We need to talk about drones – millions of Chinese spies in the sky

Like most clichés, the phrase ‘the fog of war’ is a little tired. Even so, the US and China’s battle for global dominance and the ‘end of history’ fits the cliché – it is hard to see who is drawing ahead and who is falling behind, mainly because economies and societies of this scale are so multivariate, so complex, so pixelated with the myriad cogs and wheels of a working society that grand pronouncements are a bit foolish. 

Perhaps it is more instructive to look at the smaller skirmishes; the ones in which a clear victor emerges. 

So, we need to talk about drones – that small corner of the sprawling mobility sector. It turns out the entire industry (comprising military, commercial and recreational drones) has recently become urgently contested territory, suddenly finding itself in the geopolitical spotlight. 

Why? Because China has taken what was originally a Western invention and surged quietly ahead, with a commanding, perhaps unassailable, lead. 

The issue at stake is more serious than a simple technology race. This would not normally be front-page news (China is ahead in other industries too – solar energy, EVs, computer vision, high-speed railways, 5G etc.), but China’s dominance in the design and manufacture of drones has created an espionage headache for the US, and a big one at that. 

It is serious enough for the US to have passed a Bill last month grounding 70% of the country’s commercial drones. That’s a big, panicky reaction. The Bill is called, without much attempt at euphemism, the Countering CCP Drones Act. 

We’ll get to that in a moment but, first, some stats. According to Skycam (a drone stats company), 2.4 million drones were shipped in 2024 (the ones we know about – the deployment of military drones is a little more opaque), of which consumer drones outnumber commercial drones 2 to 1. That’s about 10 times the number of all types of planes in the US.

This seems to be a surprisingly large number – an awful lot of flying objects cruising around over our heads, many of which we cannot see or hear. A recent guest article by experts Cat Orman and Jason Lu, in prolific blogger Noah Smith’s Noahpinion, paints the picture:

“Drones operate behind the scenes of every American industry — they inspect our civil infrastructure and electric grid, shoot movies, conduct land surveys, detect diseases in crops, prospect for minerals, locate gas leaks, and create 3D models. If you get mugged in one of over 1,500 American police precincts (including Santa Monica, where I live), the first responder on the scene might be a drone.”

Let’s get back to where the problem lies, at least for the West, and particularly for the US. China, through its drone giant (a company called DJI), manufactures a full 90% of all commercial drones and 76% of consumer drones. That is as close to a monopoly as any company might aspire to, particularly given that all the important underlying tech was developed in the West, starting with military target-practice drones in the 1950s. 

China took the gap when everyone else was looking elsewhere. They took the tech, improved it, optimised it, refined it, shed cost, and scaled up manufacturing – and now China is not only the biggest but, more importantly, the best drone manufacturer in the world by the metrics of both quality and cost. Indeed, a couple of US companies have gone bust trying to compete. 

The Chinese drone industry has everyone in a headlock. There are no serious competitors.

So, why has a new law been passed which is designed to shut down DJI in the US? It is not because they make better drones at a more attractive price which almost everyone in the US buys. 

The story begins on 9 August 2017, when a memo was released from the Los Angeles office of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Bureau. It was the culmination of years of intelligence gathering by numerous experts and third parties. 

It was titled Da Jiang Innovations (DJI) Likely Providing U.S. Critical Infrastructure and Law Enforcement Data to Chinese Government, and it described how DJI-manufactured drones in the US, all owned by none-the-wiser companies and individuals, were uploading data on to DJI servers in China. The final comment in the memo does not mince words:

“DJI systems are collecting sensitive intelligence that the Chinese government could use to conduct physical or cyber attacks against the United States and its population. Alternatively, China could provide DJI information to terrorist organisations, hostile non-state entities, or state-sponsored groups to coordinate attacks against US critical infrastructure. 

“The UAS [Unmanned Aerial Systems] capture close-up imagery and GPS information on water systems, rail systems, hazardous material storage systems, first responders’ activity, and construction of highways, bridges, and rails.”

The report didn’t make a huge splash when it was published.  

Now panic has erupted, perhaps sparked by the emergence of military drones in Ukraine. According to the US government, the Chinese have had secret eyes over the whole damn country for years, perhaps decades. Millions of them. They have been watching everything. Infrastructure. Law enforcement activity. The movement of goods and supplies. Stadiums. Traffic. Harbours. Airports. Military bases. Reservoirs. Power stations. 

That is about as great a security threat as a country can imagine. Hence the banning of DJI drones last month, which amounts to 70% of the US-based population of UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles).  

It is not clear where all this is going. Perhaps towards a rejuvenation of drone manufacturing in the US, although it is hard to see how local manufacturing will ever match the Chinese price points. It is a hard pill to swallow. The West cannot compete. 

But there is a larger story emerging here as China forges ahead in science and tech after a somewhat tainted history of mere copying, large-scale cheap manufacturing and (it must be said) IP theft. The loss of drone supremacy is surely not a happy story for the US, but the prospect of losing the intelligence war to China is a far greater existential threat. 

The grounding of 70% of the US’s drones is a blunt weapon, but until someone has a better idea, it seems like the only choice. Other skirmishes to come are certain to give us a more accurate guide to the biggest battle of all.

I have a dog in this race, I suppose. I would prefer the Chinese to lose. I like the Western concept of democracy, not the Chinese view of whatever they call it. 

Twenty years ago it was clear that the governing systems of Western democracy had the upper hand. I am not so sure any more. DM

Steven Boykey Sidley is a professor of practice at JBS, University of Johannesburg. His new book, It’s Mine: How the Crypto Industry is Redefining Ownership, is published by Maverick451 in SA and Legend Times Group in the UK/EU, available now.