In an era where bipartisanship in the US Senate is about as improbable (and infrequent) as spinning straw into gold, there seems to be one topic on which politicians are willing to love it up across the aisle – the general threat to national interests posed by China as a whole, and particularly by drones made by sector leader DJI.
While coming to a debt ceiling agreement to avert what virtually all experts say would be an economically catastrophic default on US loans seems beyond contemplation, 16 members of the Senate did managed come together to again sound the alarm on the purported leak threats embodied by DJI drones. Though those craft have already been barred for use by a variety of federal agencies, the bipartisan group of senators this week penned a letter to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) urging it to conduct an official investigation and publish its findings on the security risks the UAVs represent.
If that call sounds familiar, it’s because that’s been heard repeatedly before.
Read: Blacklisting redux: GOP legislators targeting DJI anew
That involved US legislators – including several signatories of the new letter – leading recurring efforts to have DJI drones banned from an ever-widening list of both federal and public agencies. Included in that activity are different bills tabled to prolong or harden restrictions of existing blacklists, or having the company’s inclusion on them made virtually permanent. None, it would seem, have advanced past their initial, very high decibel rollouts.
The underlying rationale of those efforts were repeated in the letter to the CISA asking it to investigate the Shenzhen firm, its UAVs, and their alleged links to Chinese government organizations.
“China’s efforts to modernize the capabilities of the People’s Liberation Army (‘PLA’), including through their ‘Military-Civil Fusion’ strategy – which systematically blurs the lines between PLA and civilian science and technology research and development efforts – are well documented,” the letter stated, noting a US Department of Defense ruling last year that DJI and its drones were part of Beijing’s purported public-private construct. “Identification of this relationship between DJI and the PLA suggests a range of risks to US operators of the technology, including that sensitive information or data could wind up in PLA hands.”
Read: Report of DJI ‘Chinese drone threat’ in DC skies should direct accusing finger at US legislators
As has been the case since DJI became a favored target of US legislators amid worsening US-China relations, no actual evidence substantiating – or even offering partial proof – of the company’s drones leaking data back to Beijing has been presented.
Moreover, DJI has repeatedly refuted the charges that its drones represent (much less act as) a security threat to users, and has noted that the ability of craft to transmit data is determined by operators themselves.
But as has also been evident in previous legislative offensives against DJI, the new Senate letter similarly rings with protectionist tones suggesting a main motivator behind the drive is to use dominating anti-China sentiment in Washington to support US drone companies battling DJI’s popularity with consumers and enterprise users.
“In 2021, it was reported that DJI controlled almost 90% of the consumer market in North America and over 70% of the industrial market,” the letter says – failing to note DJI’s share of the US commercial drone market dropped to about 54% to since the blacklisting of its craft began. “And in 2019, it was reported that 73% of public safety operations are flown by the company’s aircraft.”
Read: GOP’s top FCC official calls for ban on DJI drone sales in US
That last detail is clearly another factor that sticks in the craw of the letter’s bipartisan authors. Despite successive federal blacklisting of DJI drones – and a concerted communications effort by US legislators to undermine the company’s activities further – statistics suggest a majority of businesses and public administration operators are ignoring the dire warnings from DC to continue using what they consider better UAVs than competitors offer.
Failing actual evidence of the data leaking that DJI is accused of overseeing at China’s behest, it’s unlikely current or future political broadsides will alter operators deciding which drones offer best value for limited budgets. Because while virtually nobody underestimates the nefarious and underhanded objectives and activities of China’s government, it’s just clear most UAV users will give DJI the stink eye based from US politicians who have credibility problems of their own.
Photo: Mike Stoll/Unsplash
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Comments