U.K. government officials have raised private concerns that Chinese-manufactured drones are being used to take high resolution images of critical national infrastructure sites in the U.K., going against guidance from the country's security services. National Grid PLC, which operates the nation's electricity and gas networks, uses drones made by Shenzhen-based SZ DJI Technology to take videos, photographs and thermal images of its electricity substations, according to information posted on its website as recently as September. DJI drones have also been used to survey the construction of Electricite de France SA's Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant, to inspect solar farms, and by Thames Water to monitor reservoirs and the water supply. Deployment of the drones comes despite a warning in 2023 by the U.K.'s National Protective Security Authority (NPSA), part of the domestic security service MI5, that British organizations managing sensitive sites should be wary of using drones "manufactured in countries with coercive data sharing practices," a reference to China. Moreover, in 2022, the U.S. Department of Defense included DJI on a blacklist of Chinese firms with military ties.

The Pentagon is stealing a page from Minority Report with an experimental artificial-intelligence program that can look'days in advance' and predict possible attacks on vulnerable locations. The Global Information Dominance Experiments, or GIDE, use machine learning to sift through vast amounts of data to notice tiny changes that humans might miss - such as the number of cars increasing or decreasing in a parking lot - which might indicate an evolving threat. The program can then alert human agents who can take a closer look at the location. The latest experiment - GIDE 3 - focused on'contested logistics', in a scenario where lines of communication in the Panama Canal were compromised, military officials said. General Glen VanHerck, commander of the US Northern Command (NORTHCOM), said GIDE combines artificial intelligence and cloud computing resources with data from sources around the world to'achieve information dominance' and'decision-making superiority.'

WASHINGTON – The world's largest manufacturer of civilian drones is proposing that the craft continually transmit identification information to help government security agencies and law enforcement figure out which might belong to rogue operators. DJI, a Chinese company, said in a paper released Monday that radio transmissions of an identification code, possibly the operator's Federal Aviation Administration's registration number, could help allay security concerns while also protecting the operator's privacy. The paper suggests steps that can be taken to use existing technologies to develop an identification system, and that operators could include more identification information in addition to a number if they wish. Anyone with the proper radio receiver could obtain those transmissions from the drone, but only law enforcement officials or aviation regulators would be able to use that registration number to identify the registered owner. Law enforcement agencies and the U.S. military raised security concerns last year after FAA officials proposed permitting more civilian drone flights over crowds and densely populated areas.