Staff Reports
In a new letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is demanding answers regarding U.S. companies that were apparently allowed by the Biden administration to export technology to entities in adversarial foreign countries — entities with products currently being used in attacks against America’s international partners.
Another Biden Scandal Might Be Brewinghttps://t.co/dsUkYeJYCT
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Since President Biden took office, the world has become an increasingly dangerous place. Russia invaded Ukraine as Biden insisted his sanctions would deter Putin’s ambitions. Israel was attacked in a bloody slaughter carried out by Iran-backed Hamas terrorists. Other patrons of Tehran’s bloodthirsty regime have managed to block some 60 percent of the world’s shipping traffic from transiting the Red Sea. China continues to harass Taiwan and threatens the planes and vessels of the U.S. military and its allies in the region.
Amid all this chaos, it seems that the Biden administration is dropping the ball when it comes to protecting and enhancing any advantages the United States has over its foes around the world, including Russia, China, and Iran. Now, a bipartisan group of lawmakers led by Republicans Sens. Joni Ernst, Marsha Blackburn, Todd Young, and Marco Rubio, along with Reps. Elise Stefanik, Jimmy Panetta, Mike Gallagher, and others are demanding answers.
The lawmakers’ concerns stem from the company in question, Da Jiang Innovations (DJI), a Chinese state-owned drone company that has been on the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security’s Entity List since 2020 for facilitating widespread human rights abuses in China. The lawmakers are alarmed that DJI, a company on the Entity List, has apparently continued to benefit from U.S. technology via export licenses approved by the Biden administration.
According to the lawmakers, there is evidence that U.S. components are found inside DJI drones, suggesting that the U.S. government is granting these licenses. Reports have shown that DJI drones have been used by America’s adversaries for military purposes, including by Hamas to disable Israeli surveillance systems and drop munitions on Israeli forces on the Gaza border. Furthermore, DJI is also illegally equipping the Russian Federation with drones that Russia’s military is deploying on the front lines of their war in Ukraine.
It is clear that the CCP-owned company arming America’s foes and those attacking our allies has benefitted from exported U.S. technologies with licenses approved by the U.S. government. Lawmakers are demanding clarification on whether the Department of Defense supported the export of U.S. technologies to DJI, which has enabled the company to assist the CCP in brutally repressing the Uyghur population and equipping Iranian-backed Hamas and Russian military forces with drones.
The concerns raised by lawmakers come at a time when Biden’s Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo emphasized the growing threat from China and expressed a desire to make her agency’s Bureau of Industry and Security “more muscular” as Commerce supposedly improves America’s footing to compete with China. However, the situation with DJI raises questions about the effectiveness of the U.S. government’s export control policies for China and whether decision-makers are truly prioritizing national security interests.
Former U.S. Army artillery officer Stephen Coonen, who worked on efforts to prevent U.S. tech from falling into the hands of America’s foes, highlighted the failure of U.S. export control policies for China. He called for accountability and urged Congress to revamp the adjudication process so that national security concerns have the overriding voice in the export of dual-use technologies to China. This situation with DJI illustrates the need for a serious reevaluation of how the U.S. government handles technology exports to adversarial foreign entities.
