Washington, D.C. - Today, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, Congresswoman Ashley Hinson (R-IA), and Chairman John Moolenaar (R-MI) of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) led a letter to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and the Director of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Jen Easterly demanding CISA and USDA take action to mitigate the unacceptable risks of allowing Chinese-manufactured agriculture drones to proliferate across America.
For years, the CCP has been working to undermine America’s agriculture dominance and Communist China is now leveraging their monopoly on drone manufacturing to further this goal. This presents numerous unacceptable national security risks and gives Communist China leverage over our nation’s food supply.
The U.S. Department of Commerce currently classifies agricultural spray drones as weapons delivery platforms and therefore places rigorous export restrictions on spray drones manufactured in America. However, there are currently just under 10,000 registered agricultural spray drones in the U.S. many of which were manufactured by DJI, a Chinese Military Company. Additionally, DJI manufactures agriculture drones that have sophisticated sensing technology specifically designed to monitor the health of crops and direct the spray drones to the appropriate area. This means that Chinese drones are actively collecting granular level detail on our agriculture industry that can be weaponized by the CCP to threaten our food supply.
Stefanik has been leading the effort to combat the national security threat of CCP-manufactured drones to America. Stefanik’s bipartisan legislation, the Countering CCP Drones Act, is included in the House-passed National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025, prohibiting new models of DJI drones from operating in the United States.
In the letter, the lawmakers wrote,
“Food security is national security and the CCP is actively trying to undermine America’s global agricultural dominance. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has drastically increased their ownership of U.S. agricultural land and Chinese spies have stolen U.S.-developed genetically modified seeds directly out of the ground in Iowa. Dominating the supply of agriculture drones is another strategy that the PRC is pursuing to jeopardize America’s food supply.”
The lawmakers continued,
“The risk of DJI’s transmission of data to the CCP is made clear in a recent industry cybersecurity guidance on Chinese-manufactured drones published by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). According to the guidance, using Chinese-manufacture drones, “risks exposing sensitive information to PRC authorities, jeopardizing U.S. national security, economic security, and public health and safety.” Furthermore, China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law obligates “all” Chinese organizations and citizens to collaborate with state intelligence operations. Meaning that DJI must support China’s intelligence services and military by turning over data they collect in China and overseas.”
Stefanik was joined by Reps. Alford, Cline, Dunn, Garbarino, Guest, Hinson, Johnson, Moolenaar, Newhouse, Van Orden, Wittman, and Nunn.
Read the full letter HERE.
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