Chinese drone maker DJI has sued the US Department of Defense, alleging it was added to a list of companies affiliated with the Chinese military and denied the opportunity to protest its innocence.

DJI filed the lawsuit [PDF] last week to protest its inclusion on the DoD's list of Chinese military companies (CMCs), insisting that it isn't owned or controlled by the nation's military forces, and that it doesn't manufacture drones for military purposes. DJI said it filed the lawsuit to protest its inclusion on the list after trying for more than a year to pry a justification out of the Defense Department so it could argue a rebuttal. 

"DJI, through outside counsel, sought to engage with DoD over more than a 16-month period to understand the rationale for DJI's designation, obtain the administrative record, and provide DoD with facts demonstrating that DJI is not a CMC under the statutory criteria," the manufacturer said in its lawsuit. 

DJI submitted a delisting petition in July 2023 but received no response, except for the DoD redesignating it as a CMC in January 2024, after initially adding it to the list in 2022. At that point, the drone maker began considering legal action, according to the filing.

"On September 6, 2024, DJI, having determined that it had no other reasonable option available, informed DoD that it planned to seek judicial relief," the drone maker claimed in its suit. "Only then did DoD produce a 'courtesy copy' of an internal report that it described as containing the full rationale for DJI's designation." 

DJI asserts the report "contains a scattershot set of claims that are wholly inadequate," including the application of an incorrect legal standard, confusion of Chinese naming conventions, "stale alleged facts" and other issues that indicate DJI's designation was "deeply flawed." 

Along with those allegations, DJI said that it simply doesn't meet the criteria set out under section 1260H of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act [PDF] that outlines the criteria for being designated a CMC. According to that rule, companies either owned, controlled or beneficially owned by Chinese military or political entities; or one that acts as a "military-civil fusion contributor to the Chinese defense industrial base" can be considered a CMC. 

We've been here before

DJI said it doesn't meet either criteria. And as it turns out, the DoD's declaration isn't the first time it's been fingered as part of China's military-industrial complex. 

The drone maker is also present on the US Commerce Department's entity list, which bans US companies from doing business with it without a waiver. DJI was also added to the Treasury department's own list in late 2021 for allegedly supplying drones to the government for tracking Uyghur Muslims as part of ongoing human rights abuses against the minority group. It's less clear the outfit has fought those designations, and it didn't respond to questions about the inclusion on the other lists. 

"DJI is not owned or controlled by the Chinese military, and the DoD itself acknowledges that DJI makes consumer and commercial drones, not military drones," the company told The Register while reiterating its reasons for filing the lawsuit. 

This doesn't mark DJI's first run-in with the Defense Department, either: Its drones were banned for use in the US Army after it came out that data from one of DJI's mobile apps may have been sending data back to China. The drone maker has since fixed the issue with a "local data mode," but that hasn't convinced the military to let the drones back into the fold. 

The manufacturer has also been accused of supplying drones for Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which it vehemently denied before suspending sales of its drones in both countries, saying it didn't want to see anyone use its devices for warfare. That hasn't stopped Russia from acquiring DJI drones for use on the front lines, which the outfit has continued to protest. 

That's hardly on DJI, however - even parts from US manufacturers end up in the hands of Iran and Russia.

The question may be moot

This entire argument may be moot if a pending piece of legislation ends up becoming law, though. The Countering CCP Drones Act would essentially ban DJI devices by prohibiting them from operating on US communications infrastructure. The bill passed the US House of Representatives in September, and is currently in the Senate where it has been in committee since last month. 

"For years, the U.S. government has known that DJI presents unacceptable economic and national security risks but no one was willing to take the necessary steps to remove Communist Chinese spy drones from our skies," bill sponsor Elise Stefanik (R-NY) said. 

If the bill doesn't become law, which may not happen given time is running out before the 2024 presidential election and the end of the congressional term, then a Washington, D.C. district court will need to decide whether DJI's argument passes muster to have it removed from the CMC list, and it's not clear when that might happen. 

We reached out to the DoD to comment on the case, but didn't hear back. ®

https://www.theregister.com//2024/10/22/dji_sues_dod/