In response, DJI released an official statement emphasizing that their drones are made for “civilian use and do not meet military specifications.”
“The visibility given my AeroScope and future Remote ID requirements is one more reason why using them for military missions is inappropriate.”
According to DJI, their AeroScope system has a built-in data-gathering functionality in their drones that cannot be turned off. However, DJI cannot obtain user information and flight data “unless user actively submits it to us.”
“We do not have the ability to identify and verify a user’s location, and therefore we do not hold the data you have requested.”
DJI also refuted the claims that their products are also being used to “navigate missiles” in the war.
DJI Founder and CEO Frank Wang said this was “complete nonsense,” during an interview with the Chinese state website, Guancha.
— DJI (@DJIGlobal) March 16, 2022
“DJI’s civilian drones are unable to directly guide missiles, and Russia doesn’t need to rely on DJI to trace the locations of drone operators,” the company was quoted as saying.
As governments and consumers continued to lambast DJI for their association with Russia, MediaMarkt, Europe’s largest consumer electronics retailer, stopped selling DJI drones in their stores. When asked why they pulled out DJI products, the store said they were for various reasons. However, they did not specify if the Russian-affiliation is one of them.
DJI’s removal from retail shelves was “a clear signal for the values that have the highest priority for us and which we see being attacked in an unacceptable way by Russia’s aggressive war against Ukraine,” the company said.
If that’s not bad enough, the US Treasury Department also blacklisted DJI together with intelligence firms like Megvii and SenseTime because of an alleged association of their products for Muslim minority surveillance in Xinjiang.
In an interview with Ukrainian soldier Volodymyr Demchenko, he shared how when they use DJI drones; they also get attacked simultaneously as if their locations are also being disclosed to the Russian army.
“We are using Chinese drones, and the Chinese give Russians a program that can search us,” he told CNN. “Russians see from where we are starting and where we are landing and once it happened to us, we were attacked like right away. The drone was landing and the next, like in 30 seconds, a mine was like really close, like 30 meters away.”
On the other hand, DJI denies these “correlations” and said that there are existing problems with their AeroScope drone detection platform(A drone that detects other drones basically) in Ukraine, citing bad internet connection as a possible reason for these events.
“We are aware of problems with some AeroScope units in Ukraine; they may be connected to prolonged loss of power/internet. But there is no deliberate action to downgrade AeroScope there.”
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