T.he The U.S. government at the federal, state, and local levels uses Chinese drones that the Chinese Communist Party uses for espionage. That is the public conclusion of a division of the Department of Homeland Security. Citing “security concerns”, other departments have made almost explicitly the same claims, and some have begun to take steps to limit the purchase of Chinese drones.
Drones created in China and operated by Americans map U.S. infrastructure, agriculture, railroads, government buildings, power plants, disaster relief operations, and the movements of law enforcement officials. The data collected during those drone flights is believed to be sent back to China, where there is no divide between civil and military sectors. The listing of a major Chinese drone company on Friday by the trade division of a major Chinese drone company on the US entity list makes it difficult for US companies to purchase its products and underscores the growing sense of urgency to end their entry into the United States. But it is time to move on. The US government must immediately stop buying Chinese drones at all levels and stop Chinese drone companies from entering the US commercial market.
The US dependence on Chinese drones and the parts that end up in drones is unsustainable. While US companies are waiting to meet demand if Chinese drones are excluded from the US market, there are still too few to meet the needs of the US government, and some US drone companies still rely on cheap Chinese parts. This is one of the arguments for closing off access to the Chinese drone market. But the risks to national security are too great to move slowly, and so the US must not only cut off access to the Chinese drone market, but also expand the Pentagon’s existing efforts to create a US and US ally drone- build a production base that doesn’t. rely on China-made parts. It is easy to see how a national emergency or conflict over the defense of democratic Taiwan could require increased production of drones. Depending on China, that should be out of the question.
Ellen Lord, Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Conservation, has been an advocate for strengthening US sovereignty by developing an industrial base for critical technologies in the US and related countries. At a recent Hudson Institute event with me, she praised that of the Pentagon Trusted capital market, which would increase the options for safe drone manufacturers. This initiative should become a top national security priority in the US government and private sector.
It is important to counter companies such as Da Jiang Innovations Science and Technology Company (DJI), a Chinese-owned drone giant headquartered in Shenzhen, China. It dominates the US drone market. Its low cost has displaced the US and allies markets, giving it nearly two-thirds of the US and Canada’s share.
But DJI is more than just a market leader. Like other Chinese technology programs and companies such as Huawei, it also enables Chinese espionage and the Chinese surveillance state, especially of the Xinjiang concentration camps.
A memorandum from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in Los Angeles in August 2017 stated: “The Chinese government departments most likely to receive the data from the DJI cloud are the offices responsible for defense, critical infrastructure, traffic control and cyber crimes. . . Officials said they have “moderate confidence” that the DJI’s commercial drones and software “provide US critical infrastructure and law enforcement data to the Chinese government.” The flurry of actions by other agencies to slow the use of DJI drones suggests that officials now have more than “moderate” confidence that this is happening.
Other government agencies, such as the Ministry of Defense – with few exceptions for some applications – have stopped using Chinese drones. As of this fall, the Department of Justice has also banned the use of DOJ funds to purchase them. The largest agency that uses drones is the Department of Interior. The DOI has more than 800 drones, all of which are made in China or have Chinese parts. They use these drones for search and rescue, fighting forest fires and dealing with other natural disasters that can threaten lives or property. In October, the Wall Street Journal reported that the DOI grounded its entire fleet of aerial drones, citing a national security risk from Chinese manufacturers.
We are aware of some of DJI’s horrific collaboration in China. In 2017, just as US officials sounded the alarm, DJI signed an agreement with the Xinjiang Autonomous Region Public Security Department (XARPSD) to deploy DJI drones for “ stability preservation ” and “ counter-terrorism. ” This summer, drone footage went viral on U.S. social media platforms showing a DJI drone tracking Chinese paramilitary police escorting Uyghur Muslims – chained and blindfolded – at a train station in Xinjiang, a city notorious for its ‘re-education camp’ where the The Chinese government is engaged in rape, abortion, forced sterilization, torture and other forms of religious and cultural genocide.
DJI was also keen to take advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic. This spring, it gave away free drones to 43 law enforcement agencies in 22 US states to shamefully enforce government guidelines on social distance. That’s right: The Chinese company that enabled the Chinese government to monitor Chinese Muslims for compliance in concentration camps sought to enable US governments to monitor Americans’ behavior for compliance during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Some members of Congress have followed up on the issue and are trying to legally require the US government to stop using Chinese drones and end its reliance on Chinese parts for the drone market. Last year, Senator Rick Scott (R., Fla.) And Representative Mike Gallagher (R., Wis.) Led a two-pronged coalition to enact the U.S. Security Drone Act. If passed, it would, among other things, prohibit federal departments and agencies from purchasing foreign commercial turnkey drones or unmanned aerial vehicles manufactured or assembled in countries identified as threats to national security.
For reasons unclear, and despite a bipartisan consensus that helped put drone security features in the House version of the recent defense bill, the Senate stripped them down. The latest bill sent to President Trump’s office leaves the issue untouched. So DJI drones are still free to flood the US market and send their images and data to the Chinese Communist Party. The bipartisan coalition addressing this issue should expand and Congress should focus on the issue in the new year. In the meantime, with just a few weeks left of the Trump administration’s tenure, Trump should issue an executive order to address the national security risks posed by Chinese drones, and DJI drones in particular. The sooner we can get Chinese drones off the market, the safer we will be.