blacklists

Scarcely a week goes by anymore without new efforts being announced to tighten bans on DJI drone operation in the US and this is one no exception, amid national and state activities to effectively and legally ground UAVs produced by the market leader.

Global drone leader DJI has come under increasingly intense pressure in the US, as successive federal and state measures banning its craft for official use have proliferated amid worsening relations with China – and accompanying security concerns. Though accusations by politicians that DJI UAVs leak data to Chinese authorities have never been substantiated – and flatly denied by the company – the blacklisting has reportedly undermined the firm’s former 70%-plus US market share down to what some estimates say is closer to half now. 

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.

A firebrand US House of Representatives legislator who usually rails against the size, cost, and over-reach of rights-crushing government is hailing the advance of her bill to deprive perhaps millions of state agency, business, and police, fire, first responder, and private users the ability to fly their DJI drones across the country. And there aren’t even “alternative facts” backing up the motives for the astonishingly repressive effort.

The world’s leading drone maker DJI has clearly had enough of the recurring accusations about the data security of its craft, and the attendant blacklists drawn up by US political leaders offering no substantiation of their claims. In response, the company has issued a rare clarification about the steps it takes to secure user information on its craft.

Two additional U.S. police departments have been equipped with new drones for use in their law enforcement duties. And once again – despite proliferating government attempts at dissuasion – those forces adopted DJI craft as offering the best solutions available to their budgets, opting for pragmatism over politics.

The walls appear to be steadily closing in on DJI in the US – and perhaps, users of its drones as well – following official warnings issued by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Homeland Security’s Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency over alleged security threats China-produced drones pose to operators.

A funny thing happened the on the way to the conclusion of an otherwise convincing editorial about the self-defeating consequences of the recently passed anti-China American Security Drone Act of 2023 (ASDA): The author associated himself with a lobby supported by same DJI targeted by the law’s federal blacklisting, thus undermining the effectiveness of what had been a very compelling argument.

Efforts to undermine the fortunes of the world’s leading drone maker DJI are about to bare a bumper crop fruit with legislative passage of a key defense bill that contains the National Security Drone Act of 2023, which blacklists aerial tech from China-based companies for use in official federal agency work. The wider package now awaits President Joe Biden’s signature.

US politicians responding to soured relationships and strong distrust of China have again tabled legislation seeking to prohibit use of technology produced by companies from the nation, with popular and widely deployed DJI drones clearly the primary focus of those efforts.

The time-tested parental observation advises that one learns more about a situation by heeding what people do rather than what they say. That may also be said of the recent decision by the Baltimore Police Department in establishing its new drone fleet using DJI drones – and in doing so broadly reflecting the frequent response of independent administrations to the largely politicized moves by Congress, US government agencies, and several state legislatures to blacklist the UAV giant’s craft from official use across the nation.

In spite of the rash of largely protectionist blacklisting initiatives in the US justified by nominal data piracy motives, a new survey commissioned by drone and onboard tech specialist Teledyne FLIR indicates information leak risks remain a middling UAV purchasing criterion for US enterprise and public administrations operators.

New moves unveiled by China threaten to further disrupt the already complicated business activities of global drone leader DJI in the US and elsewhere in the world, with Beijing saying it will impose new export restrictions on UAV technologies produced in the country.

In sign the global leader of the consumer and enterprise UAV market is broadening its lobbying efforts against US blacklisting of its aerial tech, DJI has joined a small group of domestic companies to form the Drone Advocacy Alliance, which vows to battle spreading bans of craft “based simply on where they are manufactured.”

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.

In a move that will have only minor effects on its own – but which could have larger consequences were it to be replicated around Europe, especially in terms of drone use – the Baltic nation of Lithuania has responded to increasing international instability by banning the purchase of tech from countries deemed untrustworthy, including China, for defense or public service operation.