TikTok with Wings?: Chinese Drones and National Security w/ Lars Schönander

The Dynamist

Are Chinese drones a security threat? Not the kind that drop bombs, but the ones you might see at the beach or a major sporting event—used to take aerial photos and videos. These drones aren’t just for hobbyists. Government agencies in the U.S. use them for policing to fighting wildfires. And they've been buying them for years, predominantly from a Chinese manufacturer named DJI. Since the early 2010s, DJI drones have allowed even a poorly coordinated amateur to shoot video and create high-quality maps, and the company today has a 70 percent global market share.

So what’s the problem? The company has close ties to China's People’s Liberation Army and has the ability to disable its products from afar. Could America’s reliance on DJI be an economic or cybersecurity risk? Is this just another anti-China “red scare,” an outgrowth of the growing tensions and saber-rattling between the world’s two greatest powers? Evan is joined by Lars Erik Schönander, a policy technologist at the Foundation for American Innovation and author of a new paper for FAI, Securing the Skies: Chinese Drones and U.S. Cybersecurity Risks.

*Correction: Evan misstated the publication of an article discussed on the episode. It was published in Foreign Policy, not Foreign Affairs.