We've covered the politics surrounding Chinese-made drones – especially on a state-by-state-basis – before, but this week the National Security Drone Act of 2023 was passed by Congress and handed to President Biden to sign into law, with potentially devastating effects on the business of DJI and Autel.
Since DJI was added to the American 'Entity List' in 2020 it has found it difficult to sell drones to the US for various government customers, and that is now a very broad definition of government, including regional police stations as well as military operations. This law formalises the blacklist, all on the spurious and unproven ground that data sent from drones is used by the Chinese government for spying.
