If It Flies, It Spies
Espionage In the Bean Fields
There’s a guy in North Carolina named Russell Hendrick, and he’s the high-tech holder of two impressive records: the state’s record for soybean yield, and the world record for “dryland corn yield.”[1] He’s a first-generation farmer on a 30-acre farm up in Hickory. (That’s the way we talk hereabouts. West and north are “up,” south and east are “down.” Same as in Colorado, come to think of it.) Anyway, you might wonder how a first-gen farmer manages to turn in such impressive stats.
The most modern of modern equipment. Drones.
Yep. He’s got his own private air command. Drones, he says, are better than traditional crop-dusting aircraft. “Airplanes and helicopters do not apply the materials as well as utilizing the prop wash and the vortexes on a spray drone [drones utilize a vortex effect created by the rotor wash to spread out and distribute the atomized liquid].”[2] In addition to crop-dusting, he uses drones for mapping and “Normalized Difference Vegetation Index analysis.” Clearly, this is not the old school way of doing things.
He uses several types of drones, all manufactured by DJI Technologies, a Chinese company. And therein lies the rub.
Enter Elise Stefanik. Yeah, that Elise Stefanik, Congresswoman and would-be Vice President, (MAGA-NY). Elise has a burr up her backside about Chinese drone technology because of course we all know that the Chinese plant spy chips in everything they sell in the U.S. – computers and TikTok and fortune cookies, oh my.
Soooo, Stefanik has introduced a bill called the “Countering CCP Drones Act” (HR 2864), which has since been tacked onto a defense spending bill that passed the House a week or so ago. Apparently the focus is mainly on DJI, who seems to be the big player in the AG drone business. According to Hendrick, there are other Chinese companies in the AG drone business, as well as American manufacturers who use Chinese parts and software.
Hendrick claims that American manufacturers are 5 to 10 years behind their Chinese counterparts when it comes to this technology. On the security issue, Hendrick asserts that anything China could learn by using spy agricultural drones is already freely available from the USDA. Also, no one has ever hijacked a DJI drone in flight. So why the big push to shut down DJI?
Turns out there’s a U.S. based drone maker named Skydio. According to Hendrick, Skydio’s director of federal policy used to be national security advisor to guess who? Yep. Elise Stefanik. As Hendrick drily notes, “There are clearly vested interests at play here.”
And that, boys and girls, is how a bill becomes law.
[1] https://agfundernews.com/north-carolina-farmer-weighs-in-on-china-ag-spray-drones-battle-everyone-is-contacting-their-state-reps-about-this
[2] Ibid.
MAGA bullies really do suck!