Protecting Arkansans, one drone at a time
Like most decisions in life, trade-offs are a necessary part of the legislative process. This was certainly true in the passage of Act 525 during the last legislative session.
The law sets new policy for state agencies buying and using drones, which have become an indispensable tool for everything from law enforcement to bridge inspections to surveying power lines. The law will allow agencies to continue to use this important technology while ensuring our national and state security isn’t being jeopardized in the process.
While drone use in itself is not inherently dangerous, when we look at the global market and supply chains enabling this ubiquity, an alarming security trend emerges. The global drone market is currently dominated by drones manufactured by our foreign adversaries.
One Chinese company, DJI, dominates around 70 percent of the U.S. hobby drone market and 90 percent of the U.S. commercial drone market. This same company is currently classified by the United States Department of Defense as a “Chinese Military Company” operating within the U.S. What many Americans may not realize is that Chinese Communist Party law requires Chinese companies to cooperate with their intelligence agencies.
DJI maintains that it is privately held and has not received “direct” investments from the Chinese government. However, research by Internet Protocol Video Market, an independent physical security technology research organization, found that DJI received infusions from at least four investment firms “owned or administered by Beijing” since 2018, including one from a Chinese state asset manager that plays a key role in Chinese military-civil partnerships.
DJI also has access to cheap microprocessors and raw materials, as well as cheap labor. This access, arising from its proximity to China’s “Silicon Valley” and alleged subsidies from the Chinese government, provides DJI significant advantage over most competitors. DJI offers compact high-performing drones at an increasingly low cost. However, DJI’s popularity among public safety organizations and infrastructure owners and operators, combined with compelling evidence of strong ties to the Chinese government, has raised concern among national security experts and government officials alike.
Act 525 addresses the concern over the saturation of Chinese-made drones and their seeming infiltration throughout municipalities, localities, and law-enforcement agencies across Arkansas. The new law prohibits the future acquisition of Chinese- and Russian-made drones by state agencies.
Recognizing some agencies are currently using these drones, the law allows for a four-year window for existing drones to be used/transitioned out and creates an exemption process based on exigent circumstances for these compromised drones to be purchased on the rare occasion where need and availability of non-Chinese made drones are non-existent or immensely costly.
In practice, the legislative process is accomplishing the art of the possible, considering the perspectives and subject matter expertise of those in the field that use these mission-critical pieces of infrastructure to execute their day-to-day tasks.
Dissenting voices, concerned citizens, and national security experts were all heard, and this act took into account those very voices through amendments and revisions to promote through a single universal truth that Chinese-made drones, namely DJI drones, are at their very core compromised and at worst instruments of influence by the CCP, and allows for a steady off-ramp for our state agencies to procure non-compromised drones in the future.
American drones, once considered technologically inferior, are now matching and in some cases surpassing capabilities of their competitors while securely meeting our drone needs. We believe this new policy will allow agencies to continue to use this critically important drone technology without posing a threat to the safety and security of our citizens.
Recently in a bipartisan effort, members of the House of Representatives and the United States Senate folded in language from the American Security Drone Act into the National Defense Authorization Act. This appropriation and authorization replicates the same common-sense protections instituted here in Arkansas that prohibits the federal government from purchasing drones manufactured in countries identified as national security threats, such as the People’s Republic of China.
This remarkable feat is a clarion call of the overwhelming need to protect our homeland from the encroachment of foreign nations that want to steal our secrets and use our data and information against us.
To be clear, this isn’t a law state legislators passed just in case Chinese-made drones pose a security threat. That threat is here, and it is real. So, in weighing the trade-off of commerce versus risking state and national security through continued use of these compromised drones, elected officials did and should continue to err on the side of security and the 3.1 million Arkansans who count on us to protect their privacy and keep them safe.
Rep. Brit McKenzie (R-Rogers) was elected to the Arkansas House of Representatives in 2022 and is the primary sponsor of Act 525 which passed during the 94th General Assembly. Brian Harrell is the former Assistant Secretary for Infrastructure Protection at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.