Comment by gbear605
2 days ago
At least theoretically, there could be code in the China-made drones that allows them to be taken over in the event of a war between China and the US. In practice, this is probably just protectionist.
2 days ago
At least theoretically, there could be code in the China-made drones that allows them to be taken over in the event of a war between China and the US. In practice, this is probably just protectionist.
Taken over how, though? They are controlled by short-range radio, and have no cellular transceivers.
A lot of them are controllable from mobile devices through apps that could have new code remotely deployed to them - for example https://www.dji.com/downloads/djiapp/dji-go-4. The apps are mostly for controlling the camera, but presumably they're not airgapped from the flight controls.
And they run heavily encrypted firmware, so you have no idea what is actually happening. There is so much CPU power in those things it puts your cell phone to shame and a lot more sensors to boot. Some models have 8 onboard cameras.