Chinese-made DJI drones widely adopted by US safety agencies even as Trump administration voices data security concerns
- The company controls more than 70 per cent of the global commercial and consumer drone market and generated sales of US$2.7 billion in 2017
US public safety agencies are rapidly adopting unmanned aircraft from Chinese drone maker DJI Technologies even as the Trump administration voices security concerns that the devices could be sending sensitive surveillance data back to China.
“Between 2015 and 2018 we have seen 500 per cent growth of drone adoption by public safety agencies in the US,” Jan Gasparic, director of strategic partnerships at DJI, said at the RISE tech conference in Hong Kong on Wednesday. “The reason for such a fast rate is because this technology has a transformative impact on the type of work they do.”
The rapid adoption of drones in safety agencies illustrates DJI’s strategy of sharpening its focus on its industrial business with new products to offset slowing growth in the broader consumer market.
“DJI started as a drone company but will not only play in that field,” said Gasparic. “We are always taking different approaches to put core technologies into new products and [product] categories.”
In May, CNN reported that the US Department of Homeland Security alerted American companies to “be aware” in case their unmanned aerial systems (UAS) data was “being stored by the vendor or other third parties”.
The alert from the department’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, according to CNN, stated that the drones were a “potential risk to an organisation’s information”.
