CUMMING, Ga. — A small Georgia business is caught in the middle of a U.S. foreign policy move targeting Chinese drones.
For Cliff Whitney, his small hobby business took off when he bet the house on drones.
“I mortgaged the house and everything we had and wired them $1 million because I thought this was going to be cool,” Whitney told Channel 2’s Michael Doudna.
Whitney runs Atlanta Hobby, a hobby shop in Forsyth County that sells a collection of different products, from model planes to remote-control cars.
He says back in the early 2010s, an associate brought up to him the idea of getting into the buying and selling of drones, and he dove in.
“I mean, the dollar volumes from a small little hobby shop, all of a sudden we were doing $8 to $10 million a year in business,” Whitney said.
Specifically, Whitney focused much of his business on DJI drones, a Chinese company, which have since become the industry standard.
Whitney showed Doudna some of the products.
“This is a $3,000 piece of equipment. The next closest piece of equipment made in the United States that would compete with this is $17,000,” Whitney said.
These drones are not just for hobbyists. They are used in industries including real estate, agriculture and public safety.
“But yet we have not been able to import these into the U.S. since September of last year, and it’s costing my company millions of dollars,” Whitney said.
Last year, things changed for the Chinese-based company. The drones started getting held up in U.S. Customs over humanitarian concerns about how they were produced.
Then, the National Defense Authorization Act passed in 2024 will require DJI and its Chinese counterparts to be placed on the FCC’s Covered List within a year of the passage of the act unless a national security agency determines they do not pose an unacceptable national security risk.
“They gave them a year to do it, into 25, it’s now July, and it has not started,” Whitney said.
In 2022, a Pentagon audit found “no malicious code or intent” in DJI’s Government Edition drones. The company has maintained on its blog that it welcomes the audit.
This week, members of Congress wrote a letter to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to start the review process.
Last month, President Donald Trump issued an executive order trying to promote American drone manufacturing.
However, Whitley says that at this time, American drones are inferior and cost tens of thousands more than their Chinese counterparts.
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