For five years, investors and founders across Silicon Valley have been on an unrelenting campaign: get the U.S. government to ban DJI, the behemoth drone manufacturer headquartered in Shenzhen, China. “Every single one of those drones is a potential surveillance platform by the Chinese Communist Party,” investor Marc Andreessen said on a podcast in late 2024.
The rallying cry is a moral stance, as well as a profitable one. Investors have tried for years to diminish China’s dominance of the U.S. drone industry, where it holds more than 90% of the markets for both consumers and public-safety agencies, most of that from DJI. Andreessen Horowitz has backed San Mateo-based Skydio, a drone-maker valued at $2.2 billion, while Index Ventures and Sequoia Capital have thrown millions at other U.S. upstarts, including Brinc Drones and Neros Technologies.
Still, DJI drones have remained cheaper, easier to use, and largely preferred by law enforcement and emergency services when lives are on the line. Nine of every 10 drones used by public-safety agencies are made by DJI, according to research from Bard College.
To seed a homegrown drone industry, Silicon Valley technocrats have adopted a two-pronged strategy: pressure Washington to ban DJI, then make U.S.-made replacements unavoidable, by donating investor-backed drones to local agencies and locking them in early.
Last week should have been a victory lap for this plan — before politics intervened. Industry executives expected President Donald Trump to accelerate a ban of DJI and other Chinese drone companies through executive order. A draft version of the order viewed by The Standard explicitly mandated that a national security agency vet DJI’s technology and determine if Chinese drone companies should be banned within 45 days.
But what Trump ended up signing was far more tepid and makes no mention of China. The scaled-back orders came a day after he spoke on the phone with President Xi Jinping — a 90-minute call that Trump categorized as “very good.”
Two drone industry executives said they suspect Trump backed off to avoid heightening tensions with China. The White House declined to give a statement. A DJI spokesperson said the company “welcomes and embraces” the chance to thoroughly “demonstrate our privacy controls and security features.”
DJI has gone from a Silicon Valley darling to a national security target. The Army has prohibited service members from using DJI drones, and reporting has found links between the company and the Chinese government. (DJI has denied the allegations.)
A legislative effort to block the import of new DJI models led to a requirement that the company receive security clearance from a government agency by December or risk a ban.
Meanwhile, U.S. drone companies and DJI have been battling it out in Washington. Last year, Skydio spent $680,000 on lobbying efforts, Teal Drones spent $80,000, and Brinc Drones spent $240,000, according to Open Secrets.
DJI invested more than $1.4 million in lobbying over the same period, and, according to a source, had “over 100 meetings on the Hill” to try and prevent the ban. Congress didn’t specify which national security agency had to audit the company, and so far, no one has volunteered to be the deciding vote in a geopolitical maelstrom.
With Trump’s executive order failing to expedite the prohibition on Chinese drones, DJI has more than six months to get an agency to audit its technology. Meanwhile, billionaires have found their own way to encourage U.S.-made drone adoption: giving them away for free.
Drone donors
Last week, crypto billionaire Chris Larsen donated $9.4 million to expand the San Francisco Police Department’s drone program and fund its Real Time Investigation Center, which uses surveillance technology to monitor crime.
“We’re going to be covering the entire city with drones,” SFPD Captain Thomas MacGuire said of the donation at last week’s Police Commission meeting.
The SFPD first got drones in 2024, after the city passed Proposition E, which widened the array of surveillance technology the department could use. The drones have helped police track suspects, catch criminals committing burglary, and manage crowds. “I cannot overstate how valuable drones are for our department,” then-Chief Bill Scott said in a video announcing the fleet. As of April, the SFPD had made at least 43 arrests using drones.
During its first year of drone operation, the department was clear about its brand loyalty: It purchased 63 DJI drones, versus renting seven Skydio drones.
But this year, flush with Larsen’s donation, the department is opting for U.S.-made drones. According to a spokesperson for Larsen, the donation will go toward 12 drones and docks, half from Flock Safety and half from Skydio.
Investor Ben Horowitz employed a similar tactic in Las Vegas, where he lives. In 2023, he donated at least $7.6 million to the city’s police department, with much of it going toward products from Andreessen Horowitz portfolio companies like Flock Safety and Skydio.
It’s a familiar strategy. Target donated money to the Los Angeles Police Department that was used to buy Palantir software, and billionaires quietly funded surveillance technology used by the Baltimore Police Department before the payments came to light and were ruled unconstitutional. These types of contributions have become more popular since the “Defund the Police” movement put increased scrutiny on public funding of law enforcement.
To critics, the donations amount to a private subsidy for surveillance — with no public oversight. “Billionaires should not be allowed to buy access and influence with law enforcement,” Evan Feeney, former senior director of the nonprofit civil rights organization Color of Change, told TechCrunch.
That influence is sometimes shockingly direct. For example, when Horowitz asked over email which Skydio drones the Las Vegas Police Department wanted, the chief of staff wrote back, “Whatever you want, Ben.”
The handouts can position companies to secure ongoing, lucrative contracts with police departments. “They can then try to both sell the [police] on a follow-up contract but also then use the fact that [police] are deploying a technology for advertising,” Albert Fox Cahn, founder and executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, told TechCrunch.
At the same time, private donations mean cities get easier and more affordable access to the cutting edge of police technology — especially until the cost of American drones goes down.
“In a massive budget deficit in San Francisco, we are forced to both do more with less and prioritize private/public partnerships,” Larsen said in a statement. “Mayor Lurie’s leadership has embraced this approach and we are excited and confident it will bring tangible value and help keep San Franciscans safe.”
Whether the ban comes from Congress or the market, the result may be the same: American drones surveilling American streets, with the help of Silicon Valley billionaires.