Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) weighed in on questions swirling around China's potential use of drones against the U.S., claiming the chance was "nontrivial."
Krishnamoorthi, the top Democrat on the House select panel examining the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), joined NewsNation's "The Hill" Wednesday, looking into the uptick in recent drone sightings.
Asked by host Blake Burman if the drone sightings could have been "nefariously" conducted by China, the lawmaker suggested the chance was significant.
“It’s a nontrivial chance,” he replied. “It’s definitely a possibility and the likely that they can then access data that is collected by these drones is very high.”
Krishnamoorthi explained that companies in China must provide its government access to back-door user data from their products for anywhere in the world.
He also noted that a letter was sent to Fairfax County Law Enforcement, just outside Washington D.C., when they considered purchasing Chinese-made drones.
“You can easily imagine a situation where these drones are flying over sensitive sites in the D.C. airspace,” Krishnamoorthi said, noting that any information the aircraft receives could be “potentially accessible” to the CCP.
Krishnamoorthi’s comments come just after drones were seen flying near sensitive U.S. military sites in New Jersey and California.
The Pentagon assured there was “no evidence” that the drones were from a foreign entity” or were “the work of an adversary. Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.), however, claimed Iran launched the drones via a mothership.
Additionally, a Chinese citizen, who was lawfully in the U.S., was arrested earlier this week after flying a drone over the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. He was arrested and charged in the San Francisco airport as he was heading on a flight to China.
Robert Wheeler, the assistant director of the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group, testified in Congress that the agency was investigating unexplained drone sightings near U.S. military sites.
Krishnamoorthi reiterated the concern that if the drones are Chinese-made, they will transmit information back to the CCP.
“Unfortunately, this is one of those areas where the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party, has really kind of deployed a lot of resources to control the market, not just in China, not just in the U.S., but globally,” he said. “And so, this is yet another platform that we’re concerned about.”
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