Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr says that Chinese drone company DJI is a national security threat and should be added to the agency’s Covered List, excluding it from receiving payments form the commission’s Universal Services Fund.
In taking action against DJI Carr claims the actions are to prevent ‘an airborne version of Huawei’ referring to the Chinese mobile communications company that was added to the Covered List in 2019.
“DJI drones and the surveillance technology on board these systems are collecting vast amounts of sensitive data-everything from high-resolution images of critical infrastructure to facial recognition technology and remote sensors that can measure an individual’s body temperature and heart rate,” Carr said in a statement.
DJI is the world’s dominant drone producer and accounts for roughly 70% of global sales across a range of professional and consumer drones.
“DJI drones and the surveillance technology on board these systems are collecting vast amounts of sensitive data,” Carr said. “Everything from high-resolution images of critical infrastructure to facial recognition technology and remote sensors that can measure an individual’s body temperature and heart rate.”
“DJI’s software applications collect large quantities of personal information from the operator’s smartphone that could be exploited by Beijing,” he added. “One former Pentagon official stated that ‘we know that a lot of the information is sent back to China from’ DJI drones.”
Over the past two years DJI has seen use of it’s drones dropped by the US military due to security concerns. Last year the Commerce department blacklisted DJI by adding it to the dpeartment’s ‘Entity List’, again labeling DJI as a national security concern.
Once on the ‘Entity List’ they become prohibited from receiving exports of US technology.
DJI is launching three new products starting tomorrow, including a new action camera, a professional-level camera gimbal and a new flagship drone the Mavic 3.
The threats by Commissioner Carr against DJI won’t have immediate impact on DJI, however a decision to add the company to the ‘Covered List’ could happen any time and have significant ramifications for it’s sales in the United States.
