Skydio CEO Adam Bry on the China ban and Blue

Skydio CEO Adam Bry is the latest guest on The Buzz podcast. He offered his opinions on the recent developments that are shaking up the drone industry in the US. Specifically, the government ban against Chinese-made drones and the creation of an approved “Blue sUAS” list of US-made products.

These are truly dynamic times in the drone industry. Recently, the US administration banned Chinese-made drones, or drones carrying Chinese-made parts, from being purchased by government departments and related agencies. There are other countries affected as well, but the measure seems to be directed, some say punitively, at DJI. The Chinese drone maker is the global giant, responsible for in excess of 70 percent of all drone sales on the planet. It has done this by producing excellent products at reasonable prices, especially when compared to some of the competition.

For those reasons, DJI’s higher-end Enterprise drones have frequently been the product of choice when it comes to government departments and First Responders. And, as we’ve seen, the growth of this sector and demand from these clients has only grown in recent years.

Skydio

Skydio’s X2 is one of the five drones on that government list. And CEO Adam Bry was happy to talk about the US-China dynamic, which he agrees is a “hot topic” in the industry right now.

Forgetting about Skydio, I think that as a citizen of the US there are a lot of reasons to believe that having a strong domestic supply base for drones is really important. These products that started out looking like consumer toys have just turned out to be incredibly useful for a bunch of different industries – including DoD and National Security use-cases. And I think being dependent on China for these products, or being solely dependent, is generally just not healthy.

Adam Bry, Skydio CEO

Skydio’s X2 – An Enterprise/Military drone on the Blue sUAS list..

The country, not the company

Bry went on to make a careful differentiation. The issue is not really about DJI as a company, he says. The concern, rather, is about broad powers available to the Chinese government:

The second thing I would say here is: People talk about cybersecurity and the integrity of the device quite a bit. And I think there’s an attempt to sort of deflect the conversation towards like, making sure you can’t hack into it, or making sure that things are properly encrypted. Which is not really the point. The question is not ‘Can you build a drone that passes a cybersecurity test?’ The question is: ‘Do you trust the drone to never have a backdoor to do something that it shouldn’t do?’ And that’s something that you can’t validate with a cybersecurity test. That comes down to: Do you trust the source? And it’s not a question or particular companies. It’s a question of policies of the Chinese government, which grant them extremely broad IT access to companies in China. Which, I think, should make people a little bit uneasy and question what that actually means. I don’t want to steer clear of this issue because it’s something that we’re in, as now the leading US drone company.”

Adam Bry, Skydio CEO

Wait, there’s more…

But you don’t have to read it – and I don’t have to write it. You can get pick up the rest of Adam’s thoughts by tuning in to the latest edition of The Buzz.

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