Thoughts On the Proposed Drone Bans?
Apologies in advance, this will be a long post, but it’s a fairly nuanced issue. I’m truly looking for feedback here because I don’t see a clear answer.
One callout, there are multiple Chinese-owned commercial drone companies in roughly the same boat, but for simplicity I’ll focus on DJI here.
Background:
DJI (Chinese drone company) controls +/- 70% of the commercial drone market in the US. They send encrypted data back to China and there’s no real info published on what they’re actually collecting. It could be hardware data for future device development or they could be streaming/capturing video, essentially crowdsourcing spying for the Chinese government.
Current Status:
Given this lack of transparency, there are multiple federal bills in the pipeline to outright ban drones from Chinese companies and a number of federal, state, and local agencies have already stopped using them.
The Politics of it All:
The proposed bans are problematic for a couple of reasons…
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-bartlett
What’s Next:
The NDAA with its version of the ban language has passed the House vote. The Senate will now put together their version and the. The two will be reconciled. There’s no real indication as to whether or not the ban will be in the Senate version or survive the merge.
Implications:
I don’t particularly care if the general public loses access to recreational drones, but law enforcement, fire, search and rescue, and agriculture (drone sprayers) losing access to DJI without a viable replacement is a considerable step backwards.
At the same time, I do agree that having TexDot or the LCRA use DJI drones to inspect critical infrastructure sounds like a terrible idea if the data is being sent back to China
One callout, there are multiple Chinese-owned commercial drone companies in roughly the same boat, but for simplicity I’ll focus on DJI here.
Background:
DJI (Chinese drone company) controls +/- 70% of the commercial drone market in the US. They send encrypted data back to China and there’s no real info published on what they’re actually collecting. It could be hardware data for future device development or they could be streaming/capturing video, essentially crowdsourcing spying for the Chinese government.
Current Status:
Given this lack of transparency, there are multiple federal bills in the pipeline to outright ban drones from Chinese companies and a number of federal, state, and local agencies have already stopped using them.
The Politics of it All:
The proposed bans are problematic for a couple of reasons…
- The bills put forth were, at best, a political favor, and more bluntly pure political collusion/corruption. The sponsor for the two main bills is Representative Elise Stefanik who probably couldn’t spell DJI much less care about their drones if not for her former National Security Advisor, Joe Bartlett. Joe Bartlett just so happens to now be the Director of Federal Policy for Skydio who is the American drone company best positioned to monetarily benefit from ban (they’ve also financed the majority of the lobbying). The bills Stefanik proposed appear to be stalled, but as is tradition with unpopular bills that people need to push through, the meat of her bill was tucked into an unrelated bill that usually gets rubber stamped. In this case it’s now section 1722 of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2025.
- While Skydio is best positioned to benefit from the ban, they aren’t remotely capable of actually replacing DJI in the near future. Skydio has abandoned the consumer market and their enterprise level drones aren’t as good as DJIs, cost 5-10x as much, and have a multi-year waitlist which gives preferential treatment based on order size.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-bartlett
What’s Next:
The NDAA with its version of the ban language has passed the House vote. The Senate will now put together their version and the. The two will be reconciled. There’s no real indication as to whether or not the ban will be in the Senate version or survive the merge.
Implications:
I don’t particularly care if the general public loses access to recreational drones, but law enforcement, fire, search and rescue, and agriculture (drone sprayers) losing access to DJI without a viable replacement is a considerable step backwards.
At the same time, I do agree that having TexDot or the LCRA use DJI drones to inspect critical infrastructure sounds like a terrible idea if the data is being sent back to China
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