On the one hand, pretty easy to see why the US would be looking for ways to stop Chinese drones getting in. Various US-backed entities have demonstrated that sleeper cells of drones are a pretty reasonable attack vector and the Chinese would be crazy not to try and prepare some sort of latent drone attack force in the US given that they are probably next on the chopping block after the US is done with Russia. Plus drones are very militarily strategic and China appears to have achieved an overwhelming dominance in the market which bodes well for them. US leadership must be quite unhappy about that and looking to try and salvage what they can of their local capabilities.
On the other hand, I doubt they can really stop China and it is amazing watching the US first position themselves to reject manufacturing as an undesirable industry, then start blocking imports from the globe's foremost industrial superpower as they realise that industrial capacity wins wars. There is a level of incoherence here - how does the US intend to run an advanced industrial society if it won't accept local pollution and won't accept goods from the places pollution is outsourced to?
Depending always on how misleading the Chinese figures are, the US doesn't have the globe's preeminent economy any more. They appear to be #2 or very close to becoming it. They're going to have to re-learn how to engage with a larger more industrially successful power and keep on good terms with people through diplomacy.
> sleeper cells of drones are a pretty reasonable attack vector
What exactly is the attack vector here? If we're talking about sleeper agents sure but these restrictions are focused on importing commercial products by citizens here: crop dusters and photography etc. sure they have a cloud service and might exfiltrate some aerial photography, but then anybody can see the same on Google Earth.
I think this is just a negotiating tactic and a little bit of red scare to amp up the defense story
"Dear DJI customer, congrats! For free, we are sending you a brand new hardware update to your DJI drone, a super battery pack! Please attach it to your drone immediately and try it out, the improvements will be positively explosive! Also please don't shake it or bump it too hard."
DJI drones are not arriving in the US strapped with explosives and ready to swarm an airbase taking out bombers and jets.
A more realistic "danger" is DJI drones taking over the market (more than they have already) and:
* backdooring usage patterns back to China - that gives a lot of info via traffic analysis especially if adopted by law enforcement and military,
* suddenly proving useless in a crunch (when used by military or paramilitary for observation or weapons delivery against forces China favours) due to backdoor control.
If American companies like Tesla leave the possibility of tracking/disabling their cars remotely, why China should not do the same? It would be strategically stupid to make a product without a backdoor when everyone else inserts backdoors.
My comment above made no judgement about backdoor access to products, it merely pointed out that country X might judge an over reliance on products from country Y a security risk if those products leak information or can be remotely controlled.
It's a risk for China to use US hardware in Chinese network infrastructure as much as it is a risk for the US to use Chinese communications or other hardware.
These risks can be mitigated by vetting but they are real risks that countries must account for in their national security protocols.
> They're going to have to re-learn how to engage with a larger more industrially successful power and keep on good terms with people through diplomacy
This will take decades, if it ever happens. The entire political and power system of the US is rife in arrogance and the thought that they can do whatever they want. Because they could, for quite a while. Look at all the coups, all the meddling.
Would you say the same about OHV firmware? Airplane firmware? Cubesat firmware? Amateur rocketry firmware? Starship firmware? Speedgun firmware? BGP router firmware? Consumer Wifi router firmware? Any wifi firmware? iPhone firmware? GPU firmware?
That's a long way to ask if you mean all firmware, or if you think some devices are more public security sensitive.
I think it's perfectly reasonable to require firmware be open-source or permissively licensed to customers. It's pretty rare that firmware is a competitive advantage; companies just try to produce the bare minimum to get their devices to work and maybe lock them down to sell software subscriptions.
If you sell me a piece of hardware, you should owe me any software required to make it perform to its original spec. Simple as that.
The canonical wisdom is that the more security sensitive or critical a piece of software is, the more important it is that it be auditable. Open Source meets that criterium, and is arguably the only thing that does so fully.
Some systems do require secrets, that's what cryptography is for. The algorithms are generally open and audited, and only the minimum (the keys) are kept secret.
There is nothing reasonable about “drone sleeper cells”. That’s the noon of paranoid fantasy that fuels the “think tanks”. The stuff they fantasize like they’re suffering from fever delusions is really astonishing. They always make for a good laugh, reading their position papers and analysis. Unfortunately for us all, they often persuade all the clowns in Congress and the Pentagon.
So there's no open source drone (and I mean quadcopter in this case) already? 3D printers (using lightweight filament), motors, ESCs, a microcontroller running some open code....?
There are plenty of open designs where you can buy parts off the shelf and build your own drone. Nothing has the software that DJI produces to go on top of the drone. Not specifically a good or bad thing, learning to fly on your own has a lot of value. But you will have more crashes.
Same as 99% of Chinese sellers on amazon - make a bad product, just rename, and have deepseek make you a new random short-as-possible company name with random characters and as human as possible.
DJI drones are nowhere near "bad", they're the best and nothing else comes close. It's a shame how they're sanctioned given there's no viable alternative. I always wonder why there's no Western company that has the same product offerings.
In most electronic peripheral categories, like USB hubs, the "expensive" US stuff you buy for $100 and $150 are the same Chinese internals you get for $20.
As for the quality, I’ve ordered a few products under some pretty outlandish names and I can’t say that quality was any worse than that of most other no-(real)-name things sold on Amazon.
On the other hand, I doubt they can really stop China and it is amazing watching the US first position themselves to reject manufacturing as an undesirable industry, then start blocking imports from the globe's foremost industrial superpower as they realise that industrial capacity wins wars. There is a level of incoherence here - how does the US intend to run an advanced industrial society if it won't accept local pollution and won't accept goods from the places pollution is outsourced to?
Depending always on how misleading the Chinese figures are, the US doesn't have the globe's preeminent economy any more. They appear to be #2 or very close to becoming it. They're going to have to re-learn how to engage with a larger more industrially successful power and keep on good terms with people through diplomacy.
What exactly is the attack vector here? If we're talking about sleeper agents sure but these restrictions are focused on importing commercial products by citizens here: crop dusters and photography etc. sure they have a cloud service and might exfiltrate some aerial photography, but then anybody can see the same on Google Earth.
I think this is just a negotiating tactic and a little bit of red scare to amp up the defense story
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Spiderweb
A more realistic "danger" is DJI drones taking over the market (more than they have already) and:
* backdooring usage patterns back to China - that gives a lot of info via traffic analysis especially if adopted by law enforcement and military,
* suddenly proving useless in a crunch (when used by military or paramilitary for observation or weapons delivery against forces China favours) due to backdoor control.
It's a risk for China to use US hardware in Chinese network infrastructure as much as it is a risk for the US to use Chinese communications or other hardware.
These risks can be mitigated by vetting but they are real risks that countries must account for in their national security protocols.
Oh, don’t worry, we’re fixing that! :/
This will take decades, if it ever happens. The entire political and power system of the US is rife in arrogance and the thought that they can do whatever they want. Because they could, for quite a while. Look at all the coups, all the meddling.
This should have been done long ago but now it's creating problems even for the government. There is no legitimate reason for non-free firmware.
That's a long way to ask if you mean all firmware, or if you think some devices are more public security sensitive.
If you sell me a piece of hardware, you should owe me any software required to make it perform to its original spec. Simple as that.
Some systems do require secrets, that's what cryptography is for. The algorithms are generally open and audited, and only the minimum (the keys) are kept secret.
Wouldn't mind ALL firmware, but also clearly some device categories are also more crucial than others.
Yes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Light_teams
Are you sure supply chain sabotage is really that unusual in 2025?
Didn't a bunch of pagers just explode?
The hardware typically runs https://pixhawk.org/ on 3d printed airframes https://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/ukraine-s-drone-air-for... or to OP's point, DJI drones flashed with custom firmware
As for the quality, I’ve ordered a few products under some pretty outlandish names and I can’t say that quality was any worse than that of most other no-(real)-name things sold on Amazon.