Chinese drone maker DJI sues Pentagon over ‘military’ designation

Chinese drone company Shenzhen DJI Innovation Technology Co., Ltd., commonly known as DJI, is suing the U.S. Defense Department in a bid to overturn the department’s designation of the firm as a “military company.”

The lawsuit alleges that the listing is unfair because “DJI is neither owned nor controlled by the Chinese military and … sells only ‘consumer and commercial’ — not military — drones.”

DJI names Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Deputy Defense Secretary for Industrial Base Policy Laura Taylor-Kale as co-defendants in the lawsuit filed by U.S. law firm Paul Weiss in the Washington, D.C., District Court on Friday. The company alleges that the Pentagon has refused “to provide its rationale for DJI’s designation” and ignored requests to meet with DJI representatives.

“After attempting to engage with the DoD for more than sixteen months, DJI determined it had no alternative other than to seek relief in federal court,” DJI said in a statement on Saturday.

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The new suit comes in response to the Pentagon’s move to place DJI — the world’s largest drone maker — on a list of “Military Companies Operating in the United States” in 2022. That followed the Pentagon’s declaration that DJI products “pose potential threats to national security” in 2021 and barred their use by U.S. government agencies. The lawsuit claims those actions have inflicted “ongoing financial and reputational harm” on the company.

The lawsuit reflects how the company is going on the offensive as it faces a congressional push to ban DJI’s drones from use in U.S. airspace. The company’s woes deepened in August when the House Select Committee on China urged the Commerce Department to probe allegations of DJI seeking to dodge trade restrictions through the use of front companies.

Suing the Pentagon is the latest effort by a Chinese firm “to weaponize U.S. legal frameworks to undermine national security,” said Craig Singleton, senior China fellow at the nonprofit thinktank the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Ultimately, this lawsuit is a dead-end for DJI.”