What’s Unique About the Anzu Enforcement Action?
When the FCC moved in July to prohibit the importation and marketing of drones from a host of companies that had been identified as DJI pass-throughs, one was conspicuously absent: Anzu Robotics, the first company formally identified by Congress as being a DJI pass-through years earlier. Today, August 24, the 30-day comment period for Anzu finally opens.[1]
Background (skip if you know the Anzu story)
In August 2024, the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party sent letters to Anzu demanding answers about their relationship with DJI. The Committee’s findings were blunt:
Security researchers had confirmed that Anzu's Raptor T is essentially a DJI Mavic 3 ‘painted green’
Anzu’s remote control and drones all ran on DJI technology
Anzu’s claimed agreement with DJI to modify and manufacture at will — no royalties, no shared ownership, no customer-data reporting — while DJI simultaneously provided priority technical support was, literally, incredible. The Committee drew the only reasonable conclusion: there was no reasonable business rationale for DJI to enter into this relationship aside from using Anzu as a pass-through to circumvent legal restrictions placed on DJI.
Strip away the corporate structure and the scheme is simple. DJI, facing a mounting wall of U.S. restrictions, found a nominally American company to sell nominally software-separated drones - something that is unverifiable without a great deal of time, cost, and forensic analysis. The Committee also flagged a second, similarly problematic maker, Cogito Tech, in the same breath (Letter to Commerce Department and Anzu Robotics, House Select Committee on the CCP, August 27, 2024) — an early signal that this was never going to be a one-company problem - but Anzu was the first one to land in the crosshairs.
Over the next few years, more companies would appear mirroring the Anzu playbook, admitting or denying their involvement with DJI to varying degrees - many of whom were included in the FCC’s July 17, 2026 announcement.
So Why is a Non-Spray Drone Enforcement Action Relevant to Ag-Drones?
The question raised since then was: where was Anzu in all the FCC’s releases? While now answered, it confirms something much more interesting: this confirms that the FCC is definitely not bringing these actions in the order they were received, nor the order in which the companies came onto the market.
This is key for our industry because it is more likely that a given company that has bad paperwork on file with the FCC (yes, there very much are more) has simply not had their notice published, rather than that they have gotten away with it. As such, drone industry folks should strap in for a turbulent 3, 6, or 12 months, as these company-specific rulings come out and then, as SBOM/HBOM requirements get rolled out, a follow-on wave then.
Finally, and this is probably the most-missed part: Look at this as a prelude to the Conditional Approval List, Import Restrictions, and FAA Crackdowns. While we don’t pretend to have any special insights into the FCC, this is a very very very strong indicator of what’s to come. Federal Agencies were pretty busy before drones were a thing, and Congressional appropriations have not tracked to staff the FCC and FAA with equivalent people to handle the massive regulatory workload. But while the government is slow, they are dedicated to substantively reviewing everything eventually.
As Warren Buffet once said, "You never know who actually has their shorts on until the tide goes out"
and the smart money is on this tide getting pretty low…
[1] As a note, while the FCC published the notice a couple of weeks ago, the comment & enforcement clocks start from the date the notice is published in the Federal Register, which is today.