Safeguarding Geospatial Integrity A Call for Greater Security Awareness in the GNSS Surveying Community BY JAVAD To the land surveying profession, Over the past year, sweeping national security debates have reshaped segments of the geospatial technology landscape in the United States. What began as concern over consumer electronics and unmanned aerial systems has rapidly expanded into broad regulatory action targeted at global supply chains and foreign-controlled communications technology — most visibly the high-profile restrictions on Chinese-manufactured drones such as those from DJI. These developments serve as a clarion call for our profession, where the precision of our measurements is matched only by the importance of the data we collect and manage. On Dec. 23, 2025, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) enacted a ban preventing new models of foreign-made drones — most notably from DJI and other companies — from receiving FCC equipment authorization required for legal sale and import into the U.S. market. This action stems from a provision in the Fiscal Year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) (“Section 1709: Analysis of Certain Unmanned Aircraft Systems Entities”), which mandated that a designated national security agency complete a risk assessment of certain foreign UAS manufacturers by a statutory deadline. Because no such assessment was completed by that date, the law directed the FCC to add these companies’ products to its Covered List, triggering a de facto ban on future new product authorizations due to perceived “unacceptable risks” to national security. In parallel, U.S. Customs enforcement of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) has further complicated the availability of certain foreign-sourced products by presumptively barring the importation of goods linked to forced labor supply chains absent clear and convincing evidence to the contrary. These laws, while aimed at unmanned aircraft, underscore a larger regulatory reality: Hardware and systems that incorporate wireless communication, positioning data and network connectivity are now being evaluated not just on price and performance, but on the geopolitical and legal frameworks governing their manufacture and data flows. Why This Matters to Surveyors Unlike drones that may record video or operate autonomously, GNSS receivers and surveying instruments might appear, at first glance, to be “infrastructure agnostic.” Yet modern surveying workflows increasingly rely on connected receivers, real-time correction streams, cloud-linked processing and firmware updates. These integrations create potential vectors for data movement, firmware control and system trust that can have implications far beyond the jobsite. The same national security logic applied to drones — that foreign corporate governance, UCLS Foresights 26
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