It appears that DJI is providing decisive situational awareness of the canal airspace. Under the guise of security of the canal, DJI can apparently remotely down a drone over the canal for the Panamanian Canal Authority. The DJI drones should be considered flying vacuum cleaners of all forms of intelligence, SIGINT, IMINT, MASINT, AudioINT, etc. etc. Similar to modern Flight Data Recorders, there are likely several hundred, distinct, and separate data elements streaming from each drone when it is on (and it possibly can be turned on remotely without the owner/operator’s awareness). Be careful what you say around the drone, your voice conversations are likely being streamed to the DJI data centers in Shenzhen, China. The Ministry of State Security Big Data Collection/Big Data Analytics/Artificial Intelligence Borg is processing and actioning everything these flying vacuum cleaners are streaming back.
So what? Who cares? This capability through the DJI drones provides a growing, decisive situational awarenes of the environment for the Chinese planners world wide. This is a breathtaking remote access operation on a massive scale. And it also means that DJI is very likely inside the Panama Canal Authority networks and can remotely play with valves, pumps, generators, doors, caissons, etc. at will. The water crisis in the canal can be imperceptibly enabled through this access. A brilliant operation.
