offering.

“They are astounding that they can get this low. America needs to do something to be able to compete in the same way that it had to for the chips and LLM landscape,” he said.

Jason Calacanis, tech podcaster and angel investor

On the same podcast released on Wednesday, Calacanis called the ban “smart.”

“You wouldn’t want to have a situation where one morning 10,000 of these woke up with the instructions to take out a terrorist attack,” he said, referring to humanoid robots. “I know it sounds fantastical, but if I told you, 50 years ago, that terrorists would take two airplanes and crash them into the World Trade Center, you’d be like, ‘that’s insane.'”