History Bends Toward Sovereignty
And when sovereignty is honored, mobility becomes a blessing instead of a privilege
Every major technological shift begins with a simple recognition that the world can work better than it does today.
We are feeling that recognition again. New markets, in real time, turning the sky from a symbolic backdrop into functional infrastructure. Something long delayed is becoming inevitable.
The next chapter of mobility is not theoretical. Centrally planned economies beholden to an ideology do not benefit the majority on whom they are imposed; a few top-level mandarins prosper, but the citizen finds himself and his aspirations crushed by the dictates of the central government. The nation state itself is similarly confined by a set of self-evident truths that constrain its policy-making and exclude challenge. Innovation becomes a slogan rather than an outcome. Progress becomes something issued from a podium rather than built from the ‘ground’ up.
The United States, mainly, operates under a different logic. The constitutional split between Washington, the states, and the property owner looks inefficient only to the untrained eye. In reality, it is the hidden engine of American breakthroughs.
Low altitude air rights sit with states and citizens. Federal policy has shifted from obstruction to ignition. And the FCC’s ban on Chinese drones and key components has cut a tether to foreign dependency.
China has already run the central planning experiment in drones. Through its Made in China 2025 industrial strategy Beijing treated unmanned systems as a strategic sector, mobilising state banks, tax breaks and subsidies on a scale estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars. The result is dominance by a single national champion rather than a genuinely competitive market. DJI today is estimated to hold around 70% - 80% of the global civilian drone market and roughly 80% - 90% of the U.S. consumer segment, with some analyses placing its global share even higher. China as a whole produces about 70% - 80% of the world’s commercial drones and accounts for close to 79% of global drone related patents (fwiw), backed by clustered manufacturing in Shenzhen. From a distance this looks like a triumph of industrial policy. Up close it looks like a single country controlling the hardware stack for everyone else.
Faced with that reality many Western voices now argue for a Chinese style response. The U.S. has already created a Blue sUAS list for “approved” non Chinese platforms and trade groups call for higher tariffs on subsidised imports to blunt dumping. But copying the logic of Made in China 2025 could be a category error, if it goes beyond leveling the playing field. The U.S. advantage won’t come from a single national champion blessed by the nation state. It comes from millions of owners, builders and firms operating in a framework of clear property rights and competitive federalism. The correct answer to Chinese centralisation is not more central planning. It is market allocation or air rights and individual sovereignty.
For more than a decade, the commercial drone sector has moved at a snail's pace, markets growing on paper while deployments remain stuck in pilot mode. Analyst reports value the global commercial drone market somewhere between about $11 and $30 billion in 2024, with forecasts that more than double this by 2030, yet industry veterans stuck.
