Pakistan’s prime minister has recently warned India of carrying out any “false flag” operations in the disputed region of Kashmir.
The US government at federal, state and local levels uses Chinese drones that the Chinese Communist Party operates for espionage. This is the public finding of a branch of the Department of Homeland Security. Citing “security concerns,” other departments have made the same claims publicly, but explicitly, and some have started to take steps to limit the purchase of Chinese drones. The drones made in China and operated by the Americans map American infrastructure, agriculture and railways. , government buildings, power plants, disaster relief operations and the movement of law enforcement officials. The data collected during these drone flights would be sent back to China, where there is no division between the civilian and military sectors. The Commerce Department’s listing of a major Chinese drone company on Friday’s list of U.S. entities makes it difficult for U.S. companies to purchase its products and underlines the growing urgency to end their access to the United States . But it is time to go further.
The U.S. government at all levels should immediately stop purchasing Chinese drones and end Chinese drone companies’ access to the U.S. commercial market. U.S. dependence on Chinese drones and parts that enter drones is not sustainable. While there are US companies 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 against removing access to the Chinese drone market. But the risks to national security are too great to evolve slowly, and therefore, in addition to cutting off access to the Chinese drone market, the United States should also expand the Pentagon’s existing efforts to build a drone manufacturing base. American and allied to the United States which does not. rely on parts made in China. One can easily see how a national emergency or conflict in defense of a democratic Taiwan could necessitate a ramp-up in drone production. Dependent on China for this should be out of the question. Under Secretary of Defense for Procurement and Sustainment Ellen Lord has been a champion of strengthening US sovereignty by developing an industrial base for critical technologies. United States and allied countries. At a recent Hudson Institute event with me, she touted the Pentagon’s Trusted Capital Marketplace, which would expand options for manufacturers of secure drones.
This initiative is expected to become a top national security priority for the US government and the private sector. It is important to counter companies such as Da Jiang Innovations Science and Technology Company (DJI), a giant Chinese drone headquartered in Shenzhen, China. It dominates the US drone market. Its low cost has sidelined the US and Allied market, giving it a nearly two-thirds share in the US and Canada, 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 Chinese state surveillance, especially the concentration camps in Xinjiang. An August 2017 memorandum from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office in Los Angeles states: “The Chinese government branches The offices responsible for defense, critical infrastructure, traffic control and cyber attacks are the more likely to receive data from DJI’s cloud. . . Officials said they had “moderate confidence” that DJI’s commercial drones and software “provide the Chinese government with data on critical infrastructure and US law enforcement.” The wave of actions by other agencies to slow the use of DJI drones suggests officials now have more than “moderate” confidence that this is happening. Other government agencies, such as the Ministry of Defense – with a few exceptions for certain applications – have stopped using Chinese drones. As of this fall, the Justice Department has also banned the use of DOJ funds to purchase them. The biggest agency that uses drones is the Home Office. The DOI has more than 800 drones, all made in China or with Chinese parts. They use these drones for search and rescue, to fight forest fires, and to deal with other natural disasters that can threaten life or property.
In October, the Wall Street Journal reported that the DOI was grounding its entire fleet of aerial drones, citing a national security risk for Chinese makers. We are aware of DJI’s horrific cooperation in China. In 2017, just as U.S. officials sounded the alarm, DJI signed an agreement with the Xinjiang Autonomous Region Public Security Department (XARPSD) to deploy DJI drones for “stability maintenance” and the “fight against terrorism”. This summer, Drone footage went viral on U.S. social media platforms that showed a DJI drone monitoring Chinese paramilitary police escorting Uyghur Muslims – chained and blindfolded – to a train station in Xinjiang, a city known for its “re-education camp Where the Chinese government engages in rape, abortions, forced sterilization, torture and other means of religious and cultural genocide. JI was also keen to profit from the COVID-19 pandemic. This spring, he gave free drones to 43 law enforcement agencies in 22 US states to shockingly enforce government guidelines on social distancing. It is true: the Chinese company that allowed the Chinese government to monitor the compliance of Chinese Muslims in concentration camps has sought to allow US governments to monitor Americans’ compliance behavior during the coronavirus pandemic. Some members of Congress have tracked the problem and tried to do it. mandate by law that the US government stop using Chinese drones and end its dependence on Chinese components for the drone market. Last year, Senator Rick Scott (R., Fla.) And Representative Mike Gallagher (R., Wisconsin) led a bipartisan coalition to introduce the American Security Drone Act. If adopted, it would prohibit, among other things, Federal departments and agencies to purchase any commercial drone or foreign commercial unmanned aircraft system manufactured or assembled in countries identified as threats to national security. bipartisan consensus that helped place drone safety provisions in the House version of the recent defense bill, the Senate deleted them. The final bill sent to President Trump’s office leaves the problem unsolved. DJI drones are therefore still free to flood the US market and send their images and data to the Chinese Communist Party. The bipartisan coalition focused on this issue is expected to expand and Congress is expected to focus on the issue in the new year. In the meantime, a few weeks before the mandate of the Trump administration, Trump is expected to issue an executive order on the national security risks of Chinese drones, and in particular DJI drones. The sooner we can remove Chinese drones from the market, the safer we will be.
