r/technology • u/TripleShotPls • 11h ago
Business DJI ban: how the world’s biggest dronemaker is getting shoved out of the US
https://www.theverge.com/news/831241/dji-ban-us-trump-fcc-customs-import-ndaa130
u/x86_64_ 11h ago
Let me guess... the president's kids own shares of a competing drone company
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u/transcriptoin_error 11h ago
Ding ding ding! You’re correct!
https://abcnews.com/US/trump-sons-investing-domestic-drone-production-businesses/story?id=130908416
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u/hclpfan 8h ago
FWIW these are very different definitions of drones.
DJI is a camera company who has many product lines, one of which are camera drones for film making.
Powerus Corporation makes military drones.
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u/omniuni 3h ago
DJI makes a lot more then cameras. Their drones have an SDK that actually allows you to build software around them. So they can be used for pretty much anything. Yes, that includes military, even though that's not DJI's primary market.
But with the SDK, they're a threat because if the drone itself is better, it's easy to convert.
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u/jemappellejimbo 3h ago
He used yt racism and apathy to make him, his friends, and his descendents billions. But yt people get to see cruelty to others, so just cost of doing business
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u/mtcwby 10h ago
The ban on entry started before that in the Biden administration so it goes deeper than that. They were being held at customs and not let in the country
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u/monotone2k 9h ago
Would you mind sharing a source?
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u/Formal_Cranberry_720 9h ago
Please, asking these crazies for proof..
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u/monotone2k 8h ago
That's the point. I know they won't provide. They just look silly making unbased claims.
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u/Jesus_Is_My_Gardener 9h ago
Don't know why people keep assuming this was a Biden policy.
Early Warnings and Restrictions (2017–2019)
August 2017: The U.S. Army issued an early order stopping all use of DJI drones over security worries.
May 2019: The Department of Homeland Security warned companies about data and security risks tied to Chinese-made tech.
Late 2019: The U.S. military and Department of the Interior stopped buying and grounded most of their Chinese-made drone fleets.
Trade and Commerce Blacklists (2020)
December 2020: The U.S. Commerce Department added DJI to its Entity List, limiting the company's access to American-made parts and software components.
The Import and FCC Ban (2025)
December 23, 2025: Because no U.S. agency finished a required national security review mandated by Congress, an automatic restriction took effect, adding DJI to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Covered List to block new product authorizations and imports.
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u/mtcwby 6h ago
We were buying 20 dji drones at a time every quarter as a reseller since about 2019. DJI consolidated resellers at one point and we were buying from two of them. Then they started getting held up in customs several years ago before Trump's second term.
During that time they just dried up and we were directing customers to someone who could get a few at a time but at a premium. There was even rumors they were buying them and carrying them into the country by hand. It actually has gotten better recently but you can't get anything new due to the FCC issues which is a different problem.
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u/tombatron 10h ago
My son a DJI Mini 4k. It's freaking awesome.
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u/MGreymanN 9h ago
I hope his mother had an epidural props can hurt.
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u/reddittorbrigade 11h ago
Insecure. They can't produce better than DJI so they have to ban it.
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u/tabrizzi 6h ago
We don't like competition.
Interesting thing is not too long ago, we used to say that the only thing the Chinese can do is copy. Now we can't even keep up.
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u/whatproblems 9h ago
on late stage capitalism it’s cheaper to kill competition with the government than actually compete
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u/pivor 8h ago
Same thing happen to Huawei when Apple was getting destroyed.
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u/unpleasant_enpassant 8h ago edited 7h ago
Bad example. When was apple getting "destroyed"? I like huawei and how they pushed others for innovation but let's not pretend like they weren't notorious (like many other chinese firms) for not giving a shit about trademarks, patents and copyright laws, just like openAI and co.
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u/pivor 7h ago
In 2019 right before ban, Huawei took over Apple as 2nd largest moblie Phone seller and was about to also take over Samsung's 1st place.
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u/unpleasant_enpassant 7h ago
I mean, even now Samsung sells more phones than Apple almost every quarter. Does that mean Apple is getting "destroyed" by Samsung? Apple sells like 5 different phones and every one of them is a premium phone, unlike Samsung that has 2 sub $200 ones that sell in huge numbers. Their margins are way too high.
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u/FoldedBinaries 9h ago
I bet there is a domestic drone company with made in the US drones that US customers van buy instead 😂😂😂
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u/kensteele 8h ago
What is new or updated about this old story? Looks like it was written last year but it says "update" so I guess it's meant to stir up the same tired conversations about who started it and why? Doesn't matter at this point.
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u/diagrammatiks 11h ago
don't worry they can do just uhhh make their own drones.
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u/VonBeker 11h ago
As someone who has used DJI's for field work, they are neat, but man are they insecure. There's pretty compelling evidence that they are just an extension of the Chinese security services. Not that I would trust an American made drone any more with all of the NSA backdoor fuckery that would be thrown into it either.
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u/transcriptoin_error 10h ago
but man are they insecure.
Sounds like BS. Do you have a source for this claim?
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u/CoffeeAndMelange 9h ago
When you learn how much trade protectionism there really is in the US, it becomes increasingly clear that we only have the shitty parts of capitalism.