U.S. lawmakers’ attention is turning to the skies above as their concerns about China’s data collection capabilities grow. But a proposed new law to limit the use of Chinese drones risks running into a problem: Their popularity among law enforcers across the country.

Four in every five U.S. police or fire departments use drones made by China’s leading manufacturer DJI, according to a recent survey by the non-profit organization Airborne International Response Team, largely because of their combination of affordability and advanced capabilities. Uses range from helping in criminal investigations, to monitoring endangered species off the coast of Hawaii.

Yet a small but growing number of state governments are mulling or have already introduced bans on public entities using Chinese-made drones. And earlier this spring Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) put forward a new Countering CCP Drones Act which, if enacted, would add DJI products to a list of equipment deemed to pose risks to national security and block the drones from accessing U.S. communications networks. Stefanik cited the drones’ potential use as a data collection tool, and DJI’s provision of surveillance technology in Xinjiang, to justify the new law.

The proposed legislation makes drones the latest battleground in the larger U.S. effort to avert what politicians see as the harmful impact of Chinese technology becoming dominant in their home market — an effort that has already encompassed measures against Chinese electric vehicles and batteries, solar panels and cargo cranes.

“This is not something that’s unique to drones, but it is a unique problem in the drone industry just due to the overwhelming flood of drones from China that have entered the U.S. market to the detriment of there being not much of a non-Chinese industry globally,” says Michael Robbins, chief executive officer at Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI), a non-profit trade body.

Many local police forces in the U.S. have already come to rely heavily on DJI-made drones, embedding them in their operations. Some even say their use has made the difference between life and death. 

In the Houston, Texas, suburb of Pearland for example, the local police introduced drones into their work after the loss of a nine-year-old boy whose body was found several days after he went missing in November 2016.

“Had we had drones, we potentially could have saved that juvenile’s life,” says Brandon Karr, a former Pearland police officer, referring to thermal imaging from the drones that could have helped identify a living person. Karr now serves as chief operating officer for the non-profit organization the Law Enforcement Drone Association (LEDA), which trains officers in using drones. Karr had spearheaded the introduction of Pearland’s drone program.

“We built out that drone program to be one of the most recognized in the world,” he says, adding that DJI has highlighted the Pearland case as a successful example of how police forces can use its drones.

If we were to get into a conflict with China… those drones could easily be bricked through a software update, and suddenly they just don’t work anymore.

Michael Robbins, chief executive officer at Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI)

Elsewhere, DJI drones are now less welcome. To date, four states have banned public entities from using them, with Florida taking the toughest approach when it introduced new restrictions in April 2023. While other states have allowed years-long grace periods before their bans take effect, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis forced police departments across the state to ground their DJI drones almost immediately, despite local officials’ qualms about the cost of replacing them.

Indeed, law enforcement agencies face a major issue when considering homegrown alternatives — American-made drones are simply more expensive. One leading U.S. drone maker sells its latest drone model for between $13,000 and $15,000, without any additional software or accessories, two industry experts told The Wire. The professional version of DJI’s Mavic 3 with a thermal camera and the more advanced Matrice 30T, both commonly used by public safety agencies, are currently available on the company’s website for $5,498 and $10,086 respectively.

U.S. drone makers argue it’s difficult for them to compete with DJI on price because of the backing their rival receives from Chinese state-owned venture capital funds. DJI says that the investor group that includes state-owned entities holds less than a 6 percent stake in the company and has voting rights of less than 1 percent.

“While we compete [with DJI], we don’t think it’s a fair competition,” Mark Valentine, the head of global government at U.S. drone maker Skydio, told The Wire during the AI Expo for National Competitiveness, a major conference showcasing U.S. technologies held in Washington D.C. in May. “Whether it’s drones, cranes, or electric cars, we’re seeing the U.S. government and industry navigating China’s unfair dumping of goods on the global market.”

“DJI has been a private company from day one,” a company spokeswoman told The Wire in response. “There’s no government entity or any representative from the government that sits on our board or has any role in our management.”

The Department of Defense, which discontinued the use of DJI and other commercial drones in 2018, has called the company’s products a potential threat to national security. President Trump issued an executive order just before he left office in 2021 citing the risk of foreign adversaries using drones to access sensitive information.

For those like LEDA’s Karr, arguments about DJI’s data collection potential are irrelevant because much of the information departments like his possess is already publicly available.

“There’s very little that we have that is secret,” he says. “If a Chinese national came to the United States and did a Freedom of Information Act request on any government entity, so long as it’s not an open-ended investigation, we’re required by law to provide [the data].”

For its part, DJI says that some of its customers working in public safety choose to isolate their drones from unsecured networks, like public WiFi networks, as an extra data security measure.

Others argue that the risk of relying on DJI drones may only become apparent if U.S.-China relations were to deteriorate further.

“If we were to get into a conflict with China…those drones could easily be bricked through a software update, and suddenly they just don’t work anymore,” says Robbins, the AUVSI head. The association supports a gradual transition away from Chinese drones but opposes the immediate ban envisaged in the Countering CCP Drones Act. Although the Act has not yet been scheduled for a vote, it passed out of the committee stage with unanimous approval.

“That indicates to me that there is a lot of willingness to go out and push harder than I think a lot of folks in the community are looking for right now,” Robbins says.

“The lawmakers driving this legislation continue to reference inaccurate and unsubstantiated allegations regarding DJI’s operations, and have amplified xenophobic narratives in a quest to support local drone manufacturers and eliminate market competition,” DJI said in response to the bill.

Other Chinese companies facing data security controversies, like TikTok, have attempted to split off their U.S. operations to demonstrate that data collected in America would remain there. DJI told The Wire it had explored the possibility of moving some manufacturing operations to the U.S., but concluded that it was too challenging to implement.

“That’s not to say that we are giving up on that [idea] completely,” says a company spokeswoman. “As a hardware company, especially one relying on the manufacturing capability of Shenzhen, it’s going to be really challenging for us.”

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