Time to Yearn for The Vast and Endless Sea
Federal Power Sets the Floor, Communities Shape the Sky
Drones are everywhere, but many deliberately still behave as if the air above your home and town belongs to no one.
Commercial drones routinely operate in ways that ignore property rights in the United States, as policymakers argue about supply chains, geopolitics, and national security, low-altitude air has become economically real.
This is the core failure. Not technology. Not Chinese or US manufacturing. Not a lack of federal or state authority. The failure is that low-altitude air, the space where drones actually fly, is underutilized and unpermitted.
Progress toward the “flying car” has not stalled because the machines are incapable. It has stalled because we have not embraced ownership of air rights and consent.
The total US drone market size was $25B in 2024, rising to $30B in 2025 and projected to reach $450B over the next five years, according to Ark Invest, assuming low-altitude private airspace becomes accessible. That growth sits on top of a fragile supply chain reality that keeps Chinese DJI as the default. The Commerce Department states that DJI controls about 70% of the global commercial drone market and a similar share in the US.
That dominance is most evident in public safety. DJI drones are heavily used by US public safety agencies, which is why every attempt to “ban” foreign drones quickly morphs into an exemption regime. On the commercial delivery side, open sources rarely let you prove a clean “uses Chinese parts” claim, because operators do not publish bills of materials. Chinese firms, especially DJI, dominate the complete systems market.
Everything that follows, from FCC bans to Commerce Department reversals, from Chinese drone promoters pretending to be concerned citizens to China hawks in Congress and exemptions buried in agency guidance, is downstream of this. Washington is fighting a supply chain war, while homeowners, towns, states, and real estate owners are poised for significant commercial gains.
Recent federal guidance indicates a greater focus on enabling drones and air taxis to take to the skies. For example, Missouri proposes to tighten and expand “unlawful use” rules governing where drones may be operated, particularly near critical infrastructure and open-air facilities, and to increase penalties for certain conduct. If it moves, it is a bill that can quickly change where lawful operations are permitted, even when FAA flight rules are met. This is a clear development of local laws taking control of low-altitude airspace.
In Hidden Hills, California, it is very clear that air rights are key to drone use. Nationally, operators often claim the rules are unclear, which is not the case. This is newspeak for we don't like the way we don't have free reign over your sovereign rights.
By default, drones cannot fly without the permission of the air rights owners. Hidden Hill has documented it, so there is no dispute. They prohibit flying over private property without permission.
Federal Moves & States Push On
The FCC banned foreign-made drones and their parts. There is various chatter about what exactly it means and whether those who are promoting Chinese drones in the US can still use their drones to fly over your home, close to schools, and near critical infrastructure. They carved out a temporary exemption from the FCC “Covered List” restrictions for critical components on the DoD-backed Blue UAS Cleared List, and components that qualify as “domestic end products” under the Buy American standard. The exemption is time-limited and currently runs through January 1, 2027.
Fights And Flights
There appears to be two different fights happening at once. One is a Washington supply chain fight, it lives in acronyms, committees, and equipment authorizations. The other is the fight you actually care about: who gets to be in the air above your home, your kids’ school, and the places where “critical infrastructure” stops being a phrase and becomes a vulnerability.
The FCC just escalated the first fight. On December 22, 2025, it added all foreign produced drones and “UAS critical components” to the FCC’s “Covered List” after an executive branch national security determination, the practical effect is that new device models in that category cannot get FCC equipment authorization, and without that authorization they cannot be legally imported, marketed, or sold as new approvals in the US.
This is not a national “no-fly” order. The FCC’s public notice states that the update does not affect consumers’ ability to continue using drones they lawfully purchased and does not prohibit the import, sale, or use of existing device models that were previously authorized. So if someone already has a DJI the FCC action does not ground it.
But despite the clear danger of Chinese drones and components proliferating every aspect of life, the US government and US industry still need drones, and they still need parts.
On January 7 to 8, 2026, the FCC announced exemptions following a Pentagon recommendation. The allowed imports include specific models from companies such as Parrot, Teledyne FLIR, Wingtra, and AeroVironment, as well as a list of permitted critical components from firms including Nvidia, Panasonic, Sony, Samsung, and others. Imports are allowed through the end of 2026.
Separately, the FCC says the Covered List entry was updated to carve out (until January 1, 2027) two buckets that are treated as not posing “unacceptable risks”; drones and critical components on the Defense Contract Management Agency’s Blue UAS Cleared List, and items that qualify as “domestic end products” under the Buy American standard. It also describes a process for entities to request “Conditional Approvals,” routed to the Department of War and DHS for determination.
So the “ban” is real, but it is also highly bureaucratic, porous by design, and time-limited in key places. It is a gate on future approvals, with a side door for favored lists.
The Bigger Hammer Was Not The FCC
The Commerce Department had been working on something broader, restrictions aimed at the guts of Chinese drone systems. This includes onboard computers, communications links, flight control systems, ground stations, operating software, and data storage. Commerce sent that proposal to the White House for review on October 8, 2025, and then withdrew it on January 8, 2026, with an official indicating it appeared tied to the administration freezing some China-targeting actions ahead of a planned Trump-Xi meeting in April 2026.
That matters because it tells you what drone policy is, right now, a negotiating chip. However, it must be remembered that national defense is not the chip in play, and will likely not be.
Chinese Concerns
On Capitol Hill, there are many who believe Chinese drones are not just cameras with props, they are CCP-subsidized surveillance tools.
Representative Elise Stefanik and then House China committee chair Mike Gallagher put it bluntly in a January 2024 statement, citing a CISA report and arguing Chinese drones present a national security risk, alleging the CCP subsidized firms like DJI and Autel to undercut US competitors and spy on critical infrastructure.
Gallagher also teamed with the committee’s top Democrat, Raja Krishnamoorthi, in pushing procurement restrictions. In relation to the “American Security Drone Act,” Gallagher said taxpayer dollars should not buy drones from countries like China, and framed it as reducing vulnerabilities from reliance on foreign-manufactured drone tech while encouraging growth in the US drone industry.
Senator Rick Scott’s office notes that in February 2022 he, Marco Rubio, and Tom Cotton introduced the “Countering CCP Drones Act” to add DJI to the FCC Covered List, with Scott arguing the US government should not purchase drones made in Communist China.
On X, Scott described a “Drones for America Act” as building on his work to fully ban Chinese made drones, claiming they are used to spy on Americans.
Stefanik has likewise said she has led multiple bills to ban “Communist Chinese drones” and referenced the Countering CCP Drones Act.
It is not only infrastructure in play; it is also vast swaths of American farmland. A group of House Republicans, including Stefanik and China select committee chair John Moolenaar, pressed USDA and CISA about DJI agricultural drones, warning they could be manipulated for attacks and could collect sensitive farm data, with Stefanik urging immediate action.
The Senate Armed Services Committee Republicans got involved. 14 Republicans on the committee, led by Senator Roger Wicker, backed the import ban as the right move to protect American industry, buy time to transition to American-made drones, and rebuild “free market” supply chains with allies and partners. The motion looks to be: ban the foreign gear, force a domestic rebuild, and reduce the spying risk.
The Homeowner Question
Now back to the key question: can “promoters of Chinese drones” still fly over your home, near schools, near infrastructure? Yes in priciple, If they already have the hardware, because the FCC move is not an operations ban. But not without the air rights owners permssion.
It is a forward-looking choke point on new authorizations and imports, with explicit language that previously purchased drones can still be used.
Even if every Chinese drone disappeared tomorrow, your privacy problem would still exist because the core issue is not the drone's passport; it is the consent layer in low-altitude airspace.
National security is a legitimate state function. But it is also the most overused shortcut in modern policymaking: instead of proving a specific harm and tailoring a remedy, you label a category dangerous and ban it. That is how you end up with a policy that is very muscular about trade, and strangely helpless about the backyard.
Air Rights Are Property Rights
American law does not treat your air as a public hallway, its private.
As low-altitude air becomes economically valuable (delivery corridors, mapping, inspection, security patrols), the rights-respecting solution is not to pretend that no one owns it. The solution is to utilize it and enable trade through permission and digital easements.
There can be no persistent low-altitude use without consent. People opt in and get paid when they want to. That is a market, not a mandate.
The Gap It Leaves
The FAA asserts exclusive authority over aviation safety and airspace efficiency, including for drones. At the same time, the FAA explicitly states that states and localities may generally regulate outside federal fields and notes that many states have passed drone laws addressing privacy, contraband delivery, private property, and law enforcement use.
Privacy Is A Rights Problem, Not A Nationality Problem
If the fear is surveillance, the right answer is to rely on surveillance law. Drones raise serious privacy and civil liberties concerns, and policy should focus on protections such as warrant requirements and limits on persistent aerial monitoring, rather than allowing the technology to outpace the Fourth Amendment.
That approach also has an advantage: it is technology-neutral. It does not pretend that an American-made camera cannot violate your privacy.
What This Adds Up To
The FCC ban is a supply-chain chokepoint, not an air fence. The Commerce pullback shows the “hard line” can soften overnight when diplomacy demands it.
Meanwhile, the China hawks keep describing a world of “spy drones,” and they may be right about the risk, but even a perfectly executed ban would not solve the everyday rights issue: who gets to occupy the air right above private property, and under what terms.
If we actually want the “flying car” future, or just to start with a drone delivery future, without turning backyards into involuntary hallways, the missing piece is not another covered list. It is a permission-and-property-rights layer for low-altitude air, making consent requests the default and commerce the opt-in.