The US House of Representatives has already passed a bill (https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/6572) that would outlaw DJI and its subsidiaries from using FCC allocated radio frequencies needed to control the drones. The Senate (Rick Scott’s amendment) is quickly falling suit. The need to do this is attributed to national security. But those national security issues have never been defined or documented.
What I find strange about this legislation is that it is going after one company. Shenzhen Da-Jing Innovations Sciences and Technologies Company Limited, aka DJI. Why does our government fear one Chinese company?
I don’t know anything about DJI as a company, but I do use their drones and their drones work really well. I also recognize excellence in technology. The DJI drone is so good it has to be made by top notch engineers. If government or party members were involved, the product would have long ago been compromised. DJI has the feel of an Apple Inc. when Steve Jobs ran it.
The products of companies run for or by committee or governments just do not work well. Their bloated, expensive and prone to failure.
Think of Boeing. It use to produce the best airliners in the world. But its management moved from Boeing Field in Washington State, where those planes were built, to Chicago and now to Virginia. At the same time their focus changed from engineering excellence to financial management and government contracts. The result is the 737 Max and a space capsule stuck in space.
Think Tesla and Musk Incorporated. The Tesla automobile was a lean, mean machine. But Musk’s other companies Boring and SpaceX, rely more and more on taxpayers money. I see diminishing returns there. And of course Twitter, now X, is a mess. He strayed from engineering to politics and will pay the price.
Think our defense contractors. None of them can make a gun, vehicle, airplane, ship, missile, rocket without a cost over run. All of them have problems getting their product out the door.
So what does our government do. Take down a foreign company that is making a great product.
There are no US companies that make any drones that work as well and at the price DJI charges. American drone manufacturers are not interested in consumer level drones. They want the large, US taxpayer funded contracts to make drones for many thousands if not million of dollars. A $1000 drone that work for small businesses, first responders and individual photographers/videographers do not interest them.
Put Armstrong
