Arizona joins movement to ban DJI drones from US operation

Legislators in Arizona are lining up in the procession of authorities across the US looking to ban the use drones made by global leader DJI, citing the company’s China origins as motivating their security justifications.

Arizona Senate Bill 1500 doesn’t name DJI or any other drone maker specifically. But coming amid the rash of national and state initiatives to blacklist the company’s craft, there’s little question about who the proposal is targeting. The text proposes a state public “agency may not purchase, acquire, or otherwise use a drone or any related equipment produced by… a manufacturer domiciled in, or owned or controlled by a country of concern.”

Topping the list of nations proscribed by the Arizona bill is DJI home China, as well as the not-exactly-consumer-and-enterprise-mass-producing-UAV countries Russia, Syria, North Korea, and Cuba.

Like the pending US House bill seeking to slap a de facto prohibition of DJI drone operation in the US by blocking their access to universally used Federal Communications Commission infrastructure, the Arizona text is still in the early legislative phases of gestation. But both passed committee hearings this month, and face little opposition from Republicans dominating the respective chambers considering each.

Their prospects of passage are improved further by the horrendous US-China relations that continue worsening over time, augmenting legitimate concerns over Beijing’s spying and plotting. But that atmosphere has also facilitated what are often transparently protectionist efforts by legislators of both parties to assist US drone manufacturers by gradually shutting DJI out of government and public operation. That has given rise to national legislative goal now being advanced of also grounding DJI drones in the consumer and enterprise markets they’ve dominated.

That protectionism comes at a high cost beyond the violation of supposed sacrosanct free market principles US politicians claim to revere (or, to repurpose a quote by a famous French soccer coach observing a chaotic international match, “the English are the champions of fair play, right until they start losing”.)

The Arizona bill is largely inspired by a law passed in Florida last year. But in banning DJI drone use by public services, that measure forced police, fire, emergency, and other agencies to buy over $25 million in new, US-made replacement UAVs that reportedly don’t perform nearly as well. 

A similarly protectionist measure in Arizona could be prove just as expensive to state taxpayers, given a fleet audit by publication AZMirror finding “(a)lmost all Arizona law enforcement agencies with drones use DJI.” 

The indirect subsidy to US makers engendered by the Arizona bill risks being all the costlier to the public as more states add their own ban initiatives to the growing list of federal blacklists, whose initial focus on government agencies now also threatens public and private users of perhaps millions of DJI drones.

Democrat Christine Marsh, the only Senate committee member to vote against the Arizona bill in its hearing, recognizes the self-defeating consequences of the prohibitions amid what thus far has been an absence of proof by blacklist backers that DJI drones leak data to China as accused.

“We would be taking one more tool away from our already underfunded police departments,” she told AZBigMedia. “We’re taking away the ability for them to find missing people and to get an air view of our situation on the ground that can be dangerous, or worse, because it could be deadly.”

Indeed, as written, the Arizona text might wind up banning the same US-made drones it seeks to assist as well.

In replicating the Florida model, the bill puts a rather fine point on its restrictions by spreading them to any “critical component” made in a listed country. That specification would also apply to China-based parts suppliers that many American UAV makers rely on.

A similar detail, according to a Forbes article last year, led some Skydio operators in Florida last year to stop using their craft to avoid risking fall afoul of the law. Meaning that if passed as written, the Arizona bill might only end up being a boon to that giant drone industry in Tuvalu just waiting to pounce out of stealth mode.