The Office of Foreign Assets Control at the U.S. Treasury Department has added the Chinese company DJI, a maker of drones, and seven other Chinese companies to its non-SDN Chinese Military-Industrial Complex Companies List, which would effectively mean that Americans are prohibited from trading shares in the company.

The Treasury Department press release cites Executive Order 13959, which was issued by President Trump but later amended by President Biden in Executive Order 14032. Under these executive orders, U.S. persons are prohibited from trading the securities of the designated companies. In Executive Order 14032, President Biden said that "the use of Chinese surveillance technology outside the PRC and the development or use of Chinese surveillance technology to facilitate repression or serious human rights abuse constituted unusual and extraordinary threats to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States, and I expanded the national emergency to address these threats."

The press release explains the rationale for including DJI on the list as follows:

SZ DJI Technology Co., Ltd. (SZ DJI) operates or has operated in the surveillance technology sector of the economy of the PRC. SZ DJI has provided drones to the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau, which are used to surveil Uyghurs in Xinjiang. The Xinjiang Public Security Bureau was previously designated in July 2020, pursuant to E.O. 13818, for being a foreign person responsible for, or complicit in, or that has directly or indirectly engaged in, serious human rights abuse.

In October, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr called for adding DJI to the FCC’s Covered List, which would prohibit federal money from being used to purchase its communications equipment. In doing so, he noted that the Commerce Department placed DJI on its Entity List last year, "citing DJI’s role in Communist China’s surveillance and abuse of Uyghurs in Xinjiang."