Let's Move Past Rampant Paranoia Against Drones

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Watching President Trump's recent successful trade negotiations with China, I'm reminded of some words that a wise young man told his international business school classmates at their graduation, "The answer to our problems will not be found in the halls of our respective governments. The key to peace is what we spent the last year learning about. It's commerce. It's business, it's the free market."

Our nation's 47th chief executive understands how the exchange of goods and services leads to prosperity and peace. (Thomas Friedman's notion that no two countries with a McDonalds will ever go to war is not 100% true anymore, but it's still a great sentiment.)

President Trump also understands the importance of peace through strength.

While "nattering nabobs" and "pusillanimous pundits" wring their hands about tariffs and isolationism, the president has been using tariffs as a means, not an end: tariffs have forced our counter-parties to the negotiation table to get better deals for American workers.

Now that he has that deal with the world's second largest economy, he's suspended tariffs for a year. Let's hope that the rest of the government will follow suit with this kind of guarded optimism.

This optimism would mean dropping a section of last year’s defense authorization act that was based on the so-called "countering CCP Drones" bill, which took aim at DJI, the world's most successful commercial drone manufacturer.

Bizarre even by Washington’s standards, the bill targets this single company, and its competitor Autel, from selling in the United States, based on the accusation that the drones threaten our national security.

That's because DJI has a presence in China. The company also has a presence in the U.S., Germany, the Netherlands, Japan, South Korea, and elsewhere.

This doesn't make DJI special. Whatever device you’re reading this on probably also has a presence in China, Germany, and on and on because there’s that peaceful free market in action again.

So the full-court press against one company isn’t about the lofty free market ideals I talked to my business school class about; this is cronyism plain and simple.

See, while DJI has won the market, they lack the home-court advantage of their American competitors. U.S.-headquartered drone companies have lobbied the U.S. government to promote rules that will ban foreign made drones.

Now, that isn't to say the government couldn’t do more due diligence.

Indeed, Section 1709 of the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) requires a risk assessment by an appropriate national security agency for products like drones.

So then let's do that. If a fair and balanced audit finds there’s problems with the drones — which probably would not be the case — then we can ban them afterward.

Like Captain America said, "I thought the punishment usually came after the crime."

Although DJI manufactures a whopping 70% of the world’s consumer drones, apparently they’re still small potatoes in Washington. Politicians would never dare to ban iPhones --- which have a bigger Chinese footprint than any drone — but will target DJI because it doesn’t have the lobbying muscle that Apple does.

American consumers deserve access to the best products available — that's what the President’s trade deal with Beijing is all about.

Certainly, there are reasons to be concerned about China’s militarism — whether it's building hypersonic missiles and nuclear weapons or conducting cyber-espionage and sending sex spies to Silicon Valley.

But none of that is going on here.

It reminds me of the quote that Captain Jean Luc Picard, from "Star Trek" gave us many years ago that "the road from legitimate suspicion to rampant paranoia is very much shorter than we think."

The president has suspended tariffs with China for one year.

The government should take the 47th commander in chief's lead and allow another year for the national security agencies to complete a fair review of DJI.

Jared Whitley is a longtime politico who has worked in the U.S. Senate, White House, and defense industry. He has an MBA from Hult business school in Dubai. In 2024 he won the Top of the Rockies Best Columnist award. Read Jared Whitley's Reports — More Here.