Another hardware maker bites the dust as iRobot files for bankruptcy, joining a growing wave of manufacturing casualties. The bitter irony? The dilemma that's killing these companies is deceptively simple yet nearly impossible to crack: go global and slash costs by producing overseas, or play it safe at home and watch competitors steal your designs. There's no winning move. Innovators are caught between survival economics and intellectual property nightmares. As more hardware ventures collapse under this pressure, it's worth asking—is the traditional manufacturing playbook even viable anymore in an age of instant duplication? The question matters way beyond robotics.