This is the Kator Daily Podcast for Wednesday, May 29th, 2024. I'm Caleb Brown.

It's often hard to tell exactly when protectionism is driven by legitimate national

security concerns and when is driven by more parochial financial and political

interests. I sat down with Cato adjunct scholar Will Duffield to discuss the fight over drones and the

congressional effort to essentially keep certain Chinese-made drones out of the hands of Americans.

What are, at least among members of Congress, what are the concerns about drones, particularly when it comes to where they're probably going to be produced, China.

They're twofold. First, that the drones could be used to spy on us surreptitiously, that either in-flight

recordings or metadata could be hoovered up given to the CCP and used for some malicious purpose. The other concern is that

we aren't building enough drones here in America. Just those two things alone seems like a perfect storm for some sort of heavy-handed regulation that absolutely

will harm, well let's just say, let's call them tinkers, people in the US who want to mess around with

drones cheaply.

I think it goes beyond tinkers.

It's really a huge industry. Everybody from real estate professionals to farmers use drones these days.

But the bill that you described or hinted at exists, it's been introduced by Congresswoman Elise Defonic and it's called the

Countering CCP Drone's Act and it would in a sort of roundabout way prohibit the

use of all DJI drones in America.

DJI drones explain that.

So DJI is a Chinese-based company that's really the most successful small quadcopter manufacturer.

You see DJI drones everywhere from commercial uses to everyman hobbyists,

people tinkering, Instagram stars,

photographing themselves on the beach,

the standard quadcopter you imagine

...