Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Saturday, April 19th.

Today on Forbes, Silicon Valley's military drone companies have a serious made-in-China problem.

It was the day after Mock Industries published a slick promotional video for Viper, its new military strike drone, and CEO Ethan Thornton had a problem.

A few eagle-eyed viewers of the video, which Thornton had posted to social media, proclaiming,

quote, show don't tell, had noticed that the drone used an engine with an uncanny resemblance

to one made by a Chinese manufacturer.

He'd vehemently denied that there were Chinese components in any of the company's drones.

But now, Paul Merlucky, CEO of Defense Tech Giant Anderil, had asked him a question with

far less wiggle room to answer, asking, quote, what about the airframe in the video? Backed into a corner, Thornton replied,

confirming the engine's country of origin, conceding on X, quote,

We feel comfortable blowing up Chinese components for testing purposes, Palmer. Thornton told Forbes,

quote, all final production units ship without Chinese components. Anderil and Lucky declined

to comment on the exchange. The conflict in Ukraine, rising tensions over Taiwan, and the dominance

of Chinese drone companies like market leader DJI have underscored the need for the U.S.

military to source cheap and mass-produced drones from American

and allied companies. But Thornton's exchange highlighted an open secret in Silicon Valley.

Most drone companies answering the Trump administration's America-first mandate have a made-in-China

parts problem. China currently controls close to 90% of the global commercial drone market, and

manufactures most of the key hardware used to build them, airframes, batteries, radios, cameras,

and screens, according to market research firm, drone industry insights UG.

Because of its longstanding reliance on these parts, the U.S. is years behind building the

manufacturing infrastructure that could come close to rivaling China's.

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