DJI Interview Reveals Section 1709’s ‘Trap Door’ Design Guarantees Ban

I’ve been covering DJI’s regulatory battles for years, and this might be the most revealing interview yet. DJI’s Head of Global Policy Adam Welsh sat down with YouTuber Faruk from iPhonedo to explain exactly why the December 23 deadline will trigger an automatic ban, and his answer confirms what we’ve suspected: the legislation was designed to fail.

• What: Adam Welsh explains how Section 1709 of the FY25 NDAA contains two deliberate “trap doors” that guarantee DJI’s ban regardless of evidence
• Who: DJI’s Head of Global Policy speaking directly to the drone community
• When: Seven days before the December 23, 2025 deadline
• Why it matters: This interview reveals the servicing problem most coverage has missed: if the FCC makes the ban retroactive, DJI can’t replace broken drones during repairs

The full interview is available on Faruk’s iPhonedo YouTube channel.

The Two Trap Doors

Welsh’s explanation cuts through months of speculation about why no federal agency has conducted the mandated security audit. The answer isn’t bureaucratic incompetence. It’s deliberate design.

“At the last minute the language was substituted and basically two trap doors were built into Section 1709,” Welsh told Faruk.

The first trap door: Section 1709 doesn’t designate a specific agency to conduct the audit. It says “an appropriate intelligence agency” should review DJI, which under the relevant statute could mean Department of Homeland Security, FBI, Office of Director of National Intelligence, Department of Defense, or NSA.

“By not giving the job to one agency, all of them could just point the finger in the other direction,” Welsh explained. “And so it gets lost in the shuffle.”

The second trap door: If no audit happens within 12 months, DJI automatically joins the FCC’s Covered List. No evidence required. No findings of wrongdoing needed.

“If nobody does anything to gather any evidence against us, if there’s no proof of any wrongdoing, if the 12 months rolls past with nobody doing any work, we are still the ones that pay the price,” Welsh said.

This matches what we reported in our November coverage: Congress created a deadline and mandated a determination but deliberately avoided assigning responsibility for conducting the actual review.

The Retroactive Threat Nobody Is Discussing

Most coverage focuses on DJI’s inability to launch new products after December 23. Welsh explained why that’s only the best-case scenario.

The FCC voted on October 28 to grant itself retroactive revocation authority. As we reported at the time, this goes beyond the Huawei precedent where existing authorizations remained valid.

“There is a rule change the FCC voted on on October 28th that allows the FCC to make the covered list retroactive,” Welsh confirmed. “That would mean they could go through a process to remove the certifications that we need to market and sell those products in the US market.”

Welsh characterized this scenario bluntly: “If the FCC were to make it retroactive, it would be driving the car off the cliff.”

For Part 107 operators, the servicing implication is critical and largely unreported. If the ban becomes retroactive, DJI can bring in parts to fix repairable drones, but their standard practice of replacing unrepairable units with new ones becomes impossible.

“If a product is not fixable, we replace it with a new product,” Welsh explained. “And so if that had been retroactively removed, we weren’t able to bring those products into market and sell, then we would have a problem with actually doing those replacements as well.”

Beyond Drones: The Product Scope Most Coverage Misses

DJI’s FCC certification issues extend beyond drones. Welsh confirmed what we’ve been tracking: this potentially affects DJI’s entire product ecosystem.

“DJI does a lot more than drones. We make movie making equipment. In fact, we won a technical Oscar this year. We make action cams, microphones and all the rest,” Welsh noted, adding that he’s seen politicians criticizing DJI while wearing DJI microphones during interviews.

The company believes these products would also be affected, though Welsh acknowledged some uncertainty about how the FCC would implement restrictions across product categories.

The Economic Damage

Welsh provided specific numbers that quantify the collateral damage:

• 460,000 jobs across the US depend on DJI products
• $116 billion in economic activity in the United States relies on DJI
• Two-thirds of Drone Service Providers Alliance members said they would go out of business without DJI products

“This isn’t about just DJI’s future,” Welsh emphasized. The impact spans law enforcement, agriculture, real estate photography, and the hobbyist market where, as Welsh noted, “nobody’s even trying to serve that hobbyist market other than DJI.”

The Company’s Position: Begging For An Audit

Welsh described a bizarre situation: a company accused of being a security threat is actively requesting investigation.

“We’re in this really interesting position of being a company saying, ‘Please audit us,'” Welsh said. “So far, as far as we can tell, nobody’s actually taken up the audit.”

DJI has been audited before. Welsh cited previous reviews by the Department of Homeland Security using Idaho National Labs, the Department of Interior, and even the Pentagon’s office that examines consumer off-the-shelf products. None found evidence of wrongdoing.

“If this is about data security, then somebody would want the audit to take place,” Welsh argued. The implication is clear: the audit’s absence isn’t accidental.

As we reported last week, DJI sent letters to five federal agencies on December 1 making what may be its final appeal before the deadline.

What Happens to Your Drone

Welsh was clear about what the Covered List does and doesn’t affect for current owners:

“If you had already bought that product, you were able to use that product. The FCC was pretty clear when they voted for this rule change back in October that the products already in the hands of the consumer would still be available for use.”

The question marks are around servicing, replacement, and future purchases. In the best case, you keep your current drones but can’t buy the Mini 6 or Mavic 5 when they launch. In the worst case, if the FCC exercises its retroactive authority, even DJI’s current catalog becomes unavailable.

What You Can Do

Welsh pointed drone owners to the Drone Advocacy Alliance, an organization set up to help people contact their representatives.

“Your voice does count,” Welsh said, noting that support has come from across political lines, including law enforcement in traditionally conservative areas and farmers who depend on DJI for agricultural operations.

One request from Welsh: “Please be polite.” He acknowledged the stress and frustration in the community but emphasized that respectful engagement produces better responses from legislators.

DroneXL’s Take

This interview finally puts on record what we’ve been reporting for months: Section 1709 isn’t a security measure. It’s a legislative trap designed to ban DJI without requiring evidence of wrongdoing.

Welsh’s “trap door” framing is the clearest articulation I’ve seen of the mechanism. Congress mandated an audit but assigned no agency to conduct it, then built in an automatic punishment if the audit nobody was assigned to conduct doesn’t happen. That’s not security policy. That’s protectionism with plausible deniability.

The servicing detail is what Part 107 operators should focus on. If you fly DJI commercially and your drone crashes beyond repair in 2026, you may be looking at buying from whatever inventory remains rather than getting a replacement through DJI’s service department. For operators with multiple aircraft, this changes your maintenance calculus immediately.

Here’s what I expect: The FCC will add DJI to the Covered List on December 23. They will not immediately exercise retroactive authority because the political blowback from grounding first responder fleets would be severe. Instead, we’ll see a gradual squeeze where new products like the Avata 360 and Mavic 4 launch everywhere except America, while existing inventory slowly depletes.

DJI says they’re not giving up on this market. With 70% market share and $116 billion in dependent economic activity, they can’t afford to. Neither can the 460,000 American workers whose jobs depend on products that may become impossible to service.

Are you planning to contact your representative before December 23? Have you already made contingency plans for your fleet? Let us know in the comments.