Drone Security Is The FCC’s Job, Not DOT’s: Owen Morgan Tells XPONENTIAL Robotics Panel

Brendan Schulman, the former Vice President of Policy and Legal Affairs at DJI who left for Boston Dynamics in September 2021, returned to an AUVSI XPONENTIAL stage in Detroit on Tuesday to moderate a robotics policy panel that opened with a line tailored for the room: “If you like drones, you’ll love robots.”

The most newsworthy drone-specific moment in the hour-long discussion came from Owen Morgan, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy at the U.S. Department of Transportation, who told the audience that DOT is “not the lead agency” on adversary drone threats and that for safety regulation purposes, DOT treats Chinese and American drones the same way.

The panel, titled “Robotics Policy in the 21st Century: Towards a National Strategy,” brought together four panelists alongside Schulman: Jenn Wall, General Counsel at Intrinsic (the Alphabet industrial robotics company); Martijn Rasser, Vice President of the Technology Leadership Directorate at the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP) and executive director of the new National Security Commission on Robotics for Advanced Manufacturing; Patrick Craven, Advisor at the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy; and Owen Morgan of DOT. The discussion ranged across China competition, humanoid robotics investment, and pending federal legislation, but the segment most directly relevant to drones came when Schulman asked Morgan about AI, autonomy, and beyond visual line of sight operations (BVLOS).

Morgan On AI And BVLOS: A Long-Awaited Rule Is Still Coming

Schulman asked Morgan how AI and autonomy are reshaping the drone industry from a DOT regulatory perspective, and whether DOT sees a connection between the AI developments discussed earlier in the panel and BVLOS operations where drones fly themselves beyond the operator’s visual range.

Morgan acknowledged the direction of travel: “Up until now, drones have pretty much been exclusively flown by somebody with a joystick operator remotely. You may have basic elements like return to home that are autonomous, but more and more we’re seeing increasing autonomy with drones.”

On the long-pending BVLOS final rule, Morgan offered guarded confirmation that it remains a priority.

“As the FAA’s figuring out finalizing its BVLOS rules, it’s gonna be a really important component to understand what those systems are doing and how we can make sure to integrate them safely in the airspace,” he said. “It’s been a long time coming. We all want the rule to be final. We gotta get these kinds of rules right. I think you’ll see that addressed.”

Morgan did not commit to a specific final-rule date. The FAA’s Part 108 BVLOS rulemaking missed its February 1, 2026 statutory deadline set by Executive Order 14307, and FAA Air Traffic Organization COO Franklin McIntosh, speaking on a separate XPONENTIAL panel the day before, was similarly cautious about timing.

Morgan On Foreign Drones: DOT Regulates The Same Regardless Of Origin; FCC Owns The Security Lane

The most consequential drone-related statement of the panel came when Schulman, drawing on his deep institutional knowledge of the drone industry’s foreign competition concerns, asked Morgan whether the robotics industry’s emerging China dynamic reminded him of the drone industry’s experience over the past several years.

Morgan’s answer drew a clear interagency line.

“From the standpoint of the Department of Transportation, we’re not the lead agency on some of these competitiveness issues or security issues,” he said. “So I would point to the FCC as kind of the home of dealing with some of these threats for adversaries.

What DOT does is we regulate the drone technology to make sure that it can safely fly in the airspace. We look at everything the same. So if it’s a Chinese drone, if it’s an American drone, we want to make sure they can fly safely and interact with other aircraft.”

That position is consistent with DOT’s traditional safety regulator role, but stating it explicitly from a Trump administration DOT podium at an AUVSI event is notable. It implicitly frames the FCC Covered List process and DJI’s Ninth Circuit challenge as the actual federal venue for adversary drone restrictions, while leaving DOT and the FAA focused on airspace integration regardless of manufacturer country of origin. That’s a useful clarification for operators who have been navigating a patchwork of federal, state, and local restrictions that sometimes blur the safety and security lanes.

Schulman’s Frame: Robots Are Going Through What Drones Went Through

The panel’s premise was that the robotics industry in 2026 looks structurally similar to where the drone industry was around 2015 to 2018: rapid technological progress, mounting national security attention, foreign competition from heavily subsidized Chinese manufacturers, and proliferating federal and state legislation. Schulman’s slides drew direct parallels.

On policy proliferation, the slides cited three pending bills that echo the structure of drone legislation DroneXL has been tracking: the American Security Robotics Act (S.4235, Senators Cotton and Schumer, Rep. Stefanik), which would restrict federal government purchase, use, and funding of adversarial unmanned ground vehicles and robots; the Humanoid ROBOT Act (S.3275, Senators Cassidy and Coons), which would prohibit federal contracts for adversarial humanoid robots; and the National Commission on Robotics Act (H.R. 7334, Reps. Obernolte, Latta, and McClellan).

On enforcement actions, the slides referenced Chinese robot company Unitree being placed briefly on the Pentagon’s Section 1260H List of Chinese Military Companies in February 2026 before that specific designation was withdrawn for unrelated procedural reasons. The pattern, anyone covering the drone industry will recognize, is the same playbook that produced the FCC Covered List action against DJI, the NDAA Section 1709 procurement restrictions, and the dozen-plus state-level bills aimed at DJI.

Rasser, whose National Security Commission on Robotics for Advanced Manufacturing launched in March 2026 with Senators Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) and Ted Budd (R-NC) as co-chairs, said the commission held its first plenary in Washington the week before XPONENTIAL and will deliver a final report with policy recommendations by March 2027.

Wall, speaking for industry, laid out a five-part national strategy framework: declare robotics a national competitiveness priority, incentivize deployment and adoption, build “friendshored” supply chains less dependent on China, develop industry-led standards, and prepare the workforce for the transition. The drone industry’s policy debates over the past decade have hit nearly every one of those same five points.

DroneXL’s Take

I have known Brendan Schulman in his drone industry role since well before he left DJI in September 2021, when he personally informed his industry contacts, including me, to explain the move to Boston Dynamics. DroneXL interviewed him in 2023 about his drone policy career and his transition to ground robotics, and he made the same argument then that he made at XPONENTIAL on Tuesday: the technology arc and the policy debate around robots in 2026 resembles the drone debate of roughly a decade ago. He is, as far as I can tell, correct about that.

The most substantive moment for DroneXL readers was Morgan’s clean separation of DOT’s safety regulator role from the FCC’s national security role. The current FCC Covered List process, in which DJI’s Ninth Circuit petition for review was filed February 20, 2026, is where the consequential federal decisions on Chinese drone restrictions are being made. The FAA’s role is to keep the airspace safe regardless of which country built the aircraft. That is the right structural division, and it is helpful when a senior DOT official says so on the record at an AUVSI event.

The question I would have asked Morgan, if the panel format had allowed it, is whether DOT’s “same safety standard regardless of origin” position translates into any constraint on what state legislatures or local public safety agencies can do when they pass DJI-specific restrictions citing national security concerns rather than safety. Those state bills are not within DOT’s regulatory lane either, but they affect the same operators DOT is trying to integrate safely into the airspace. The structural clarity Morgan offered on federal lanes does not extend to the state and local patchwork, and that patchwork is where most public safety drone teams actually feel the regulatory pressure. Whether the next phase of robotics policy converges on the same fragmented enforcement model is one of the most worthwhile questions to keep watching over the next year, and Schulman is well positioned to do exactly that.

Sources: Panel observed live at XPONENTIAL 2026, Huntington Place, Detroit, May 12, 2026. Panelist titles and affiliations verified from the panel slide and from the U.S. Department of Transportation, Special Competitive Studies Project, U.S. Department of State, and Intrinsic public materials. DroneXL prior coverage of Brendan Schulman’s career transition (July 2023). Note: this report covers the drone-relevant portions of the panel; the broader robotics policy discussion is addressed only where it intersected with drone industry parallels.

Editorial Note: AI tools were used to assist with research and archive retrieval for this article. All reporting, analysis, and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.