In the Cold War, America’s generals knew better than to let Soviet cameras hover over our military bases. Back then, the very idea would’ve been laughed out of the room or even treated as treason. Fast forward to 2025, and America’s number one foreign adversary, China, is setting up a growing number of internet-connected cameras across the country. Unfortunately, this is now a problem in Texas.El Paso, Texas, a border city sitting next to one of the busiest illegal crossing points in America, just announced the deployment of over twenty Chinese-made DJI docks for drones patrolling American skies. The same Pentagon that once warned about Soviet spy satellites has now blacklisted DJI as a “Chinese military company.” The Treasury Department has sanctioned it for aiding in Chinese state surveillance. Yet, here in Texas, we are giving them a front-row seat over one of the most strategically sensitive cities in the nation.
These drones don’t just film fender-benders or house fires. They fly over the streets, neighborhoods, and critical infrastructure where federal, state and local agencies conduct sensitive missions every day. They operate in the same airspace where Border Patrol, National Guard, and Texas law enforcement agencies coordinate. That means every image, every GPS coordinate and every flight path risks exposing how our security apparatus actually works and responds to all types of emergencies.
And this isn’t an abstract threat. In just the first six months of Fiscal Year 2024, Border Patrol encountered more Chinese nationals at the Southwest border than in all of FY23, 24,376 in total, nearly all of them crossing illegally. That’s an 8,000% increase since 2021. Among them was a Chinese national who breached a U.S. military base in California and refused to leave. Yet despite this unprecedented surge and the clear national security risks it poses, Texan municipalities still use this adversary’s hardware.
The El Paso Police Department has argued that this Chinese military technology can be secured because they are hosting the drone data on American servers. This false sense of security ignores how easily Chinese technology can carry embedded backdoor access. It’s exactly why Congress enacted the American Security Drone Act in 2023, banning federal agencies from procuring new DJI drones and docks regardless of any American software on top of Chinese military hardware. They knew it wouldn’t be the first time Chinese technology hid access for CCP officials to conduct surveillance.
Legally, under Chinese law, DJI must share any of that data with Beijing’s intelligence services upon request. That means a Chinese espionage operation has a glaring window into our security operations.
Would we have handed the Soviets the keys to our radar systems in 1965? Would we have let them wire the communications network at Fort Bliss? Then why are we letting the Chinese Communist Party put eyes in the sky over El Paso?
Texas lawmakers need to shut this down. They need to ban Chinese-made drones for all state and local agencies, especially in border regions and fund the transition to American-made drones that keep our data in our hands and allow law enforcement to do their job.
El Paso can and should be a leader in public safety technology, but it shouldn’t be a testing ground for the CCP’s aerial surveillance.
If we wouldn’t let a foreign adversary build the fence around our house, why are we letting them fly over it?