I'm pretty sure I just read this article. My thoughts are, if there is some espionage built into my drone then some of the "Rocket Scientists" that work for the Government could easily discover it and show us the FACTS! Not speculation but facts. Now assuming that my 2 pound drone is a major threat to our country, what kind of data is being transferred to the Chinese? In my case, the Chinese are now in possession of many pictures of my local park. Give me a break here! I'm sorry, Rant Out!
I'm pretty sure I have read several re-hashed versions of this story over the last several months as well; there's absolutely nothing new here that hasn't been said before and, as you say, it's STILL all allegations - hearsay in legal parlance - and zero facts.
Very similar to the US government's stance over Huawei, in otherwords, but here's the thing - in that case the US has presumably shared whatever evidence they had with the UK, Germany, etc. under the so-called "Five Eyes" agreement, and yet they're pushing ahead with deploying Huawei equipment anyway. Despite whatever information the US had provided, and they've been able to determine themselves (neither the UK or Germany are amateurs in the electronic espionage field). Likewise, neither country is banning official use of DJI drones - again, if there is a credible threat then you'd think the US would have shared their evidence, no?
As you say, so what if the Chinese have possession of pictures of your local park? Or a State's National Park, for that matter, or the course of a pipeline or something that's marked on a map/visible on Google Earth anyway? OK, if you're a military contractor or similar, then flying survey missions over sensitive locations might be an issue (just knowing where the drone was operating within a larger area would potentially be revealling in some cases), but other than that - where's the risk even *if* every last bit of data is being sent to China?
Frankly, I think it's almost certainly just FUD and has far more to do with bringing pressure to bear and push the "China Bad" narrative in the US's trade war than anything else. So, yeah, certain sections of the media are going to run with it without fact checking because clicks and/or sucking up to The Man. For the average man on the street though, it's a non-issue, but if you do feel strongly enough about it from *any* angle, well, there's always Skydio, Parrot, or even building your own aircraft, right?