This piece originally appeared in The Messenger.
With the Senate's National Defense Authorization Act, Congress has taken a major step towards protecting the U.S. government from Chinese interference. The Senate bill’s inclusion of the American Security Drone Act as an amendment would ban federal departments from buying drones manufactured in China, showing that Congress is waking up to the federal government’s dependence on Chinese drones. Now, we need to apply that same degree of vigilance in the states.
Attention on Chinese drones’ prevalence in the U.S. government has generally focused on state public safety agencies. And with good reason: police departments and related agencies have purchased thousands of these drones for surveillance, but the drones’ serious cybersecurity vulnerabilities make them unsafe for such sensitive work. But the problem goes far beyond the police: other agencies are also dangerously dependent on Chinese drones.
Through more than 100 Freedom of Information Act requests, I have found that state transportation, forestry, and wildlife agencies frequently purchase Chinese drones. On average, 85 percent of the drones bought by these state agencies came from Chinese companies—most of all, the manufacturer DJI. Overall, $5.3 million, or two-thirds of total state agency drone spending, was spent on Chinese drones. In 38 states, the majority of the agency's drones are Chinese, and in 13 states, 100 percent of the drones in these agencies are Chinese.
Agencies use these drones for good purposes, from road surveying to fighting wildfires to animal conservation. But as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has found, Chinese drones pose serious cybersecurity vulnerabilities. The CCP’s longstanding policy of putting software backdoors in hardware means that the Chinese government could access the sensitive data collected by these drones. Furthermore, Chinese law allows the government to require any Chinese company, including DJI, to give up any data it collects to the CCP if asked. In other words, the CCP could easily be acquiring data that belongs to our state governments.
If Chinese drones are so risky, why do state agencies use them? The main explanation is economic: Chinese drones are far cheaper than the alternatives, leaving budget-conscious agencies with few good options. Even worse, limited federal-state agency communication means that agencies may not be fully aware of the seriousness of the cybersecurity risks of these drones.
This problem can’t be solved overnight, but Congress has recently taken action to restrict the use of Chinese drones and improve our cybersecurity. Beyond the American Security Drone Act in the Senate NDAA, the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill in the House would prohibit the use of federal dollars within the agency and entities that receive DHS funds to buy Chinese drones, correcting a frequent national security oversight. Similarly, the reauthorization bill for the Federal Aviation Agency would prohibit the FAA from using Chinese drones for infrastructure inspections.
The longer-term goal must be to further develop America's domestic drone industry. The bipartisan Drone Infrastructure Inspection Grant Act sponsored by Senators Jacky Rosen (D., Nev.), Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.), and John Boozman (R., Ark.) would establish a $100 million grant program to help state and local transportation agencies buy non-Chinese drones. Grant programs for these and other agencies to buy non-Chinese drones would be a step in the right direction, but even better would be repurposing money already intended to improve national security. The Homeland Security Grant Program’s funds, for example, have often been used by public safety agencies to purchase extraneous equipment, but could be reallocated toward this purpose.
While Congress moves through the legislative cycle, states are smartly moving to restrict the use of Chinese drones in their drone fleets. As of September 2023, seven states, including Florida, Texas, and California, have restricted, through legislative or executive action, their agencies’ use of Chinese drones.
States should also track their drone fleets more carefully. With the exception of Texas, states do not require their agencies to report on what drones they use and why they use them. States should follow Texas’s example and require agencies to publish their drone purchase records. Basic questions about procurement that intersect with national security should not require months of investigation. An essential step in protecting ourselves from potential Chinese surveillance must be simply knowing how many of these drones exist at all levels of government.
