Whack-a-drone

In Pasadena, California, there’s a cute red brick courtyard where one storefront isn’t like the rest. The glass doors open onto a sparse industrial hallway, which leads to a sunlit foyer with a large spiral staircase. Go up, and you’ll see a typical coworking space: open tables, healthy snacks, a collection of meeting rooms with glass walls. Follow one hallway most of the way back, and you’ll find Office 18. Whack-a-drone The US tried to ban Chinese drones. Brendan Carr can’t keep them grounded. There are no signs of life in this tiny private office that’s supposed to be the headquarters of Odyssey Robot, an upstart US drone company. We saw three small desks and chairs, but no power strips, no monitors, no keyboards or chargers or decorations. Two of the desks were covered with sealed cardboard packages. This room is the latest proof: The FCC’s ban on foreign-made drones is a bad joke. On December 22nd, 2025, the US government claimed — without a shred of public evidence — that foreign consumer drones posed an unacceptable threat to national security. With the help of other agencies, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr banned all future foreign drones from entering the country without a special new waiver. Like with Carr’s make-it-make-sense consumer internet router ban, that waiver has nothing to do with the security of these products. The application includes zero questions about restricting or improving the technology itself. Instead, it gives Carr and President Donald Trump the power to decide losers and winners while beating the “America First” drum. Foreign companies have to submit a detailed plan to build their products in the US, including how much they intend to invest in US manufacturing — yet US-based Netgear got a waiver from the router ban even though it made no commitment to produce devices outside Asia. Consumer drones are effectively all made in China, and as of April, it appeared that no one planned to change that as a result of the FCC’s foreign drone ban. Though some US dronemakers exist, they’re pursuing a different and more lucrative opportunity: drones that spy and kill. But Office 18 shows another gaping hole in the FCC’s plan. Instead of creating new US consumer drone companies, it’s incentivizing fake ones instead. How easy is it to fool the FCC? Just lie on the paperwork, it seems. Just whip up a new company that pretends to build brand-new drones in the USA and count on no one noticing — even if your drones clearly use proprietary DJI wireless tech. DJI, the world’s biggest drone company, didn’t dominate drones just because of first-mover advantage. It was technology. DJI’s OcuSync and older Lightbridge real-time video transmission systems were and are the most reliable long-range, low-latency ways to remotely control a consumer-grade drone. Almost every time The Verge has tested another brand, the signal hasn’t been as reliable. It’s a competitive advantage that DJI wouldn’t easily share. But OcuSync has a telltale fingerprint.…