Drone maker DJI stands as a symbol of China’s growing technology prowess. Its propeller-powered machines dominate global markets and buzz regularly over beaches, cityscapes at sunset and increasingly, power plants and government installations.
Now DJI is fighting a claim by one U.S. government office that its commercial drones and software may be sending sensitive information about U.S. infrastructure back to China, in the latest clash over the power of data in the growing technological rivalry between the two countries. It also shows how consumer technology companies have become increasingly central to debates about national security.
The company, formally named Da Jiang Innovations Science and Technology Co., put out a statement last month contesting the allegations made in a dispatch from U.S. customs officials.
DJI has two stores in San Francisco, and the company’s drones are used by several Bay Area fire and police agencies. DJI has a long-standing partnership with the Menlo Park Fire Protection District to test the best ways to use drones in rescue and public safety work. And Berkeley’s 3D Robotics, which gave up its own ambitions to sell consumer drones in the face of competition from DJI, instead has made its software compatible with DJI’s drones.
The memo, from the Los Angeles office of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau, was dated in August but had begun to circulate online more recently.
It said officials had “moderate confidence” that the DJI’s commercial drones and software are “providing U.S. critical infrastructure and law enforcement data to the Chinese government.” It cited what it called a reliable source, whom it did not identify, in the drone industry “with first- and secondhand access.”
DJI said the report was “based on clearly false and misleading claims.”
“The allegations in the bulletin are so profoundly wrong as a factual matter that ICE should consider withdrawing it, or at least correcting its unsupportable assertions,” the company said.
The ICE memo focused on the drones used by companies and institutions, not the drones flown by hobbyists. DJI dominates the overall drone market, with a nearly two-thirds share in the United States and Canada, according to Skylogic Research, a research firm. To grow beyond hobbyists, the company has been targeting commercial customers, like utilities, law enforcement and property developers.
The allegations could not be independently confirmed, and a spokeswoman for ICE declined to comment. In a statement to the New York Times, a DJI spokesman said that users can control how much access the company can have to their data and that it shares data only “pursuant to appropriate legal process.”
The accusations point to a broadening debate over how to secure vast data reserves that are being vacuumed up by commercial technology companies.
Now equipped with remote sensing technology to monitor crops, infrared scanners to scrutinize power lines, cameras and tracking systems, drones — much like smartphones — are the stuff of espionage dreams. Customers often have little knowledge of where their data might end up, experts said, while DJI and others give themselves considerable leeway in the fine print of their user agreements to transfer data across borders.
By: Paul Mozur (The New York Times).
Contributing: Benny Evangelista (San Francisco Chronicle).
Photo: The Japan Times.
Review: Emerging Market Formulations & Research Unit, Flagship Records.