DJI uses Chinese factories to manufacture the world’s most popular drone and insists that its millions of unmanned aerial systems are not a national security threat to the United States and that they do not spy on people on behalf of the Chinese government.
“Despite all the allegations we’ve seen from politicians and agencies and others, in some cases competitors, no. [There’s] no evidence, no data that says, ‘Here’s the proof that these things that we’re accusing DJI of doing are actually true,’” Brendan Schulman, vice president of policy and legal affairs at DJI, said during a Thursday webinar.
DJI has sold two-thirds of all the drones that exist worldwide and is trying to save face and avoid its own Huawei moment: President Trump banned the Chinese communications company’s products due to security threats.
In March, TechCrunch reported that the White House was preparing an executive order that would ban all federal agencies from buying or using foreign-made drones.
DJI pointed to its latest study, one of several, that was released this week to serve as “validation” that its products are not a threat to the U.S. government or consumers, Schulman said. A PrecisionHawk-commissioned report by global consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton inspected three DJI drones but “found no evidence of data transmission connections between these drones and DJI, China, or any other unexpected party.”
DJI’s pushback against lawmakers’ concerns about its products comes after several years of federal concern that the company could be assisting China by obtaining information about U.S. infrastructure through drone cameras and maps. In 2017, Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Los Angeles office said it had “moderate confidence” that DJI drones were sending “infrastructure and law enforcement data to the Chinese government.”
The U.S. Army quietly ordered a halt in 2017 on the use of DJI drones because of the potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Last December, the Department of the Interior grounded its fleet of 800 drones following internal security concerns. Drones made in China or operating with parts from China were pulled from surveying natural disaster damage. Last year, Congress voted in support of a measure that blocked the Pentagon from acquiring Chinese-made drones.
As of early April, more than 40 police, fire, and public agencies in 21 states were using DJI drones for coronavirus-related tasks. Last year, the Federal Aviation Administration reported more than 1 million registered drones in the U.S., though it is unknown how many have parts manufactured outside the country. Schulman insisted that DJI’s popularity and use across the world was a nonissue.
“We’ve sort of been plagued as an industry with fear, and in many cases, [it] has resulted in nonrisk-based policy proposals to restrict or limit the use and access to the technology, notwithstanding all these great life-saving benefits,” Schulman said.
An Interior official told the Washington Examiner in an email that the department is working with White House officials on a comprehensive assessment of DJI drones, but the official did not comment on potential forthcoming executive action against Chinese-made drones.
