US Department of commerce bans DroneDJ citing national security concern

We all know about the ongoing US-China scuffle, which has turned into an all-out trade war. It is not news that the company which suffered the most in this Trade War is the Chinese tech giant Huawei. Its products were banned, and the companies that utilize US technology were prohibited from selling their products to Huawei.

Recently one more Chinese company was blacklisted by the US Department of Commerce. The Chinese company DroneDJ has been blacklisted, citing national security concerns, and the US administration has banned US-based companies from exporting technology to the company.

The ban primarily focuses on blocking the export of US technology to the drone-maker. The ban will make it difficult for US businesses to provide parts or components for DJI to use in its drones, which is likely to disrupt the company’s supply chain.

According to recent reports, the ban will affect when the entity list is officially updated by the US Department of Commerce at 11:15 AM ET. The US commerce department stated that DJI “enabled wide-scale human rights abuses within China through abusive genetic collection and analysis or high-technology surveillance.”

The claim comes about DJI’s involvement in providing drones to the Chinese government to survey detention camps in the Xinjiang province. The addition of DJI in the entity list comes as a significant blow to the Chinese tech market even China’s Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, or SMIC was listed in response to purported ties between the company and the Chinese military.

It was the Trump administration that started the campaign against Chinese tech companies. Trump placed Huawei on the entity list by executive order in May 2019, citing national security concerns. He then took similar measures to block TikTok and WeChat from being hosted in US app stores. But both TikTok and WeChat are still widely available in the US. And as we all know, European nations still use Huawei technology in their telecommunication infrastructure.

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