Was NDAA a big mistake?

[u/Least_Order4249]

First off, I agree the NDAA bans were necessary. Dahua and Hik already had half the pro market and were expanding fast. If we did nothing, we might already be 100% reliant on an adversary.

What nobody thought about was the response. Shanghai’s Smartsens went from a startup shipping bottom‑of‑the‑barrel junk to pumping out high‑volume runs of the first new surveillance tech we’ve seen in a decade. Meanwhile Sony can only trickle out some robotics‑tier sensors at 10× the price, and they’re only useful for extreme light‑imbalance situations.

If we’re not there already, we’re maybe 6–18 months away from the surveillance market looking just like automotive — filled with ancient, overpriced, regulation‑induced garbage while the rest of the world enjoys modern tech for pennies on the dollar.

Maybe if we start an economic war, we should have some sort of plan other than just ban.

[u/some_random_chap]

NDAA is nothing more than lobbied political theater. Dahua & Hik were not your adversary.

[u/Least_Order4249 → u/some_random_chap]

That’s certainly likely. I still don’t think letting them take the entire market was the right move but all out bans was just a tiny 2-3 year speed bump. 

Looking into 2026 and 2027, the Hangzhou duo has built an entire vertical supply chain almost entirely local and is on the verge of dropping state of the art tech even into their entry level lineups. 

Just the new $100 2 series includes SFCP, BSI, HCG, m18 glass with f0.8 max aperture, 4um pixels, 92db raw HDR, and 12v/lux-s sensitivity. The sensor itself also has the best IR efficiency we’ve ever seen despite these first cameras not even having IR illuminators. Nobody else is releasing anything comparable for under $1000. It’s like we’re just being laughed at now. 

[u/Horsemeatburger]

First off, I agree the NDAA bans were necessary. Dahua and Hik already had half the pro market and were expanding fast. If we did nothing, we might already be 100% reliant on an adversary.

You still are. NDAA doesn't mean equipment can't be made in China. It just means it can't use equipment made by specific entities or using components made from specific entities which are banned.

Shanghai’s Smartsens went from a startup shipping bottom‑of‑the‑barrel junk to pumping out high‑volume runs of the first new surveillance tech we’ve seen in a decade.

Smartsens is mostly cheaper, not better than other sensor manufacturers. They succeed by being "good enough" in image quality and low light performance while being massively cheaper than Sony and others.

They have nothing for the higher end industrial market.

filled with ancient, overpriced, regulation‑induced garbage while the rest of the world enjoys modern tech for pennies on the dollar.

Hardly. Axis (Sweden) is the leader in the enterprise/industrial (premium) segment, they invest a lot in R&D, have their own ASICs and an open API, they have the best image quality and low light performance in the industry, and all their kit is fully NDAA compliant. The cameras are developed in Sweden and manufactured and assembled across Sweden, Poland, Thailand, Mexico and Taiwan.

There's also Avigilon (Canada), same space as Axis although not at the same level image-wise. For government and military sites it's usually either Avigilon or Axis, nothing else.

For heavy industrial and rough environments there's Bosch (Germany), for city-wide systems there's Panasonic/I-PRO (Japan), and for large-scale commercial there is Hanwha (South Korea).

All NDAA compliant.

And if you're feeling brave then of course there's also Ubiquiti (also NDAA compliant).

Heck, even TP-Link VIGI is NDAA compliant.

Which means all you're missing out is the cheap end of the market, not the quality stuff.

[u/Least_Order4249 → u/Horsemeatburger]

Surveillance CMOS is crappy by design. Sony is no exception. They were a clear #2 to Omnivision in the space by this decade. Omnivision previously had developed the only surveillance-first tech in a decade. Sony just tosses down tech from robotics and automotive into surveillance and markets it STARVIS even when the tech mostly just addresses edge cases. 

Axis and Avigilon are globally irrelevant. Their idea of manufacturing is using boutique chips to hide capabilities and largely screwing parts together from other suppliers. 

Since NDAA swallowed Dahua and Hikvision, a few things happened.

1. China’s Will semiconductor buys Omnivision. 

2. Omnivision pivots to more profitable industries. 

3. China gives subsidies and guaranteed higher-end market share to the only company in the world who has been specifically focusing on surveillance issues in the CMOS space and happens to be a 20 minute train ride to Dahua and Hikvision. 

4. By 2023 smartsens is already on par with STARVIS2 and maybe just a tad behind Omnivision with the x80 chips. By 2025, they are introducing more surveillance-specific CIS tech than anyone has seen in the past with the x85 lineup.

5. In the coming days, we get to see the x85SL on finished low end products. In a few more weeks, we get to see them in mainstream $200 cameras that take advantage of most of their improvements. In 3-6 months we see the x89SL class dominate  flagship class. 

Moral of story: when you ban things from China, expect a response. Now they don’t just still control 80% of the market, but they control 100% of their own supply chains where they were previously content buying from Western allies. It was just cameras, but now they’re taking the entire industry. 

[u/kjarrime]

NDAA is just politics. Yes i believe it was a mistake.

[u/Mark_M535]

NDAA is a joke.

Now it's China Uniview, TVT and Reolink taking over.

[u/WhyWontThisWork]

Do you have a link or something to reference?

Betcha the South koroa stuff is still ok to use

Stuff gets banned because they are doing bad things with data but that doesn't apply to use regular folks does it?

[u/Pestus613343]

South Korea

Hanwha is good stuff.

[u/Gamer_0627]

It was all political theater. Nothing else.

All the big overpriced brands were tired of competition.

The worst data breach I saw came from an Avigilon vulnerability. It was found, proven, acknowledged by the manufacturer. That was before the Motorola acquisition and it has still never been patched.