This is the script of my network radio report yesterday on the risk
that many important groups and organizations will be unable to
purchase the drones they depend on for crucial operations after the
end of this year, due to lack of government progress on a
Congressionally mandated security review of drone maker DJI. As
always, there may have been minor wording variations from this script
as I presented this report live on air.
- - -
Yeah so just to quickly review you'll probably recall that many
groups, law enforcement, search and rescue, farmers, utilities,
construction, all sorts of important groups have been very concerned
that federal government actions will cut them off nationwide from
buying the DJI drones that have become critical aspects of so many of
their operations, often including saving lives.
There are a bunch of reasons why these DJI drones have a very large
majority market share for these groups. It's not just that their
pricing is very competitive (though how the ever-changing tariffs will
impact that is making future purchase planning quite a challenge
across many industries), but because they've considered the DJI
products to be very reliable, and to have features and especially
support that they depend on.
And along the way various other issues have been brought into the
discussion, including supply chain concerns because DJI is a Chinese
firm and supply chain reliability and safety are definitely important.
But there also have been some other issues like politicians claiming
DJI drones are security risks when to date there's been no apparent
evidence or example of that presented publicly and in fact DJI has
been very cooperative in terms of presenting evidence that they don't
represent security risks.
When you add politics to this situation you quickly understand why
these groups who need these drones are so concerned. Congress enacted
a law that gave DJI until the end of this year to have a relevant U.S.
federal agency certify that DJI drones are not a security risk,
otherwise new models of DJI drones (and another Chinese drone firm
who's a smaller player) couldn't be sold in the U.S. DJI has
reportedly been ready and willing and asking for this to get started.
But to date, they say they have no evidence that any such security
certification review has been started by the government. And with the
clock ticking and half the time allotted for the study now gone, it's
really getting into crunch time.
Now a couple of very new executive orders from the White House also
play into this. They push for more domestic supply chains for drones
and have other measures to boost U.S. drone production. One of the
orders also apparently requires that the security study of DJI drones
get started, and DJI is reportedly understandably pleased to hear that
news. So on its face this seems like good news for the groups
depending on DJI drones, the study will hopefully will be on the
merits and not influenced by politicians in either party. And it also
seems like good news for American drone manufacturers, because we all
want to see a healthy, competitive U.S. domestic drone industry.
One big potential problem of course is that six months is very little
time, and major structural changes in the drone industry are unlikely
to occur that quickly in terms of boosted U.S. drone production. And
these law enforcement, search and rescue, and the other many groups
who depend on drones often have to plan way ahead for purchases. A
more robust U.S. drone industry is likely to be a longer term effort.
And DJI has already chosen not to market one of their newest drones in
the U.S., presumably due to all the confusion surrounding tariffs and
these other issues. And we may see this happen again very shortly,
with unconfirmed rumors that a new DJI drone, the Mini 5 Pro, may be
released within a couple of months (but perhaps not in the U.S., once
again).
Drones today are used in so many crucial areas, and the organizations
that use them to protect and save lives, help grow crops, keep our
power systems running, and so much more need to be able to reliably
plan further ahead than six months. The current confusion seems to put
them and the vast number of people who depend upon them, at
unnecessary potential risk that we really should be working to avoid.
- - -
L
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lau...@vortex.com (https://www.vortex.com/lauren)
Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com
Mastodon: https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren
Signal: By request on need to know basis
Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org
PRIVACY Forum: https://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility
_______________________________________________
nnsquad mailing list
https://lists.nnsquad.org/mailman/listinfo/nnsquad
