The Chinese government (CPC) does not need to "infiltrate" DJI. By law, all the CPC needs to do is demand DJI's information. There is no injunction and no appeal. Chinese companies must comply.
I'm not an expert on what information the CPC may want or find useful; there are people far more knowledgeable than me who can answer that. But I'll hazard an amateur's guess.
Infrastructure: Power plants, power lines, substations, dams, reservoirs, bridges, overpasses, loading dock cranes, loading dock volume and patterns, truck depots, train depots, airports.
Industrial espionage: production information, resources and logistics information.
Military espionage: signals intelligence, military base logistics and resource consumption information.
Actual kinetic targeting identification seems a distant possibility, but again, others may know more than I do.
There are significant gaps in satellite intelligence that drones can help fill, as witnessed by the Chinese spy balloon.
For a more professional opinion, Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery writes the following, "As a former Director of Operations at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, my birthday wish would be to have U.S. drones comprehensively map China's infrastructure and download it to my targeting team. My war-planning counterpart in the People’s Liberation Army might be able to make that wish come true—unless we get serious about the threat of Chinese-made commercial drones that operate in the United States."
Even with the record button off, our Chinese drones are transmitting images all the time. We have no idea what other antennae besides our own remote controllers are receiving those signals.
I do not dismiss the information-gathering abilities of Chinese drones as easily as others here.
For more on the military perspective by RADM Montgomery, here's a link:
The rest of the federal government—and state and local agencies and even private-sector infrastructure companies—should quit using this Chinese technology.
www.defenseone.com
