We know you would not expect new stories from us over the weekend, but this is breaking; and we felt you should know: the world’s biggest commercial drone maker DJI is suing the United States’ Department of Defence, basically for allegations that the former is a tool of the Chinese government whose products have the potential to be used to undermine the security of the US.

If you are new to this world, DJI is a manufacturer of really great unmanned aerial vehicles that have been useful for just about every industrial application you can think of. The company holds over 70 percent of the world drone market; however, its founder Frank Wang is Chinese; the company headquarters are in Shenzhen, China.

The US government has a problem with that.

To cut the story short, DJI has been in legal trouble with US government since around 2017, whose latest development has been a few bills being tabled in Congress to ban DJI products from the US market.

Which has brought us to today, where DJI has decided on a legal route of its own against the US government.

On Friday, DJI sued the US Department of Defense to delete its name from a list of “Chinese Military Companies,” claiming it has no such relationship to Chinese authorities and has suffered unfairly as a result of that designation.

The company claims that since it was added to that list in 2022, it has “lost business deals, been stigmatized as a national security threat, and been banned from contracting with multiple federal government agencies,” and that its employees “now suffer frequent and pervasive stigmatization” and are “repeatedly harassed and insulted in public places.”

It also alleges that the DoD would not offer the company any explanation for its designation as a “Chinese Military Company” until DJI threatened a lawsuit this September; and claims that when the DoD finally offered up its reasoning, it was filled with errors.

You can find the full lawsuit below.