Commentary
China’s DJI is selling drones to U.S. government agencies, including the FBI and DHS, and paying lobbyists in Washington to keep the flow going. The lobbyists are allegedly obstructing bills in Congress that would ban the practice.
Instead of supporting American jobs and protecting American privacy, Democrats in the House of Representatives just stripped language from the upcoming defense spending bill that would ban federal money from going to China’s drone companies and other firms that pose risks to U.S. national security.
The House Rules Committee, which made the decision, is allegedly responding to Washington lobbyists hired by Da-Jiang Innovations (DJI).
DJI spent millions of dollars over the years on these firms. Individual lobbyists improve their access by paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations to key congresspersons. They can offer high-paid jobs to staff members, congresspeople, and their families, who are politically influential and can serve a corrupt, but legal, revolving door process.
Lobbyists could therefore serve DJI, controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), as a pass-through for donations and salaries despite laws against foreign contributions to U.S. electoral candidates.
It’s a well-greased track in the heart of Washington politics and one that can serve Chinese and Russian companies in spades.
The logo of Chinese company DJI is seen at a store in Beijing, China, on Dec. 16, 2021. (Jade Gao/AFP via Getty Images)
Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), who sponsored the drone measure, lambasted the opposition and lobbyists to which they are allegedly beholden.
Gallagher told the Financial Times, “The language in this amendment hasn’t changed since it passed the House in the Competes Act earlier this year and neither has the threat posed by DJI drones, but for some reason it seems Congress’s appetite to debate this issue has.”
DJI hired the Vogel Group and Squire Patton Boggs as lobbyists to do its dirty work in Washington. The company has spent nearly $4 million since early 2018 on lobbying.
For three months from April to June 2022, according to Jimmy Quinn in the National Review, Squire Patton Boggs got just $150,000 from DJI—a paltry sum for selling out U.S. national security.
Gallagher wrote in a statement sent to the National Review, “This is the latest example of how the CCP uses the swamp against us.” He said the lobbyists would “rather sell out the country than lose a lucrative contract.”
Security expert Eric Sayers, at the American Enterprise Institute, also blamed lobbying on the House’s failure to include the drone language in the defense bill.
While public attention has focused on DJI, leading to a drop in its market share commercially to 50 percent in 2021 from 62 percent the year prior, another drone manufacturer from China, called Autel, increased its share in the United States to 9 percent from 7 percent. Both companies are threats to U.S. national security.
The bill to stop them is the American Security Drone Act (ASDA), which would forbid U.S. government agencies and the use of federal money granted to domestic law enforcement from buying commercial drones from adversary countries. It specifically bans purchases from companies influenced or controlled by the CCP.
In 2017, the Pentagon banned the purchase of DJI drones. A DHS memo from the same year stated that DJI provides “U.S. critical infrastructure and law enforcement data to the Chinese government” and selectively targets “government and privately …….