52
These pricey assembly linesha
pany to keep up with its engineer
now produces industrial dronestha
land, spray pesticides on farms,a
take biological samples from whale
(the Snotbot). When Chinese auth
instituted a lockdown in response
coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan,
police used a DJI drone, the
Inspire, outfitted with a loud-
speaker, to warn people in the
streets to stay indoors, wear masks,
wash their hands. (Police aroundEu
have also taken to flying dronesto
pense coronavirus information.)
In 2018 media reports suggeste
that DJI planned to raise severalhun
dred million dollars ahead of an even
tual IPO. That talk died down afterth
company fired dozens of employeesit accusedof
inflating parts costs for personalgain.The fraud scheme
cost DJI about $150 million, according to company state-
ments. Former employees say the parts wheeling and deal-
ing stemmed from internal chaos and a financial reporting
system that might not pass muster with auditors. DJI copped
to some of this in a statement it released at the time. “While
mature companies have established the training, controls,
and management protocols to limit these issues, DJI has in
the past emphasized corporate growth over new internal
processes,” the company said.
Roger Luo, DJI’s president, says there’s no hurry to go pub-
lic. “If we IPO, there might be some restrictions. Investors
will pay attention to profit. We want to avoid restrictions and
focus on our passions,” he says. The company is currently
building a monument to those passions, and Wang’s ambi-
tions: a 636-foot-tall structure with a pair of towers connected
by a skybridge, a multistory drone test zone, and, on the first
floor, a product showcase and battlebot arena.W
hile it’s not recommended—or, in most places, legal—
it’s technically possible to fly DJI’s drones as high as
4 miles into the sky. Someone in China was doing exactly
that—and the drone almost collided with a People’s Liberation
Army Air Force fighter jet, according to two people familiar
with the 2016 incident, who spoke on condition of anonym-
ity because they weren’t authorized to discuss it. The fighter
pilot landed and was furious. He asked to check footage from
a camera mounted to the plane to see if it caught images of
the device, which it had. The military brought the pictures toDJI and demanded to know whose drone it was.
DJI said it didn’t have a database with that sort
f specific information and could provide only a
l idea of devices near that location, according to
ofthe people familiar with the matter.
Thegovernment insisted that DJI create a type of
air-traffic-control database that can identify and
monitor drones flying in China. While Wang,
according to former employees, isn’t a big fan of
the military, he created this system rather than
have the government try to build it, one of the
people says. DJI’s Unmanned Traffic Controller,
orUTC, matched the unique IDs of drones, which
aretied to people’s phone numbers in China
based on a black box inside them, to various
sensors—GPS, barometer, gyroscope, and
compass. After developing the program, DJI
turned it over to China’s air force as a so-called
-label product that could be branded however
themilitary wanted, so as to obfuscate DJI’s involve-
mentandavoid concerns about the company working with
the military. (Some former employees contest whether the
near-collision spurred DJI’s development of UTC. One says
the company had been working on the concept before 2016,
while two people say it focused on the system later, after a
series of drone incidents at international airports in south-
west China caused flight disruptions in 2017.) Luo declined
to comment beyond saying he had no knowledge of the mil-
itary plane incident.
These previously unreported details underscore the con-
cerns of China hawks in the U.S., who’ve questioned how
close Chinese drone makers are to government authorities.
They also cut against DJI’s years of insisting these worries
are overblown.
Cut to 2020, and the company now sells a tracking sys-
tem similar to the one built for the Chinese military called
AeroScope. It allows airports, nuclear power plants, and other
sensitive locations to buy a device that can scan about 30 miles
of airspace and detect drones in a matter of seconds. In 2015,
DJI also hired Brendan Schulman to help navigate regulations
and lawsuits for the nascent technology. Schulman, a Harvard-
educated lawyer, is something of a hero among drone enthusi-
asts for having defended the first instance of Federal Aviation
Administration enforcement against a drone operator. Lately,
Schulman, who’s now vice president for policy and legal
affairs, has been spending much of his time reassuring peo-
ple that DJI is not spying on them. “Now we have to deal with
skeptics and international politics and things that are some-
what outside of our control,” he says.“NOW WE HAVE TO DEAL WITH SKEPTICS AND
INTERNATIONAL POLITICS AND THINGS THAT ARE
SOMEWHAT OUTSIDE OF OUR CONTROL”
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