What we should all be concerned about aren't the exports. It's the "imports" -- drones invading our airspace, built by no-name manufacturers and launched by anonymous people, for who knows what purposes.<p>Even without nefarious goals, a drone can simply malfunction and drop on someone's head, which is already dangerous. But if 1 out of 1000 drones is programmed to do something malicious, how would our legal systems address it? Do we even have a system that could prevent something like that? We've never had to deal with autonomous robots roaming among people before.<p>What I'm most afraid of is the arms race of drones. It will happen before the AI arms race that Hawking and Musk warn about: <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/27/artificially-assured-destruction/" rel="nofollow">http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/27/artificially-assured-destru...</a>
This is silly. They are not acting in their own best interests by doing this. The only thing this does is open up the opportunity for someone else to step in. It's not like they are leading in either drone or supercomputer technology.<p>It would make sense if they were so ahead of the curve that everyone was clamoring to get the stuff and in which case the restrictions on the top end stuff would make sense but as it is I don't think they're in that kind of position. Manufacturing wise they might be but not in terms of R&D.
If by "restrict" they mean "prohibit", then this unilateral action just destroyed most of the world's hobbyist & prosumer UAV trade flows, which were driven by Shenzhen factories big and small.