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There is no robot vacuum manufactured in the United States as far as I can tell.

It seems crazy to me---these devices map out the interior of people's homes and businesses, often with cameras running and a wifi connection to the Internet. Talk about an espionage giveaway... all to a certain authoritarian country in Asia which manufactures 95% of the devices.

I used to be a big free trade advocate but have come to feel that free trade is something of a gift, which should be given mainly to countries whose vision of the world is compatible with ours. It also should not be allowed to undermine security-critical technologies and capabilities, such as electronics and microprocessor manufacture, etc.

In spite of recent tariffs and moves to restrict exports of sensitive technologies, the tech ecosystem in the US seems to be in a seriously impaired position.

If one were to push back against this and try to launch a robot vacuum product assembled in the USA of US-made components... what would it take? What are the economic impediments to doing this in a profitable fashion? Is there an economic policy that would make this feasible?

It seems there are a number of key components: * Microcontroller * Sensors - laser or lidar to map environment - something to determine floor type / depth * Bluetooth antenna to interface with a mobile app * Vacuum * Dust compartment * Dock to autoclean * Embedded software * Mobile app

Such a device would be an ideal candidate for training using reinforcement learning. (Has this been tried? Or is "robot vacuum" already a solved problem?)

My training is in software and machine learning. Yet it is in on the material side of things where the U.S. lags the most. There are so few physical things of relevance to modern life that we are making here these days, and even fewer at a competitive price point.

Would love to hear others' thoughts. Thanks

EDIT: A relevant article from 2011: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/08/17/why-amazon-cant-make-a-kindle-in-the-usa/

With LLMs and foreign troll farms and bot nets, it seems it would be valuable for Americans, or any country's citizens, to have conversations that more or less can be relied on to be carried out by their fellow citizens. For global contexts, the ability to have conversations with very-likely-to-be-human-beings also seems increasingly desirable.

Is this being worked on? Seems like a business opportunity to provide independent proof-of-human in digital form.

Centralized and distributed approaches all appeal. Whatever happened to the Web of Trust?

One issue with solar and wind is their intermittency. But (my economics / engineering mind thinks) if we have a market for electricity where the price of electricity depends on current moment supply and demand rather than a fixed rate (time variable pricing, I think is the term) then the market itself should, over time, address the intermittency.

So, when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing and the price is negative, savvy operators of battery storage, pumped hydro, etc. stock up on energy for later.

Then, when it's the middle of the night and the wind's not blowing, the price spikes, and those who stored energy ahead of time make a profit providing that energy when it's needed most.

Of course this is an abstraction, and I'm not an expert, but... are there utilities whose rate structure enables execution of this kind of arbitrage business model?