Roomba’s collapse exposes America’s robotics dilemma

The brief

Christopher Mims joins David Brown to examine how Roomba became a genre-defining American invention, then lost ground as Chinese competitors copied and outcompeted iRobot.

The conversation broadens from iRobot’s bankruptcy to what disappears when manufacturing moves abroad: production know-how, institutional memory, and the capacity to turn inventions into durable industries.

Humanoid robots matter because workplaces already fit human bodies, but tasks such as folding laundry reveal why seemingly simple physical actions remain difficult for machines.

Mims contrasts U.S. strengths in foundational robotics and software with China’s hardware scale, factory deployment, open-weights AI strategy, and control of rare-earth refining.

The episode’s AI realism keeps the focus on behavior: people overestimate new tools, misuse them, and remain central to whether automation works in practice.