GrayMatter Robotics CEO: The FCC was right to ban Chinese robots. But protection alone won’t win the robotics race

The Federal Communications Commission’s decision to restrict new Chinese-made humanoid and advanced mobile robots marks one of the most significant industrial policy decisions the United States has taken in years.

It reflects a growing recognition that robotics is no longer simply another technology market. It is becoming a strategic capability that will shape manufacturing, economic competitiveness and national security for decades to come.

The decision was the right one. But it would be a mistake to believe it answers the larger question facing the United States.

Protection may buy America time. It will not, by itself, make America the world’s robotics leader.

That challenge runs much deeper.

For much of the past two decades, America has rightly celebrated its capacity to innovate. Our universities remain the world’s finest. Our entrepreneurs continue to build transformational companies. Artificial intelligence is the latest example of American ingenuity shaping the global economy.

Yet innovation alone has never guaranteed industrial leadership.

Increasingly, success depends not on who invents first, but on who can manufacture, deploy and scale those innovations most effectively.

China understood this years ago. Today, its commercial shipbuilding industry has more than 230 times the production capacity of the United States. It also operates more than two million industrial robots across its factories, around five times the American total. Those figures are about far more than ships or automation. They reflect a long-term national strategy to expand industrial capacity, strengthen supply chains and turn technological advances into........

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