This is the script of my national radio report yesterday on the
continuing looming bans on DJI drones and the negative impact this is
already having on law enforcement, search and rescue, farmers, and
others dependent on this tech. As always, there may have been minor
wording variations from the script as I presented this report live on
air.
- - -
Yeah, well, this is a situation that seems to be rushing faster and
faster toward an ever bigger train wreck, as one of the most dramatic
examples of politics vs. technological reality that I've ever seen.
And each time I talk about this topic, the big question is whether
various politicians in BOTH parties are REALLY going to do purposeful
damage to law enforcement efforts, search and rescue organizations,
farmers, construction projects, utility companies -- that long list of
people and organizations that now depend on drones for key aspects of
their operations. And the answer seems to continue being YES. Scoring
political points seems to be taking complete and utter precedence over
all these organizations, firms, and individuals involved in savings
lives and growing food, keeping power and communications going, it
just goes on and on.
As we've discussed before all of this is essentially in the name of
trying force the Chinese firm DJI out of the U.S. even though the
people who work with these drones so often insist that there simply
aren't affordable U.S.-made substitutes that are as reliable and well
supported, and that's not by small margins, the differences are really
dramatic.
I think there's general agreement that a healthy U.S. drone industry
would be a good thing. Absolutely. But we don't have that now. Not by
a longs shot. DJI created the industry by filling needs that U.S.
manufacturers had been ignoring, who apparently preferred to focus
their efforts in many cases on extremely expensive products out of the
reach of most consumers, businesses, and other organizations.
So now there's all this pressure to push out DJI, but worse, to do it
pretty much all at once, leaving these people and organizations, who
have been depending on these drones, in a terrible situation. And
rather than actually discuss these issues reasonably, politicians
continue to make wild claims about what DJI "could do" or "might do",
but still haven't presented any evidence that DJI "has done" or "would
do" anything negative related to national security. When you consider
all the ways that China could simply buy data on Americans and all the
ways that China has provided technology to U.S. consumers where U.S.
firms have been dropping the ball, the political hypocrisy in all this
is raw and obvious.
And it's all happening along multiple fronts. Congressional actions,
state actions, federal administration actions now even including the
Commerce department. A lot of this is going to reach a boil at the end
of this year or a bit later, after which various bans on DJI being
able to import new products or consumers potentially being unable to
legally operate new DJI products could roll in. Police? Rescue?
Farmers? Hey, if the politicians can score points, I guess everyone
else doesn't really matter!
What's perhaps most telling is that DJI keeps offering to do whatever
is necessary to show they're not a security threat, and the federal
government reportedly just keeps ignoring them, apparently trying to
run out the clock and trigger those bans.
This has now gotten so bizarre that when DJI released a new advanced
mini-drone last week, that could indeed save lives and do so much
more, that the U.S. was shut out completely. The global announcement
pages return a 404 "no such page" response from their website if
you're in the U.S. The same thing happens if you even try to download
documentation about that drone -- the Mini 5 Pro -- from here. And of
course there are no official sellers of the drone in the U.S. You can
fly it if you can get it, but that means the gray market -- so
typically without a manufacturer warranty. Plus the risk of future
repair problems, and higher prices from the serious importing and
tariffs mess. In fact the supply of various other DJI drones has
largely already dried up in this country.
And you can't blame DJI for this. They've tried, but they get a cold
shoulder from politicians that has made regular operations here
impossible. Our government needs to stop playing politics with this
kind of vital technology while claiming they're banning, supposedly
"for our own good", tech that the rest of the world has easy access
to. And this needs to stop right now.
- - -
L
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
[email protected] (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
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Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility
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