• 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.
If drones are a threat to national security, then all existing drones should be grounded, regardless of the manufacturer. Or, if Chinese drones are the threat, then all existing Chinese-made drones should be grounded?
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.
Well this would be step one to try to motivate some US company to start manufacturing. Then once it ramps up they can step in with banning existing stuff without causing too much disruption.
Exactly, it's about supply chains. Banning existing drones with no replacements on offer would be unnecessarily disruptive.
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.
Wouldn't you want the opposite? Once domestic production ramps up you gradually lift import restrictions to create more competition. I guess that's if the intention is to improve the domestic market in the national interest, rather than to just make people rich.
That is exactly what you never want to do under protectionist policies.
Domestic producers are shielded from Chinese competitors.
This means they are under less pressure to reduce prices and innovate.
I wouldn't read too much into the national security justification.
It's a political argument to an economic policy.
If this is about military capability, why ban all foreign manufacturers, including proven innovators like Helsing and Baykar?
Instead of blanket bans, targeted contracts could leverage Ukraine tested designs while building domestic capacity.
Innovation happens under competitive pressure. The US just created a domestic vacuum.
The national security justification is that we need expertise building/designing drones. We won't get that if we allow China to out-compete domestic manufacturers.
The grandfathering clause is the tell. If these drones were an active national security threat, they wouldn't let civilians keep flying them.
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.
If that was the reason, a case by case analysis would make more sense than blanket ban. There’s no plausible technical explanation for this that doesn’t apply to any other devices, components, or software. If it could be made dangerous in theory then preemptively assume it will maybe at some point and ban it.
This is from the same people who brought you “let’s break all your encryption because you might become a criminal in the future”.
It's just how these things normally work. Assault rifle bans. Magazine capacity bans. Automobile safety requirements. The old, determined unsafe items are allowed to remain, only new are prevented.
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.
If I understand correctly, this doesn't ban the import/sale of drone models which the FCC previously approved. That said, in October 2025 the FCC granted itself the authority to retroactively revoke previously-approved models, so this is something they could still potentially do.
Your originally quoted text explicitly disagrees with you: "This update to the Covered List does not prohibit the import, sale, or use of any existing device models the FCC previously authorized."
It’s like a poorly executed form of protectionism. I guess they’re doing the best they can, can’t expect people unfit for office to create good policy, right.
Attack vector: drone needs to get out of a case, backpack or closet, out of the window and fly somewhere to do something.
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.
I want to believe this is some ploy to open the market for some US manufacturer that slipped a few thousand dollars in an envelope but I have a sneaking suspicion that nobody is coming to fill the void left by this naive protectionism. (Or is it deliberate sabotage? I don't even know anymore)
If it was phased in and didn't specifically include allied country imports, I could believe that.
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.
It's crazy that it also bans new models from Europe's Wingtra, Quantum Systems, and AgEagle, which are basically the only consumer fixed-wing drones available. Heck, those companies were even previously approved for the DOD's "Blue UAS" list: https://bluelist.appsplatformportals.us/Cleared-List/
> The primary goal of the Trump administration is to destroy American manufacturing. They don't want factories, hence all the tariffs.
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 US has a problem where government revenue has been increasing by the usual amount (i.e. as a percent of GDP it's within the same range it has been for 70+ years), and is therefore the highest it's ever been before in real dollars, but spending has increased by even more than that, and in particular spending has been increasing faster than GDP. But for the last few decades we've had people saying "deficits don't matter".
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?
> 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.
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 uses private health insurance instead of a national health service, which explains more than all of the difference in taxation compared to the median country in Europe. If you added what people in the US are paying for health insurance to what they're paying in state and federal taxes, they're paying more than people in Europe do. But if you adopted a public insurance system in the US then the taxes would have to go to that rather than providing revenue to cover existing spending.
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?
Your position assumes facts not in evidence. If the administration wanted to rebuild American manufacturing, the last thing they'd do is pile on additional taxes on manufacturing domestically—which is exactly what their tariffs do.
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.
> Your position assumes facts not in evidence. If the administration wanted to rebuild American manufacturing, the last thing they'd do is pile on additional taxes on manufacturing domestically—which is exactly what their tariffs do.
> ...
> 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).
Skydio? For a while they were #2 in consumer drones but found they couldn't compete with DJI and exited the consumer market in 2023. They now do > 50% of their business for the U.S. military and are in tight with the U.S. government. Could be a plan to re-enter the consumer market, this time with no competition.
> some US manufacturer that slipped a few thousand dollars
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.
There is no viable alternative to DJI’s Enterprise offerings. I get that we are trying to bolster domestic tech but this is a stick when it should be a carrot.
Won’t DJI’s current offerings still be available? I bought a Phantom 4 Pro 5 years ago that I use for mapping and it still does the job. I would expect that Enterprise drones would work the same way. Sure we’re not going to get the next new better faster model so in that scenario it does give time for a domestic company to engineer an offering.
> In their determination, national security agencies referenced, among other things,
concerns that that foreign-made UAS could be used for attacks and disruptions,
unauthorized surveillance, sensitive data exfiltration, and other UAS threats to the
homeland.
So people planning attacks and disruptions and unauthorized surveillance will have to buy drones made in the USA?
No: the threat model as stated is referring to, in restated terms, “China could silently occupy DJI headquarters and control US-deployed DJI drones into quasi-military strikes using firmware updates, remote controls, or other such mechanisms.” Same theory as Huawei 5G routers could be remotely wiretapped in various ways, etc.
(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.)
With the way DJI drone updates are deployed, that isn’t actually that far fetched, technically. Assuming the targeted event was known in advance in time/space.
It would likely be an obvious act of war, but technically it wouldn’t be that hard to pull off.
Because drones without explosives strapped to them are so effective.. not to mention they spend 99.9% of the time in storage with battery disconnected, so easy to make a bunch of them attack at the same time (because once people know the drones are malicious it’s game over for the attackers).
The covered list now includes batteries and motors, even though they don't emit RF. Most are just battery cells, wires, magnets, and connectors, with not even a single transistor inside.
They were not previously subject to FCC certification, therefore none are certified, which means none can be imported now.
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
Data transmission devices
Communications systems
Flight controllers
Ground control stations and UAS controllers
Navigation systems
Sensors and Cameras
Batteries and Battery Management Systems
Motors"
Are you saying the FCC writes one thing in the regulation, but will enforce something different?
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.
Its not clear to me whether this will impact all foreign made drones or just those from China. I get that DJI is the core target, but does this mean that a competitor from Europe (ex. Ukraine which I imagine will have a burgeoning drone market, esp for commercial/defense applications) will need a natsec signoff in order to sell a drone in the US?
Edit to add: From additional reporting on the issue, it seems that the answer is yes, it will affect all countries
Won't this place drone users in US in severe disadvantage right at the time when drones of all kinds are being used to provide all kinds of useful services ? In comparison users in countries with better policy planning will reap benefits.
Shouldn't there been some sort of planning for a local company to provide at least comparable products before needlessly wreaking havoc like this ?
I've been in the bowels of the domestic robot/drone parts supply chain. It's ugly, almost non-existent. I wish there was more of a carrot, but the opportunity for that was frankly 5 years ago.
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.
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?
Part of it could be to help ensure that the drones are operated in compliance with national regulations, such as FAA regulations in the US. Modern drones consult databases of restricted zones they are not supposed to fly in, and those databases change occasionally.
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.
Most drones require similar amount of training to the full pilots license with the exception of the hours of actual flying. You still have to learn the regulations to fly any drone that is bigger than a tiny toy.
But no they literally aren’t. If the Chinese government takes data from a Chinese company in China, there is no legal process available to anyone affected because it is outside of US jurisdiction. What is America going to sue China the country in American court? That’s <mentally deficient>.
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.
DJI had the list of US no-fly zones that included airports, military bases, prisons, etc. Since DJI is no longer selling drones in the US, they removed that restriction.
> 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.
> Seriously, why do people need an account to activate/fly?
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.
Why would anyone build manufacturing to fill a void like this knowing how arbitrary US policy is? One day you are a supplier, the next you are out of business. Long term, telegraphed, intelligent, policy shift is the way to encourage and build a domestic industry, this just makes it hard for us to have nice things.
Despite the amount of sucking up to Trump in the press release, this is not totally stupid. DJI drones do have a data path back to China. Several years ago, the US military, which used to use some DJI drones, decided that the risk was too high. There was an order (in 2022?) to cease using DJI drones and to store them with the batteries removed.
On the other hand, Donald Trump Jr. recently acquired an interest in a US drone company, which is selling drone motors to the US military for what seems a high price.
Every piece of USA tech has a data path back to USA -- who are actively threatening a bunch of countries right now.
The obvious corollary is that Canada, Greenland & Denmark (Panama, Venezuela, etc. too) and all their allies should get rid of all Windows computers, all Apple phones, all Tesla, etc, etc.
It's hard to imagine USA are not planning attacks right now using these tech vectors, given this threat model is being defended against in this way.
It was as equally clever as it was evil to put pressure on us to ditch Chinese tech, so USA can now attack us.
That's a much smaller issue than it sounds, Ukraine produces millions of drones without any Chinese components at all except magnets for electric motors, and li-poly cells. Certainly no Chinese electronics. Even lenses for thermal optics are now Ukrainian-made. They don't even come out as much more expensive anymore - there's still some slight price gap but not a considerable one.
Having Chinese drones in the sky is a risk. Having a dependency on their supply is another risk.
> That's a much smaller issue than it sounds, Ukraine produces millions of drones without any Chinese components at all except magnets for electric motors, and li-poly cells.
Source? My understanding is that Ukrainian drones are pretty much 100% off-the-shelf Chinese components.
That was the case in 2023. Not anymore. Simplest builds still use Chinese parts, but many producers are using all-Ukrainian electronics, designed and produced within Ukraine (GALYCHYNA FC, FRANKIVSK ESC etc. - all clones of SpeedyBee, of course), and some producers are making a further step and use Ukrainian motors, Ukrainian cameras, Ukrainian props (these are so far rather shitty), and frames were made in Ukraine from the beginning.
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.
Of course I’m disturbed by both the proliferation of drones and our administration developing military equipment for a war department instead of defense or rescue.
However, I unfortunately am well-aware of a company that made these parts on U.S. soil.
I’d be wary of ANY manufacturer of significance within the U.S. that has never had and will never have foreign ties or be influenced by foreign powers that the U.S. in engaged against.
The manufacturer I’m aware of was a shitshow with everything that would be important to the military, except for the actual making of the parts, which they were excellent at, at least in certain parts of the company.
So because of this, I have to assume that this is a fundamentally ignorant plan to try to nationalize manufacturing for defense, and I’d expect nothing less from our current administration.
"What does this mean?
• 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.
If drones are a threat to national security, then all existing drones should be grounded, regardless of the manufacturer. Or, if Chinese drones are the threat, then all existing Chinese-made drones should be grounded?
I don't understand how banning future drones helps national security in any way.
>> banning future drones
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.
Well this would be step one to try to motivate some US company to start manufacturing. Then once it ramps up they can step in with banning existing stuff without causing too much disruption.
Exactly, it's about supply chains. Banning existing drones with no replacements on offer would be unnecessarily disruptive.
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.
Wouldn't you want the opposite? Once domestic production ramps up you gradually lift import restrictions to create more competition. I guess that's if the intention is to improve the domestic market in the national interest, rather than to just make people rich.
That is exactly what you never want to do under protectionist policies. Domestic producers are shielded from Chinese competitors. This means they are under less pressure to reduce prices and innovate.
I wouldn't read too much into the national security justification. It's a political argument to an economic policy.
> 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.
If this is about military capability, why ban all foreign manufacturers, including proven innovators like Helsing and Baykar? Instead of blanket bans, targeted contracts could leverage Ukraine tested designs while building domestic capacity.
Innovation happens under competitive pressure. The US just created a domestic vacuum.
The national security justification is that we need expertise building/designing drones. We won't get that if we allow China to out-compete domestic manufacturers.
The grandfathering clause is the tell. If these drones were an active national security threat, they wouldn't let civilians keep flying them.
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...
agree re policy, but technically... it's possible that today's drones are OK but they're worried about future drones including something new...
If that was the reason, a case by case analysis would make more sense than blanket ban. There’s no plausible technical explanation for this that doesn’t apply to any other devices, components, or software. If it could be made dangerous in theory then preemptively assume it will maybe at some point and ban it.
This is from the same people who brought you “let’s break all your encryption because you might become a criminal in the future”.
The goal (assuming rational policy) is improving security over time.
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.
It's just how these things normally work. Assault rifle bans. Magazine capacity bans. Automobile safety requirements. The old, determined unsafe items are allowed to remain, only new are prevented.
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.
If I understand correctly, this doesn't ban the import/sale of drone models which the FCC previously approved. That said, in October 2025 the FCC granted itself the authority to retroactively revoke previously-approved models, so this is something they could still potentially do.
It bans the import, but not sale of models the FCC has previously approved.
Your originally quoted text explicitly disagrees with you: "This update to the Covered List does not prohibit the import, sale, or use of any existing device models the FCC previously authorized."
Mea culpa. I've been reading some reporting earlier in the day. Trying to find verification for the claims I see that it was wrong.
Which is better than it could be, all things considered.
So, America just shot itself in the foot again. It's starting to look like a pattern.
It’s like a poorly executed form of protectionism. I guess they’re doing the best they can, can’t expect people unfit for office to create good policy, right.
Presumably it moves some stock prices or helps a company who bought a ticket/altcoin from Trump. I expect it achieves the intended effect.
Well.. DJI have on-the-fly no fly zone update, and newer model can communicate via satellite.
That's worse if you believe there are possibility of war...
Attack vector: drone needs to get out of a case, backpack or closet, out of the window and fly somewhere to do something.
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.
Or even just 'halt and catch fire'.
Heck even a targeted but small percent increase in sporadic behavior for targets of high value might be a worthy harassment tactic.
Yeah, all your HVAC systems and even nuclear power plants are online. Don't give me this BS about kiddy drones.
Oh no, what will we do without cheap Chinese drones spying on us
I want to believe this is some ploy to open the market for some US manufacturer that slipped a few thousand dollars in an envelope but I have a sneaking suspicion that nobody is coming to fill the void left by this naive protectionism. (Or is it deliberate sabotage? I don't even know anymore)
If it was phased in and didn't specifically include allied country imports, I could believe that.
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.
It's crazy that it also bans new models from Europe's Wingtra, Quantum Systems, and AgEagle, which are basically the only consumer fixed-wing drones available. Heck, those companies were even previously approved for the DOD's "Blue UAS" list: https://bluelist.appsplatformportals.us/Cleared-List/
It’s only crazy if you think Europe and the US are still allies. That simply isn’t the case anymore. The US is in its own now.
Not completely on its own, at least they still have Russia on their side (or rather the other way around).
The primary goal of the Trump administration is to destroy American manufacturing. They don't want factories, hence all the tariffs.
> The primary goal of the Trump administration is to destroy American manufacturing. They don't want factories, hence all the tariffs.
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 US has a problem where government revenue has been increasing by the usual amount (i.e. as a percent of GDP it's within the same range it has been for 70+ years), and is therefore the highest it's ever been before in real dollars, but spending has increased by even more than that, and in particular spending has been increasing faster than GDP. But for the last few decades we've had people saying "deficits don't matter".
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?
> 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.
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 uses private health insurance instead of a national health service, which explains more than all of the difference in taxation compared to the median country in Europe. If you added what people in the US are paying for health insurance to what they're paying in state and federal taxes, they're paying more than people in Europe do. But if you adopted a public insurance system in the US then the taxes would have to go to that rather than providing revenue to cover existing spending.
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?
Your position assumes facts not in evidence. If the administration wanted to rebuild American manufacturing, the last thing they'd do is pile on additional taxes on manufacturing domestically—which is exactly what their tariffs do.
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.
> Your position assumes facts not in evidence. If the administration wanted to rebuild American manufacturing, the last thing they'd do is pile on additional taxes on manufacturing domestically—which is exactly what their tariffs do.
> ...
> 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).
Skydio? For a while they were #2 in consumer drones but found they couldn't compete with DJI and exited the consumer market in 2023. They now do > 50% of their business for the U.S. military and are in tight with the U.S. government. Could be a plan to re-enter the consumer market, this time with no competition.
> some US manufacturer that slipped a few thousand dollars
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.
Rotor Riot sells a flight controller made in USA. Donald Trump Jr. is on the advisory board of Unusual Machines that owns Rotor Riot.
Wow. The text of the determination is just unhinged completely: https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/National-Security-De...
> 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.
So now in addition to snuggling fentanyl they'll also be smuggling the drones. Twofer.
Does that mean that DJI can continue to sell models that they've already been selling in the US?
As long as there are no favored companies, I'm sure fair competition will ensure that the US regains its edge (and the Olympics will remain safe)
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/drone-company...
What and how much do I need to pay to add Don Jr. to my company’s board? $10MM converted to TRUMP? $100MM?
There is no viable alternative to DJI’s Enterprise offerings. I get that we are trying to bolster domestic tech but this is a stick when it should be a carrot.
> I get that we are trying to bolster domestic tech but this is a stick when it should be a carrot.
It's not either-or, it should be both.
Won’t DJI’s current offerings still be available? I bought a Phantom 4 Pro 5 years ago that I use for mapping and it still does the job. I would expect that Enterprise drones would work the same way. Sure we’re not going to get the next new better faster model so in that scenario it does give time for a domestic company to engineer an offering.
Look up thread, everything, including batteries is now banned. You might be able to keep your drone but good luck getting any parts.
By the way, nobody makes consumer drone batteries in the US that I know of.
Is that what we are trying to do? Does that seem like the most likely plan being executed here?
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> In their determination, national security agencies referenced, among other things, concerns that that foreign-made UAS could be used for attacks and disruptions, unauthorized surveillance, sensitive data exfiltration, and other UAS threats to the homeland.
So people planning attacks and disruptions and unauthorized surveillance will have to buy drones made in the USA?
No: the threat model as stated is referring to, in restated terms, “China could silently occupy DJI headquarters and control US-deployed DJI drones into quasi-military strikes using firmware updates, remote controls, or other such mechanisms.” Same theory as Huawei 5G routers could be remotely wiretapped in various ways, etc.
(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.)
With the way DJI drone updates are deployed, that isn’t actually that far fetched, technically. Assuming the targeted event was known in advance in time/space.
It would likely be an obvious act of war, but technically it wouldn’t be that hard to pull off.
As another commenter pointed out, the vast majority of drones are in storage, indoors, with no battery connected.
and the ones near an event are going to generally be on and with some sort of internet connection.
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!
Because drones without explosives strapped to them are so effective.. not to mention they spend 99.9% of the time in storage with battery disconnected, so easy to make a bunch of them attack at the same time (because once people know the drones are malicious it’s game over for the attackers).
pure idiocy.
No, they can buy previously authorized DJI drones, or used ones on eBay, no problem.
But nobody can import batteries, motors or flight controllers.
The covered list now includes batteries and motors, even though they don't emit RF. Most are just battery cells, wires, magnets, and connectors, with not even a single transistor inside.
They were not previously subject to FCC certification, therefore none are certified, which means none can be imported now.
~~I am not seeing that, why do you say that?~~ Update: answering my own question. It's the ††.
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...
"the following UAS components:
As stated in the pdf, this is so adversaries cannot assemble drones in the US.
Are you saying the FCC writes one thing in the regulation, but will enforce something different?
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.
Its not clear to me whether this will impact all foreign made drones or just those from China. I get that DJI is the core target, but does this mean that a competitor from Europe (ex. Ukraine which I imagine will have a burgeoning drone market, esp for commercial/defense applications) will need a natsec signoff in order to sell a drone in the US?
Edit to add: From additional reporting on the issue, it seems that the answer is yes, it will affect all countries
Won't this place drone users in US in severe disadvantage right at the time when drones of all kinds are being used to provide all kinds of useful services ? In comparison users in countries with better policy planning will reap benefits.
Shouldn't there been some sort of planning for a local company to provide at least comparable products before needlessly wreaking havoc like this ?
I've been in the bowels of the domestic robot/drone parts supply chain. It's ugly, almost non-existent. I wish there was more of a carrot, but the opportunity for that was frankly 5 years ago.
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.
People seem to think this is anti-competitive.
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?
Ask HP the same question for printers or Microsoft for Windows. Today everthing needs an account, even wash machines.
one activated your printer can just magically ~~fly away~~ report low toner every three pages
Part of it could be to help ensure that the drones are operated in compliance with national regulations, such as FAA regulations in the US. Modern drones consult databases of restricted zones they are not supposed to fly in, and those databases change occasionally.
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.
Most drones require similar amount of training to the full pilots license with the exception of the hours of actual flying. You still have to learn the regulations to fly any drone that is bigger than a tiny toy.
I don't think US-made drones would be any different.
US made drones are subject to US law.
So are foreign-made drones when operated in the US.
Don't kid yourself. American companies are as anti-consumer as they come.
But no they literally aren’t. If the Chinese government takes data from a Chinese company in China, there is no legal process available to anyone affected because it is outside of US jurisdiction. What is America going to sue China the country in American court? That’s <mentally deficient>.
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.
...is this bug being tracked somewhere?
Which famously protects the customer.
/s
DJI requires activation (through a cell phone app, exposing personally identifiable information) for all their products, even action cameras.
Drones have regulated no-fly areas in the US (other nations too), the regulations basically require some measures like this.
DJI had the list of US no-fly zones that included airports, military bases, prisons, etc. Since DJI is no longer selling drones in the US, they removed that restriction.
>> 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.
> Seriously, why do people need an account to activate/fly?
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-...
Why would anyone build manufacturing to fill a void like this knowing how arbitrary US policy is? One day you are a supplier, the next you are out of business. Long term, telegraphed, intelligent, policy shift is the way to encourage and build a domestic industry, this just makes it hard for us to have nice things.
More countries/regions should have something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025
Despite the amount of sucking up to Trump in the press release, this is not totally stupid. DJI drones do have a data path back to China. Several years ago, the US military, which used to use some DJI drones, decided that the risk was too high. There was an order (in 2022?) to cease using DJI drones and to store them with the batteries removed.
On the other hand, Donald Trump Jr. recently acquired an interest in a US drone company, which is selling drone motors to the US military for what seems a high price.
Every piece of USA tech has a data path back to USA -- who are actively threatening a bunch of countries right now.
The obvious corollary is that Canada, Greenland & Denmark (Panama, Venezuela, etc. too) and all their allies should get rid of all Windows computers, all Apple phones, all Tesla, etc, etc.
It's hard to imagine USA are not planning attacks right now using these tech vectors, given this threat model is being defended against in this way.
It was as equally clever as it was evil to put pressure on us to ditch Chinese tech, so USA can now attack us.
That's a much smaller issue than it sounds, Ukraine produces millions of drones without any Chinese components at all except magnets for electric motors, and li-poly cells. Certainly no Chinese electronics. Even lenses for thermal optics are now Ukrainian-made. They don't even come out as much more expensive anymore - there's still some slight price gap but not a considerable one.
Having Chinese drones in the sky is a risk. Having a dependency on their supply is another risk.
> That's a much smaller issue than it sounds, Ukraine produces millions of drones without any Chinese components at all except magnets for electric motors, and li-poly cells.
Source? My understanding is that Ukrainian drones are pretty much 100% off-the-shelf Chinese components.
That was the case in 2023. Not anymore. Simplest builds still use Chinese parts, but many producers are using all-Ukrainian electronics, designed and produced within Ukraine (GALYCHYNA FC, FRANKIVSK ESC etc. - all clones of SpeedyBee, of course), and some producers are making a further step and use Ukrainian motors, Ukrainian cameras, Ukrainian props (these are so far rather shitty), and frames were made in Ukraine from the beginning.
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.
Of course I’m disturbed by both the proliferation of drones and our administration developing military equipment for a war department instead of defense or rescue.
However, I unfortunately am well-aware of a company that made these parts on U.S. soil.
I’d be wary of ANY manufacturer of significance within the U.S. that has never had and will never have foreign ties or be influenced by foreign powers that the U.S. in engaged against.
The manufacturer I’m aware of was a shitshow with everything that would be important to the military, except for the actual making of the parts, which they were excellent at, at least in certain parts of the company.
So because of this, I have to assume that this is a fundamentally ignorant plan to try to nationalize manufacturing for defense, and I’d expect nothing less from our current administration.
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