Could affect Ukraine Supplies – “…US Congress is weighing (bipartisan) legislation that could kill much of DJI’s commercial business in the United States… DJI presents an unacceptable national security risk, and it is past time that drones made by Communist China are removed from America…”

4 comments

1. I agree with the author. These drones do need to get banned, at least the ones with internet connectivity that could be hijacked by China or which would report information back to them.

   Unfortunately, it’s part of that larger conversation where we have to divest ourselves of Chinese manufacturing. I understood the reasons why the policies 20 or 30 years ago were in place; after market exposure and international engagement led to a liberalization and ultimately collapse of the Soviet Communist economy and government, it was reasonable to think that the same thing would happen in china. Unfortunately, it didn’t–it backfired, and now we are in a situation where the regime still opposes us, (arguably even more so than before, and arguably more totalitarian than before) *and* we have lost our manufacturing capability both in terms of daily consumption and production, and more importantly, a lot of our strategic industrial capacity that we’ll need should we ever be a conflict with them.

   And that’s the problem here: drones, especially DJI drones, are ubiquitous and currently necessary in a wide variety of applications and industries (certainly more than most people realize). Unfortunately, we do not have a robust drone manufacturing capability domestically, and until that’s established, we’re pretty much stuck with DJI and similar imports. So I would absolutely support banking these imports, but it has to be done in the context of expanding and encouraging domestic manufacturing replacements of them, just like in all the other industries that we need to try to get back on shore.

2. They are banned for all government use in Australia. Instead, 11 local companies have received a grant to contribute to developing a local solution, with the winner to produce them at scale. It’s possible!

3. DJI is basically a manufacturing arm of the PLA in China, run by CCP party members. I’ve always wonder why then US has not banned these drones.

4. Western countries are going to have to initiate domestic drone production wherever possible from here on…this will be of strategic importance.