The State Is Coming For Your Roomba

Authored by Thiago V. S. Coelho via The Mises Institute,

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.

The consequences will appear as higher prices, fewer models, delayed innovations, and machines that remain on the market longer because potential replacements cannot obtain authorization. These losses will be dispersed among millions of households, laboratories, startups, warehouses, and small businesses. The political gains, meanwhile, will be concentrated among domestic manufacturers and contractors seeking insulation from foreign competition.

That pattern is the essence of protectionism. In Economics in One Lesson, Henry Hazlitt warned that trade barriers encourage observers to notice the immediate benefit bestowed upon a protected industry while ignoring the long-run costs imposed upon consumers and other producers. A ban is merely a prohibitive tariff: instead of making the foreign product somewhat dearer, it attempts to make the next generation unavailable. The visible result may be a ribbon-cutting ceremony at a subsidized factory. The unseen result will be every purchase forgone and every business plan rendered uneconomic by costlier machinery.

Murray N. Rothbard's analysis is even less forgiving. In his analysis of production restrictions in Power and Market, Rothbard identifies licenses, government-defined quality standards, tariffs, and geographical penalties on competitors as forms of monopolistic privilege. The robotic-device ban combines several of them. Foreign firms are excluded by default, domestic firms must satisfy political tests, and officials become gatekeepers empowered to dispense exceptions. Competition shifts from satisfying customers to securing waivers.

This will not necessarily rebuild American industry. It may instead produce an American robotics sector increasingly skilled at lobbying and progressively less skilled at competing. Entrepreneurs learn from rival products, international suppliers, consumer complaints, falling component prices, and failed experiments. Prohibition severs those feedback mechanisms. Even American startups that use foreign sensors, motors, batteries, docks, or contract manufacturing may find themselves caught by domestic-content requirements. The state is not nurturing an infant industry; it is placing the infant in an isolation chamber.

Americans have seen this paternalistic method before. Jeffrey A. Tucker recounts in "The Relentless Misery of 1.6 Gallons" how federal law limited new toilets to 1.6 gallons per flush, displacing conventional models that commonly used between 3.5 and five gallons. The mandate was advertised as enlightened conservation. Consumers experienced clogs, plungers, repeated flushing, dirtier facilities, and a reduced standard of sanitation. In that case, as now, government outlawed a proven convenience and forced the public to accommodate the resulting deterioration. The situation was famously featured in a King of the Hill episode, where Hank Hill was able to repeal the restriction of high-flow toilets, but in real life, it is still standing.

Today, the prohibited convenience rolls across the floor rather than sitting in the bathroom, but the governing conceit is identical. Officials identify one social objective - water conservation then, national security now - and suppress the multitude of tradeoffs that individuals make in real life. Performance, price, privacy, repairability, accessibility, time savings, and personal circumstances are compressed into a single command.

A free society has better answers to insecure machines. Manufacturers can offer offline operation and local data storage. Independent laboratories can test security. Insurers, retailers, reviewers, and consumer organizations can demand audits and publish ratings. Customers can contract for privacy guarantees. Companies that misrepresent their practices can face fraud claims, liability, reputational ruin, and market abandonment. None of this requires Washington to presume that every foreign vacuum is hostile and every domestic vacuum trustworthy.

The Roomba ban should therefore be repealed before it hardens into another permanent reduction in ordinary life.