The US Army is going to ban its units from using drones manufactured by the Chinese firm DJI due to “cyber vulnerabilities”.
The decision was based on the findings of a research conducted by the Army Research Laboratory and the navy that discovered vulnerabilities in DJI products.
A memo issued by the US Army’s Lieutenant General Joseph Anderson orders all US Army units that are currently employing DJI drones to stop using them.
DJI (Da-Jiang Innovation Corporation) is a Chinese firm based in Shenzhen. Goldman Sachs and Oppenheimer estimated in 2016 that DJI had about 70 percent share of the global commercial and consumer drone market.
In the memo, soldiers are also ordered to remove all batteries and storage media from their DJI drones and await further instructions…
A U.S. Army spokesperson confirmed that the memo was issued and added that they are currently reviewing it.
The DJI made the headlines in April 2016 when the company received the pressure of the Chinese government to gain access to the data collected by its drones, included telemetry, GPS location data, flight records and possibly video shot by users and uploaded to its servers.
So I guess it jumps on wifi and allows the Chinese to scan through the available systems for the footage it is shooting, and look for GPS coordinates of interest. That is intense.
As the Internet of Things goes about automating everything in our houses, you see how the non-paranoid are going to end up living at the mercy of the machine. Pieces of intelligence it would have taken decades to amass in preparation of a hit will now be a click of the mouse away, from what you have in your fridge, to when it needs to be replenished.
And if you actually have something to hide, good luck with that. Business secrets, black-mailable information, or just embarrassing moments will all end up immortalized on a hard drive somewhere.