DJI data collection certainly pales into insignificance compared to FB and Google. And while it may be quite true that data collected by DJI should be assumed to be accessible by the Chinese government, if the data are not useful then it's not much of a problem.
Correct - it was a false comparison.
I, and others, have already done that, and the transmitted information is of little strategic use. If you have DJI aircraft set to synchronize flight logs then the telemetry is uploaded, together with thumbnails and JPEGs representing media collection. If sync is off then under regular use all they see is map requests and firmware checks. In local data mode nothing is transmitted.
The problem is not generally the agency heads or staff themselves (with some notable exceptions appointed under a recent administration) - it's politicians themselves, as in this case.
There are quite a few US-manufactured options now, but they are almost all inferior and more expensive than their DJI equivalents. For example, I use a large (30 lb frame + 25 lb payload) US octoquad to field a high-resolution FLIR visible/IR camera - total cost around $40k. It works, but it is significantly worse in ease of use and image/video quality than my M2EA ($7k).
Probably not, but fun to think about in that conspiratorial sci-fi way. 
