Back in 2006, Chinese technology company DJI created the very first cheap, off-the shelf drones that even poorly coordinated amateurs could use to shoot stunning video and create high-quality maps. Fast forward to today, and DJI has become the overwhelming market leader in a civilian drone industry that largely exists thanks to its work, supplying more than 70 percent of the planet’s drone users with vast quantities of high-quality, dirt-cheap, and elegantly designed little flying robots. And it’s not just DJI: China has become the global hub of the consumer drone industry, home to both DJI’s most successful competitors and the factories that make most of the electronic parts that around the world, from the United States to Ukraine, depend on.

Now, a host of U.S. federal and state lawmakers, warning of Chinese interference, are introducing legislation cracking down on the DJI aircraft used by an overwhelming majority of U.S. government drone programs. And American drone pilots in fields ranging from search and rescue to agriculture to scientific research, painfully aware that they lack good or affordable alternatives to Chinese products, are getting nervous.

Take it from Dave Merrick, the director of the Emergency Management and Homeland Security Program and the Center for Disaster Risk Policy at Florida State University, who has spent years training hundreds of students to use drones to make maps during disasters. Merrick’s drone-mapping team constantly deploys to assist disaster responders, from documenting the extent of Hurricane Irma’s destruction to creating 3D maps of the effects of the collapse of the Surfside condominium building.

But today, Merrick’s Chinese drone-heavy fleet is mostly grounded, thanks to recent action by the administration of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and the state-approved drones he’s managed to purchase simply aren’t as good. “We’re hamstringing public safety to appease some amorphous concerns about Chinese spying,” Merrick said. “We’re already seeing smaller state agencies, and fiscally constrained counties, walking away from [drones] altogether. They can’t afford to purchase anything legal.”

And he’s worried about the future as yet another hurricane season rolls into Florida. “I’m not looking forward to using non-DJI quadcopters in the next event,” Merrick said. “Everything is going to take longer and cost more.”

As U.S. government suspicions toward DJI grew, bolstered by the Trump administration’s strong anti-China stance, leadership at the U.S. Department of the Interior decided to ground the agency’s entire hundreds-strong, DJI-heavy drone fleet in 2019, shutting down a once-promising program engaged in everything from fire-spotting to scientific research. (The program is flying again today, but operates at a much smaller scale). Although the Department of Defense released a short roster of approved U.S. and European drone makers, known as the Blue UAS (unmanned aerial systems) list, in August 2020, many government drone users complained that the approved aircraft cost vastly more than Chinese-made options, had fewer features, and still contained Chinese-made component parts. Despite these criticisms, in early 2021, the U.S. General Services Administration announced it would be buying drones for government purposes from only the Blue UAS list from then on.

Soon after, the hopes of DJI users were bolstered when the Pentagon, after carrying out an audit of DJI’s specially made high-security Government Edition drones, announced the aircraft were safe and “recommended for use” (conclusions similar to those drawn by Booz Allen Hamilton in an independent 2020 DJI security audit)–and then dashed to the ground again the next month, when a second Pentagon announcement stated the release of the earlier audit report was unauthorized and DJI products still constituted a threat to national security.

That summer, Florida went even further: DeSantis signed Senate Bill 44, a rule that both expanded the legal scope of police drone use and banned Florida governmental agencies from using any drone not on a still-to-be-written list. When the list did come out at the end of 2021, just five drone makers were on it, in a perfect copy of the Department of Defense’s own, aforementioned Blue UAS list–and DJI, still the overwhelming favorite of U.S. government drone pilots, wasn’t.

Despite vocal protests from a host of Florida government drone users, including accusations of political favoritism towards Blue UAS-approved drone companies, the ban went into effect in early 2023. More than 1,800 Chinese-made drones used by programs ranging from police to mosquito control, worth millions of taxpayer-subsidized dollars, were immediately grounded across the state. While Florida law enforcement agencies–citing issues that included an approved drone spontaneously bursting into flames in an officer’s car–were able to extract $25 million from state lawmakers to replace their aircraft, other government drone users, including state university researchers and firefighters, received no such financial support.

Now, other states, including Mississippi, Tennessee, and Arkansas, have introduced their own anti-Chinese-drone legislation. They’re joined by federal lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. One recent anti-Chinese-drone effort is helmed by Reps. Elise Stefanik and Mike Gallagher, whose new Countering CCP (Chinese Communist Party) Drones Act would counter what they evocatively if nonsensically call “the national security threat of TikTok, but with wings” by adding the drones to the Federal Communications Commission Covered List–preventing them from using U.S. communications infrastructure, such as radio, and thus effectively banning them from the U.S. market entirely.

While this sweeping law is unlikely to pass this year, other efforts, more tightly targeted at government drone users, have a better shot at making it through. A number of senators, including Marco Rubio, Mitt Romney, and Mark Warner, have signed onto the American Security Drone Act of 2023, which would ban federal government drone pilots from using aircraft from countries (such as China) identified as national security threats and prohibit using any federal funds, including those given out via contracts and grants, to buy such aircraft. Another new bill, from Sen. Marsha Blackburn and Warner, Stemming The Operation of Pernicious and Illicit (STOP Illicit) Drones Act, targets the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) by banning it from providing federal funds to or using drone products from countries, including China, that are part of what the senators have dubbed the “New Axis of Evil.”