U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-SD) and 12 of his congressional colleagues asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to brief members of Congress on the risk Chinese-manufactured drones pose to America’s food supply and what the agencies are doing to protect American agriculture.
“Thanks to the ingenuity of American farmers, the U.S. has always been at the forefront of agricultural innovation,” the lawmakers wrote in a Sept. 6 letter sent to the leaders of USDA and the CISA. “However, through unfair trade practices and massive government subsidies, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is weaponizing their monopoly of the global drone supply to gain leverage over our nations’ food supply.”
Rep. Johnson and the members wrote that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has drastically increased its ownership of U.S. agricultural land, and Chinese spies have stolen U.S.-developed genetically modified seeds directly out of the ground in Iowa, according to their letter.
“Food security is national security and the CCP is actively trying to undermine America’s global agricultural dominance,” they wrote. “Dominating the supply of agriculture drones is another strategy that the PRC is pursuing to jeopardize America’s food supply.”
For example, Chinese drone company Shenzhen DJI Innovation Technology Co. Ltd. is closely linked to the CCP and is a Chinese Military Company, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.
“Ultimately, this means that in the U.S. there are thousands of weapons delivery platforms that contain software, firmware, and hardware manufactured by a Chinese Military Company,” wrote the lawmakers. “The risk of these DJI agricultural spray drones being manipulated to carry out an attack in the United States cannot be ignored.”
At the same time, relying on America’s greatest strategic adversary for technology critical to the success of U.S. agricultural production endangers the resiliency of the nation’s food supply, they wrote, adding that not only can the CCP leverage its access to this data to disrupt U.S. agricultural production, it also has control over the export of Chinese-manufactured drones.
“America’s food supply cannot rely on technology that is manufactured and controlled by China,” wrote Rep. Johnson and his colleagues, who included U.S. Reps. Andrew Garbarino (R-NY), Ashley Hinson (R-IA), John Moolenaar (R-MI), and Dan Newhouse (R-WA).