We write to induce you to look at the lobbying actions of the Drone Advocacy Alliance on behalf of a Chinese language Navy Firm and undertake Overseas Brokers Registration Act enforcement motion as warranted. The Drone Advocacy Alliance promotes the pursuits of Shenzhen DJI Innovation Expertise Co., Ltd. (DJI); is funded by DJI Expertise Inc.; and is actively obscuring the drone firm’s ties to the Folks’s Republic of China (PRC) and its ruling Chinese language Communist Occasion (CCP) in efforts to affect Congress and the American public.
FARA requires people in the US who’re performing as brokers of overseas principals and engaged in political actions on behalf of overseas entities to register as a overseas agent with the U.S. Division of Justice (DOJ) and frequently disclose their relationships and actions on behalf of the overseas entity.1 FARA is meant to guard U.S. nationwide safety by requiring enhanced transparency into sure actions of organizations working within the U.S. on behalf of overseas entities, together with lobbying to affect U.S. coverage.
CCP-controlled drone firm DJI is sponsoring and utilizing the Drone Advocacy Alliance to market DJI drones as vital lifesaving instruments that don’t pose dangers to U.S. nationwide safety. Nevertheless, the other is the case. DJI is immediately facilitating genocidal crimes, arming the Chinese language army, and advancing the strategic targets of the CCP, an adversary that threatens U.S. nationwide safety. The Drone Advocacy Alliance is facilitating a CCP-led disinformation and propaganda marketing campaign focusing on Individuals – exercise that meets the brink of political actions as outlined beneath FARA statute and laws.
Based on its web site, “the Drone Advocacy Alliance is sponsored, and its web site maintained by DJI Expertise, Inc.” A current New York Instances article confirmed that DJI has “funded an internet site known as Drone Advocacy Alliance” that’s geared toward elevating consciousness about laws
The Drone Advocacy Alliance claims that it doesn’t endorse one particular drone producer. Nevertheless, as a result of unfair commerce practices and large subsidization, DJI has monopolized the world’s drone market, and all of its lobbying efforts are geared toward sustaining that unfair benefit.
CCP-controlled drones current an unacceptable nationwide safety danger which has been confirmed by the U.S. authorities a number of occasions within the final seven years. In 2017, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement bulletin said that DJI “is offering U.S. vital infrastructure and regulation enforcement information to the Chinese language authorities,” and that DJI drones have been getting used to “acquire on U.S. vital property.” These information have been reconfirmed quite a few occasions. In January 2024, CISA and the FBI launched a cybersecurity bulletin which states that PRC-manufactured drones “proceed to pose a major danger to vital infrastructure and U.S. nationwide safety” as a result of potential vulnerabilities in drones mixed with PRC legal guidelines that present the CCP “with expanded authorized grounds for accessing and controlling information held by corporations in China.”
Between 2017 and in the present day, the U.S. authorities has constantly maintained that working PRC- manufactured drones within the U.S. can expose delicate data to the CCP.
DJI additionally immediately advances the capabilities of the Folks’s Liberation Military (PLA). In 2022 the U.S. Division of Protection (DoD) recognized DJI as a Chinese language Navy Firm as a result of DJI’s direct help for the modernization of the PLA. And regardless of vital lobbying efforts1o, DJI was relisted as a Chinese language Navy Firm by the DoD in January 2024.119
Not solely does DJI immediately equip the army of our best strategic adversary, bettering the capabilities which may at some point be used towards U.S. service members, in addition they actively assist the CCP in finishing up genocidal crimes towards Uyghurs and different ethnic teams within the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Area. In 2021, the U.S. Division of the Treasury positioned sanctions on DJI and added it to the Chinese language Navy-Industrial Complicated checklist due to DJI’s function in “the biometric surveillance and monitoring of ethnic and non secular minorities in China, notably the predominantly Muslim Uyghur minority in Xinjiang.
systematically perpetrate crimes towards humanity and genocide towards Uyghurs and different ethnic minorities.
Individuals deserve heightened transparency when entities are lobbying Congress and the general public in a marketing campaign to prop up a CCP spy instrument that facilitates genocide and arms the PLA. As such, we urge your division to evaluate the Drone Advocacy Alliance’s actions for potential FARA submitting necessities. To the extent that any FARA exemptions are being utilized to the Drone Advocacy Alliance’s actions, please present our workers with a briefing on the Division’s associated evaluation.
Thanks to your immediate consideration to this matter and we look ahead to your response.
Sincerely,
Elise M. Stefanik
Member of Congress
John Mooleran
John Moolenaar Chairman
Choose Committee on the CCP