The federal government has discovered another menace to the republic: the vacuum cleaner.
In July, the Federal Communications Commission added foreign-produced “advanced robotic devices” to its Covered List, generally preventing new models from receiving the authorization needed to be imported, marketed, or sold in the United States. Although early headlines emphasized Chinese humanoid robots and mechanical dogs, Sean Hollister reported in The Verge that the rule also encompasses robotic vacuums, lawnmowers, delivery machines, and many warehouse robots. It potentially applies to almost any wireless, software-controlled ground robot weighing more than 4.4 pounds and capable of perceiving its surroundings.
This is not yet a confiscation campaign. Americans may continue using their existing vacuums, and retailers may sell models that were previously authorized. The prohibition falls principally on future foreign-produced models unless their manufacturers secure conditional approval. Yet the distinction makes the policy more absurd, not less. According to the Federal Communications Commission’s own fact sheet, the supposed security danger is serious enough to exclude new household products but not serious enough to affect previously purchased machines – or even purchases and use by federal agencies.
The security concerns are not imaginary. Sean Hollister himself had documented in an earlier The Verge article in February how a vulnerability in DJI Romo robotic vacuums allowed a researcher to obtain information from roughly 7,000 devices, including room maps, location data, and, in some circumstances, camera access and remote control. A machine carrying sensors through every room can plainly become an instrument of surveillance when its manufacturer handles data irresponsibly.
But a real problem does not vindicate every coercive response proposed in its name. The FCC’s rule does not primarily distinguish secure robots from insecure ones. It distinguishes foreign production from domestic production. Jennifer Pattison Tuohy observes in “The Ban on Robot Vacuums Won’t Make Them Safer, Only Worse” that a vacuum assembled in Massachusetts is not automatically more secure than one assembled in Shenzhen. The government is restricting where machines are made without demonstrating that domestic manufacture guarantees encrypted storage, responsible data retention, local processing, independent auditing, or competent software maintenance.
From a libertarian standpoint, the first question is not whether officials can imagine a danger. They can always imagine one. The question is whether the government may forcibly prevent peaceful adults from purchasing a product because bureaucrats believe that they have evaluated its risks better than the buyer has. A person owns his home, his money, and his network. He may sensibly refuse to place an internet-connected camera on his floor. He may instead purchase one after reading disclosures, disabling cloud functions, installing firewall rules, or deciding that the convenience exceeds the risk. That judgment belongs to the property owner, not to a federal licensing authority.
The Austrian case against the ban begins with consumer choice. In his explanation of the concept of consumer sovereignty, Robert P. Murphy explains that Ludwig von Mises regarded consumer spending as a continuing plebiscite directing entrepreneurs toward the goods people value. In a market, producers retain their position only by persuading customers. The FCC reverses that relationship. Consumers may vote for inexpensive Chinese vacuums, privacy-oriented American machines, offline models, or no robot at all – but only after Washington has removed the candidates it dislikes.
Ludwig von Mises described this mechanism precisely in chapter 39 of Human Action. Restrictive intervention forbids or makes more expensive particular methods of production, transportation, and distribution. It thereby eliminates means that people could have used to satisfy their wants. Government may redirect production, but it cannot conjure the factories, skilled labor, components, logistical networks, and accumulated knowledge that its decree assumes into existence. It can force robotic production away from locations selected through market calculation; it cannot guarantee that the replacement arrangement will be equally productive.
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