Democrats Should Stop Buying China’s DJI Drones With American Taxpayer Money

CommentaryChina’s DJI is selling drones to U.S. government agencies, including the FBI and DHS, and paying lobbyists in Washington to keep the flow going. The lobbyists are allegedly obstructing bills in Congress that would ban the practice. Instead of supporting American jobs and protecting American privacy, Democrats in the House of Representatives just stripped language from the upcoming defense spending bill that would ban federal money from going to China’s drone companies and other firms that pose risks to U.S. national security. The House Rules Committee, which made the decision, is allegedly responding to Washington lobbyists hired by Da-Jiang Innovations (DJI). DJI spent millions of dollars over the years on these firms. Individual lobbyists improve their access by paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations to key congresspersons. They can offer high-paid jobs to staff members, congresspeople, and their families, who are politically influential and can serve a corrupt, but legal, revolving door process. Lobbyists could therefore serve DJI, controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), as a pass-through for donations and salaries despite laws against foreign contributions to U.S. electoral candidates. It’s a well-greased track in the heart of Washington politics and one that can serve Chinese and Russian companies in spades. The logo of Chinese company DJI is seen at a store in Beijing, China, on Dec. 16, 2021. (Jade Gao/AFP via Getty Images) Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), who sponsored the drone measure, lambasted the opposition and lobbyists to which they are allegedly beholden. Gallagher told the Financial Times, “The language in this amendment hasn’t changed since it passed the House in the Competes Act earlier this year and neither has the threat posed by DJI drones, but for some reason it seems Congress’s appetite to debate this issue has.” DJI hired the Vogel Group and Squire Patton Boggs as lobbyists to do its dirty work in Washington. The company has spent nearly $4 million since early 2018 on lobbying. For three months from April to June 2022, according to Jimmy Quinn in the National Review, Squire Patton Boggs got just $150,000 from DJI—a paltry sum for selling out U.S. national security. Gallagher wrote in a statement sent to the National Review, “This is the latest example of how the CCP uses the swamp against us.” He said the lobbyists would “rather sell out the country than lose a lucrative contract.” Security expert Eric Sayers, at the American Enterprise Institute, also blamed lobbying on the House’s failure to include the drone language in the defense bill. While public attention has focused on DJI, leading to a drop in its market share commercially to 50 percent in 2021 from 62 percent the year prior, another drone manufacturer from China, called Autel, increased its share in the United States to 9 percent from 7 percent. Both companies are threats to U.S. national security. The bill to stop them is the American Security Drone Act (ASDA), which would forbid U.S. government agencies and the use of federal money granted to domestic law enforcement from buying commercial drones from adversary countries. It specifically bans purchases from companies influenced or controlled by the CCP. In 2017, the Pentagon banned the purchase of DJI drones. A DHS memo from the same year stated that DJI provides “U.S. critical infrastructure and law enforcement data to the Chinese government” and selectively targets “government and privately owned entities within these sectors to expand its ability to collect and exploit sensitive U.S. data.” DJI admitted that the company could access customer data if they opt to share it. As anyone knows who is daily confronted with the overly long and legalistic privacy policies ubiquitous on the internet, many customers opt-in without understanding the fine print or that the counterparty could be based in China. The DJI privacy policy looks bad enough, not to mention a DJI app that allegedly ran, according to researchers in 2020, in the background on users’ phones without their consent. China’s national security laws require all companies operating in the country to provide it with any data demanded by the regime. Drones are deployed during a demonstration at the Los Angeles Fire Department ahead of DJI’s AirWorks conference in Los Angeles, Calif., on Sept. 23, 2019. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images) In 2018, the Trump administration blacklisted DJI to prevent it from purchasing U.S. technology. And in 2021, the Biden administration added DJI to a list of “Chinese military-industrial complex companies” in which American investment is prohibited. The argument for allowing U.S. law enforcement to purchase Chinese drones relies on their cheaper price. But that comes at the expense of American jobs, the development of new American technologies, and the building of America’s industrial ecosystem, which the pandemic proved nee

Democrats Should Stop Buying China’s DJI Drones With American Taxpayer Money

Commentary

China’s DJI is selling drones to U.S. government agencies, including the FBI and DHS, and paying lobbyists in Washington to keep the flow going. The lobbyists are allegedly obstructing bills in Congress that would ban the practice.

Instead of supporting American jobs and protecting American privacy, Democrats in the House of Representatives just stripped language from the upcoming defense spending bill that would ban federal money from going to China’s drone companies and other firms that pose risks to U.S. national security.

The House Rules Committee, which made the decision, is allegedly responding to Washington lobbyists hired by Da-Jiang Innovations (DJI).

DJI spent millions of dollars over the years on these firms. Individual lobbyists improve their access by paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations to key congresspersons. They can offer high-paid jobs to staff members, congresspeople, and their families, who are politically influential and can serve a corrupt, but legal, revolving door process.

Lobbyists could therefore serve DJI, controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), as a pass-through for donations and salaries despite laws against foreign contributions to U.S. electoral candidates.

It’s a well-greased track in the heart of Washington politics and one that can serve Chinese and Russian companies in spades.

Epoch Times Photo
The logo of Chinese company DJI is seen at a store in Beijing, China, on Dec. 16, 2021. (Jade Gao/AFP via Getty Images)

Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), who sponsored the drone measure, lambasted the opposition and lobbyists to which they are allegedly beholden.

Gallagher told the Financial Times, “The language in this amendment hasn’t changed since it passed the House in the Competes Act earlier this year and neither has the threat posed by DJI drones, but for some reason it seems Congress’s appetite to debate this issue has.”

DJI hired the Vogel Group and Squire Patton Boggs as lobbyists to do its dirty work in Washington. The company has spent nearly $4 million since early 2018 on lobbying.

For three months from April to June 2022, according to Jimmy Quinn in the National Review, Squire Patton Boggs got just $150,000 from DJI—a paltry sum for selling out U.S. national security.

Gallagher wrote in a statement sent to the National Review, “This is the latest example of how the CCP uses the swamp against us.” He said the lobbyists would “rather sell out the country than lose a lucrative contract.”

Security expert Eric Sayers, at the American Enterprise Institute, also blamed lobbying on the House’s failure to include the drone language in the defense bill.

While public attention has focused on DJI, leading to a drop in its market share commercially to 50 percent in 2021 from 62 percent the year prior, another drone manufacturer from China, called Autel, increased its share in the United States to 9 percent from 7 percent. Both companies are threats to U.S. national security.

The bill to stop them is the American Security Drone Act (ASDA), which would forbid U.S. government agencies and the use of federal money granted to domestic law enforcement from buying commercial drones from adversary countries. It specifically bans purchases from companies influenced or controlled by the CCP.

In 2017, the Pentagon banned the purchase of DJI drones. A DHS memo from the same year stated that DJI provides “U.S. critical infrastructure and law enforcement data to the Chinese government” and selectively targets “government and privately owned entities within these sectors to expand its ability to collect and exploit sensitive U.S. data.”

DJI admitted that the company could access customer data if they opt to share it. As anyone knows who is daily confronted with the overly long and legalistic privacy policies ubiquitous on the internet, many customers opt-in without understanding the fine print or that the counterparty could be based in China.

The DJI privacy policy looks bad enough, not to mention a DJI app that allegedly ran, according to researchers in 2020, in the background on users’ phones without their consent.

China’s national security laws require all companies operating in the country to provide it with any data demanded by the regime.

Epoch Times Photo
Drones are deployed during a demonstration at the Los Angeles Fire Department ahead of DJI’s AirWorks conference in Los Angeles, Calif., on Sept. 23, 2019. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)

In 2018, the Trump administration blacklisted DJI to prevent it from purchasing U.S. technology. And in 2021, the Biden administration added DJI to a list of “Chinese military-industrial complex companies” in which American investment is prohibited.

The argument for allowing U.S. law enforcement to purchase Chinese drones relies on their cheaper price.

But that comes at the expense of American jobs, the development of new American technologies, and the building of America’s industrial ecosystem, which the pandemic proved needs more robustness, depth, and flexibility. A stronger U.S. economy, achieved through buy-American policies, produces more tax revenue, which cancels out the price advantage (for government buyers) of Chinese drones.

China’s cheaper wages, worse labor conditions, lax environmental standards, and cyberespionage robbed America of the industrial base we built in the 20th century. If we don’t reverse that trend soon—including through requirements that American law enforcement buys American and allied drones—the 21st century will be when the CCP not only eats our lunch, but achieves its goal of global hegemony.

The House has failed, and now the ball is in the court of the Democrat-controlled Senate. It should include the ASDA language and demand that the defense spending bill ban the misuse of taxpayer money for drones from China’s military-industrial complex. It just makes sense—for American privacy, security, and economic health.

Any further failure on the part of Congress to pass this law will be the fault of Democrats, and result in more Democrats losing their seats in 2024.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.


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Anders Corr has a bachelor's/master's in political science from Yale University (2001) and a doctorate in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. His latest books are “The Concentration of Power: Institutionalization, Hierarchy, and Hegemony” (2021) and “Great Powers, Grand Strategies: the New Game in the South China Sea" (2018).