> sleeper cells of drones are a pretty reasonable attack vector

What exactly is the attack vector here? If we're talking about sleeper agents sure but these restrictions are focused on importing commercial products by citizens here: crop dusters and photography etc. sure they have a cloud service and might exfiltrate some aerial photography, but then anybody can see the same on Google Earth.

I think this is just a negotiating tactic and a little bit of red scare to amp up the defense story

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unsnap_biceps a day ago | parent | next [-]

Ukraine's attack on Russian airfields via drones positioned near the airfields hidden in trucks was extremely successful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Spiderweb

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JKCalhoun a day ago | parent [-]

But a DJI drone I purchase from Amazon is missing a rather important component that would make it a weapon for the Chinese.

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mcphage a day ago | parent [-]

"Dear DJI customer, congrats! For free, we are sending you a brand new hardware update to your DJI drone, a super battery pack! Please attach it to your drone immediately and try it out, the improvements will be positively explosive! Also please don't shake it or bump it too hard."

	▲	JKCalhoun 19 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Ha ha.

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defrost a day ago | parent | prev [-]

DJI drones are not arriving in the US strapped with explosives and ready to swarm an airbase taking out bombers and jets.

A more realistic "danger" is DJI drones taking over the market (more than they have already) and:

* backdooring usage patterns back to China - that gives a lot of info via traffic analysis especially if adopted by law enforcement and military,

* suddenly proving useless in a crunch (when used by military or paramilitary for observation or weapons delivery against forces China favours) due to backdoor control.

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codedokode a day ago | parent [-]

If American companies like Tesla leave the possibility of tracking/disabling their cars remotely, why China should not do the same? It would be strategically stupid to make a product without a backdoor when everyone else inserts backdoors.

	▲	defrost a day ago \| parent [-]
		My comment above made no judgement about backdoor access to products, it merely pointed out that country X might judge an over reliance on products from country Y a security risk if those products leak information or can be remotely controlled. It's a risk for China to use US hardware in Chinese network infrastructure as much as it is a risk for the US to use Chinese communications or other hardware. These risks can be mitigated by vetting but they are real risks that countries must account for in their national security protocols.