The Gatestone Institute warned of the dangers posed to national security from purchasing DJI’s Chinese made drones. Peter Schweizer, a member of the institute, claimed that the Asian company is trying to get around the U.S. Security Drone Act bill.
In their article National security threat: China's eyes on the United States, Schweizer, noted that DJI is undertaking major lobbying efforts to prevent the bill from passing. “They recruited police officers from local jurisdictions to go to Washington and lobby congressmen," the expert explained.
Schweizer explained that the Chinese company spent $2.2 million on lobbying activities in 2020 and $1.4 million last year also on these lobbying activities.
The Epoch Times claimed that DJI owns 90% of the consumer drone market and 70% of the business/industrial drone market, These popular products are cost-effective, easy to fly and operate, and send every byte of data they collect to servers in China.
For this reason, Schweizer recalled that these drones are banned by the U.S. military and the Department of Homeland Security, although they are still used by the FBI and increasingly by local police as their "eyes in the sky" when flying over cities. Experts believe that information obtained by these devices is handed over to the Chinese Communist Party.
Drone Law
The so-called 2022 Drone Law is a bill urging the government to ban the use of Chinese company DJI's products because of the information collected in their app from the drones, which consists of GPS location, contacts, photos and online activity.
