Posted by Espressosaurus 12/23/2025
• New devices on the Covered List, such as foreign-made drones, are prohibited from receiving FCC authorization and are therefore prohibited from being imported for use or sale in the U.S. This update to the Covered List does not prohibit the import, sale, or use of any existing device models the FCC previously authorized.
• This action does not affect any previously-purchased drone. Consumers can continue to use any drone they have already lawfully purchased or acquired."
Commentary: DJI has effectively been banned from operation in the US (unable to import anything with a transmitter, including most of their gimbals, mics, and other photography related equipment) They represent 70 to 80% of the US drone market. Probably closer to 100% for those that fly noncommercially. Autel, the other large manufacturer, is also banned.
I don't understand how banning future drones helps national security in any way.
It is about money. If they ban drones that are already inside the US, they risk lawsuits by drone owners/importers for expropriation of their property. Banning things that are not already inside the country is easier as nobody has an absolute right to import stuff.
It is akin to weapons bans. Banning future sales of machine guns is far far easier to implement than outlawing those already sitting in gun cabinets across the country. The former is free to implement, the later very expensive.
The economic and political costs of grounding everything now are too high to do that. Even if the FCC somehow had the manpower to enforce such a ban.
In this case the geopolitical shift is relatively recent, so the fear is companies will be pushed to do more than they were in the past.
Though the US should probably just learn from China: Does DJI want to sell in the US? Setup a 50-50 JV with domestic production, skill and technology transfers, or go away.
I wouldn't read too much into the national security justification. It's a political argument to an economic policy.
Have you seen what's been happening in Ukraine? OTC drones are critical military equipment now.
Not having a domestic drone industry is like not having a domestic rifle industry, you cannot have an infantry without it.
Innovation happens under competitive pressure. The US just created a domestic vacuum.
This looks like industrial policy masquerading as defense in order to clear the board for domestic manufacturers just as the Pentagon starts handing out contracts to politically connected players.
Case in point: Unusual Machines just secured a massive Army contract for drone motors. Their advisor and major shareholder? Donald Trump Jr. [0]. Banning the import of foreign "critical components" conveniently forces the market into their funnel.
[0] https://www.ft.com/content/4cedc140-4a02-4ab6-9f78-93dd8c51a...
This is from the same people who brought you “let’s break all your encryption because you might become a criminal in the future”.
Which is better than it could be, all things considered.
That's worse if you believe there are possibility of war...
Meanwhile IoT devices, internet connected kitchen appliances just need to be able to be remotely activated to create a power surge and overwhelm the electric grid. Those can be sold no problem.
Heck even a targeted but small percent increase in sporadic behavior for targets of high value might be a worthy harassment tactic.
This door-slamming-shut-suddenly method says there is no plan, and given we don't domestically make most of the critical components ourselves, at best it's going to take awhile to build the factories and expertise to make up for the loss of the biggest suppliers in the market.
We'll get to pay much higher prices for much worse products while we do so.
Just looking at what's available for enterprise use (since there is no consumer-selling US drone company at this point) it looks like US companies are around a decade behind.
The goal of the Trump administration is to rebuild American manufacturing, but the impression I get is the people who they have designing the polices are kinda like stopped clocks: right about how free trade dogma was wrong, but lacking the competence to effectively move the needle in the other direction (and favoring bold, impulsive, and ultimately self-defeating action).
Also, I feel like there are weird echos of libertarianism here: they've become comfortable with some long-taboo sticks, but are still so psychotically opposed to government programs that the necessary carrots are nowhere to be found. Like tariff revenues should be getting plowed back into subsidies for new domestic manufacturing in strategic industries.
The trouble is, they kind of do, and now "interest on the debt" is eating a chunk out of the budget that rivals the entire Department of Defense. So not only is spending growing faster than GDP, a huge chunk of the money that had historically gone to cover even the traditional spending is now going to interest. And if the deficit stays how it is, that's only going to get worse.
The result is that there is no "tariff revenues" to spend on anything. Even with the additional revenue, spending still needs to go down just to tread water.
And then the question is, is the thing you're proposing worth more than the additional cuts it would take to cover it, i.e. what do you want to not have in order to have that?
Deficits do only sortof matter, but you people (I don't live in the US) are wildly undertaxed by big economy standards, and tax increases at the higher end could solve a lot of your fiscal problems.
The US also has an incredibly cost-inefficient healthcare system, and despite constant attempts to pin it entirely on the insurance companies, the cost problems are primarily related to regulatory capture by healthcare providers and the AMA, which are independent of the funding model. Medicare pays more than countries in Europe do for people in the same age group, because the government can't e.g. limit the number of medical residency slots at the behest of the AMA and then magic away the doctor shortage when they're the ones paying. Which again points to it being a spending problem rather than a revenue problem -- if they'd address the efficiency issues then they wouldn't need such a large government budget.
US per capita government spending is the highest of any economy in the top 30 by GDP. There are only four countries that spend more per capita at all, the largest of which is Norway, which nor only has a public health system included in their number, it also has less than 6 million people and gets a significant proportion of the money from state-owned oil and gas reserves.
If you tried to close the gap with higher taxes then the taxes would come from people in the US, lowering US GDP unless there was a corresponding increase in productive government spending -- which there wouldn't be if you were using it to cover the deficit, because that money otherwise comes from the purchasers of US debt, who are foreign investors, the Fed (when they create new money to buy US treasuries), and large US institutions that buy treasuries to use them as collateral (and thereby result in an economically productive domestic use). Those are the arguments the "deficits don't matter" people make -- in any given year, lower deficits would e.g. reduce inflation a little, but not a lot else. The real problem is that every year's deficit gets recapitalized, and then the interest compounds and turns into a significant long-term problem.
But the "deficits don't matter" people are right in the sense that lowering the deficit wouldn't do much for the economy in the current year. Which means that taking money from economically productive things in order to close it would be bad. Whereas taking money from economically unproductive inefficiencies would be a lot better. Which brings us back to, why is US spending so high when substantially all other countries do it for less?
An administration that wants to rebuild American manufacturing would decrease tariffs, not increase them. They'd eliminate the chicken tax, the Buy America Act, the Jones Act, and every other regulatory instrument that encourages domestic manufacturers to milk captive customers for all they can rather than make products that customers want to buy.
They'd also finish metrication ASAP, increase investment in technical education, implement universal healthcare coverage, modernize payment systems, and so on. You'll note that the Trump administration wants none of the above.
> ...
> They'd also finish metrication ASAP, increase investment in technical education, implement universal healthcare coverage, modernize payment systems, and so on. You'll note that the Trump administration wants none of the above.
I covered that with "[the people making the policy are] lacking the competence to effectively move the needle in the other direction (and favoring bold, impulsive, and ultimately self-defeating action)."
You can't infer intention from lack of competence.
> An administration that wants to rebuild American manufacturing would decrease tariffs, not increase them. They'd eliminate the chicken tax, the Buy America Act, the Jones Act, and every other regulatory instrument that encourages domestic manufacturers to milk captive customers for all they can rather than make products that customers want to buy.
Sorry, no. The 90s called and want their ideas back. You're not going to libertarian manufacturing back to the US with more free trade. The Chinese know how to exploit that, and eliminating the things you list will just lead to more manufacturing getting offshored.
What they need to do is "pile on additional taxes" strategically, based on a goal and the current status of industry (e.g. no tariffs on manufacturing equipment, yet). Then they need to pile more money into subsidies, etc. It would also be smart to require certain foreign manufacturers to form 50-50 JVs in order to access the American market (and force manufacturing tech/skill transfer).
As if they even need to do it surreptitiously. They'd just announce it in the Oval Office with a giant gold plaque for Trump, a few million bucks for the ballroom, and agree that government purchases can be made in Trumpcoin.
> Federal planning for the 2026 FIFA World Cup and 2028 Olympics already assumes that UAS will be a central threat vector. CISA’s soft‑target and UAS guidance notes that crowded venues, transportation nodes, and public‑gathering areas are particularly vulnerable to hostile drone activity.9 Recent congressional hearings on mass‑gathering security have emphasized that UAS are now a routine part of incident planning, alongside more traditional threats.10 The Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of War are already investing heavily in detection, tracking, and mitigation capabilities with these specific events in mind.11 UAS are also playing a critical enabling role on the battlefield in many modern conflicts. In Ukraine and Israel-Gaza, low-cost commercial UAS inflict extensive damage and have caused significant loss of life.12 Drug Cartels are also reportedly using foreign-produced UAS to smuggle drugs into the United States and carry out attacks.
I'm sure, the ban on DJI devices will stop fentanyl and terrorists.
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/drone-company...
It's not either-or, it should be both.
By the way, nobody makes consumer drone batteries in the US that I know of.
So people planning attacks and disruptions and unauthorized surveillance will have to buy drones made in the USA?
(It’s important to distinguish it from the “buy drone-as-weapon at US retail, use drone inside US” threat model, but beyond telling them apart, I have no position prepared on the relevance of either model.)
It would likely be an obvious act of war, but technically it wouldn’t be that hard to pull off.
what is your point?
it doesn’t need 100% effectiveness to be useful. even 1% with someone as popular as DJI will be a sight to behold!
pure idiocy.
Having Chinese drones in the sky is a risk. Having a dependency on their supply is another risk.
Source? My understanding is that Ukrainian drones are pretty much 100% off-the-shelf Chinese components.
I'm not speaking about bigger - mid-range and long-range drones - they use no Chinese, and sometimes no US-made (for the same reasons), components.
https://motor-g.com/en this company alone produces 100K motors per month now - enough to equip around 7-8% of 4M of quad copters Ukraine makes annually.
They were not previously subject to FCC certification, therefore none are certified, which means none can be imported now.
https://www.fcc.gov/supplychain/coveredlist
The new addition: Uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) and UAS critical components produced in a foreign country†† and all communications and video surveillance equipment and services listed in Section 1709(a)(1) of the FY25 National Defense Authorization Act (Pub. L. 118-159)
††: For purposes of inclusion of UAS and UAS critical components, we incorporate the definitions included in the associated National Security Determination
https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/National-Security-De...
Data transmission devices
Communications systems
Flight controllers
Ground control stations and UAS controllers
Navigation systems
Sensors and Cameras
Batteries and Battery Management Systems
Motors"The language I see there now is unambiguous, "batteries". Lithium-ion battery for my impact driver can be used to fly an FPV drone. It does not have an FCC certification because it does not emit any RF, and the FCC never required it to be certified before. Now looks like it can no longer be imported, at least not until either Department of War or Department of Homeland Security deems it not a threat.
NDAA has been a saving grace that we have anything like https://arkelectron.com/
Frankly, they should just rip the bandaid off and apply it to robotics like robovacs/delivery bots/etc scanning homes/offices/critical infrastructure at this point.
Edit to add: From additional reporting on the issue, it seems that the answer is yes, it will affect all countries
Shouldn't there been some sort of planning for a local company to provide at least comparable products before needlessly wreaking havoc like this ?
But these companies have interposed themselves between purchasers and their drones. You have to activate your drone using an app, the apps have been connecting back to china since the early DJI products, and with an update they could just fly away.
Seriously, why do people need an account to activate/fly?
So when they find your drone crashed into the Whitehouse lawn, they can track it back to you rather than rely on you to phone in a confession.
https://slate.com/technology/2015/03/white-house-lawn-drone-...
> The 31-year-old Usman lost control of a Phantom FC40 drone owned by a friend early that morning, and telephoned his employers and the Secret Service to report the incident when he learned the small model aircraft had been found on the White House grounds.
Don't kid yourself. American companies are as anti-consumer as they come.
I don’t mean US law is perfectly enforced on US drone companies, that’s <mentally deficient>. I mean that there exists a legal system that harmed people can use, as opposed to the case of Chinese companies where there does not exist etc.
/s
For regular airplanes flown by highly trained pilots relying on pilots to put in the effort to learn of changes that might affect a trip works. If a regular airplane pilot flies somewhere they are not supposed to be because they didn't check NOTAMs or were using outdated charts no one is going to say Cessna needs to do more to keep pilots from making those mistakes.
For drones, which require much less training and are sold to consumers, it is much more likely that the operators won't keep up to date. A spate of consumer drones entering restricted airspace would definitely lead to serious pressure on the makers to do something about it.
Similar for updates that fix bugs. With airplanes it is reasonable to expect the operator to apply any updates that the maker releases that fix bugs that might affect airworthiness. With drones, not so much.
Theft, for one. Anything that can be re-sold secondhand with no way for the owner to verify it hasn't been stolen will get stolen and re-sold for drug money.
You don't hear mass reports from hobos attacking people for their iPhones any more ever since Apple introduced Activation Lock and Find My, for example. Yes, there still are professionals shipping stolen devices off to China to be parted out and yes, I think we should hold China accountable because there's more than enough evidence at that point, but still, it has drastically cut back on the everyday thefts and robberies.
Same thing along supply chains. A container full of expensive things, no matter if it's drones, laptops, phones or sneakers, is a very attractive thing for insiders - but devices needing activation are, assuming a supply chain able to track serial numbers of devices inside containers, effectively worthless other than for parts and Apple is even cutting in on that "market". In contrast, you have routine train heists for millions of dollars worth in sneakers [1].
For drones specifically, accountability. Governments are sick and tired of consumer drones flown by morons completely ignoring the law. There's old models without remote-id still around from the old days, but eventually these will all die out and by then, law enforcement has at least some way of holding people accountable.
[1] https://www.sneakerfreaker.com/news/la-train-heist-sneakers-...