China's pioneering drone maker
DJI Innovations
is getting attention today-not always in a favorable light.
I visited Chinese drone maker DJI, located in the southern city of Shenzhen. It's best in class and the world market leader.
But it's also the target of security concerns by Washington, DC over its flying machines that could send surveillance data back to China.
DJI has just announced that the company will expand its drone manufacturing by opening its first foreign assembly plant in the U.S.
Flying high, DJI has soared to take two-thirds of the drone market globally. Still privately held, DJI has rapidly grown into a drone master with a global workforce and 11,000 employees.
No drone company in the West comes close to DJI dominance, as I write in my new book,
How Not to Cure Cancer
The U.S. is purging Chinese scientists at top institutions in a new red scare. A China Institute program highlighted this issue with a panel including Princeton professor
Yiguang Ju and Temple University professor
Xiaoxing Xi. An issue they emphasized is how to draw the line between foreign influence and academic exchange.
If
discrimination persists, a Bloomberg BusinessWeek article noted, we will likely see a reverse brain-drain from America that will only benefit China.
Suspicion of Chinese scientists at
MD Anderson began to take root around 2014. The chain of events that ultimately led to the departure of cancer researcher
Xifeng Wu began in the summer of 2017, when the
FBI notified the cancer center it was investigating "the possible theft of
MD Anderson research and proprietary information."
Visas for Chinese students and researchers are being curtailed, and more Chinese engineers and businesspeople, especially in the tech sector, are being detained at U.S. airports while border agents inspect and image their digital devices.