The Ban Military Drones Spying on Civilians Act, introduced by Democrat Rep. Jimmy Gomez on Friday, was referred to the House Armed Services and Judiciary committees for review. Text of the legislation was viewed by DefenseScoop this week, but hasn’t been published widely online.

“None of the funds authorized to be appropriated for fiscal year 2026 or any fiscal year thereafter for the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, or any other executive agency may be used to operate a covered unmanned aircraft vehicle in the United States to conduct surveillance of United States persons engaged in protests or civil disobedience,” the bill states.

In this context, the legislation defines “covered UAVs” as the MQ–9 Reaper and all variants, as well as any unmanned aircraft that uses an airframe initially developed for use by U.S. armed forces; is a medium-altitude, long-endurance aircraft or a high-altitude, long-endurance aircraft; or can fly at an altitude of 10,000 feet or higher.

If passed, the bill would also require the president to produce annual reports to Congress detailing every instance in which a covered drone is deployed by the government for novel purposes or for operations not authorized by Congress — “including with respect to a use by one executive agency for an authorized purpose to assist another executive agency that is not authorized to carry out such purpose.”

The reports would need to include information about any weapons the drones were equipped with and the information they collect about people on the ground.

A senior staffer on Gomez’s team told DefenseScoop that the congressman introduced this legislation “in direct response to recent actions” of DHS, which deployed surveillance drones over Los Angeles in June to monitor protests related to immigration enforcement. Notably, it was also put forth at a time when DHS and DOD are working closely on border security operations that involve expanded drone deployments.

Privacy hawks have raised concerns about DHS’s drone surveillance operations to capture information about civilians in recent years, including in 2020 when UAVs were flown over more than a dozen U.S. cities where demonstrators protested police violence after the killing of George Floyd. But Gomez has warned that the increasing sophistication and advancements of military drone technology warrant more explicit limitations on their use to track public protests.

“[Rep. Gomez] believes the U.S. government should never use military-grade drones to spy on its own people, especially those exercising their constitutional right to protest,” the senior staffer on his team told DefenseScoop.

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During an event hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, she spotlighted those three nations’ recent models and methods for deploying and exporting capabilities to facilitate dictatorial practices. New frameworks and “built-in” technology standards will be needed to promote stronger resilience against those growing threats, she suggested.

“In my view, the intelligence community is a critical ally in the fight against authoritarianism and should contribute to the promotion of norms that help to protect against the primary tools of digital authoritarianism and repression, which are censorship, misinformation and disinformation, mass surveillance and invasive spyware used to suppress public debate,” she said. 

Each year, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) conducts and releases a report on worldwide threats to U.S. national security. Haines confirmed the latest review, launched in March 2023, was the first annual threat assessment to devote an entire section to digital authoritarianism.   

“We need to move with urgency. During the coming years, we can expect that governments will grow more sophisticated in their use of existing repressive technologies — and they’ll learn quickly how to exploit new and more intrusive technologies, particularly automated surveillance and identity resolution techniques,” she said.

Recent assessments show that foreign governments are already using digital information and communication technologies to monitor and suppress political debate domestically, as well as in their expatriate and diaspora communities abroad. As these technologies, policies and mechanisms are exported and proliferate globally, democratic governance efforts will likely erode, she added.

According to ODNI’s latest evaluations, capabilities and approaches for monitoring and limiting dissent “are on a trajectory to become even more pervasive, targeted and complex in the next few years,” Haines noted. She also pointed to predictions that “generative artificial intelligence will only increase the sophistication that such regimes can use to deploy such tools, making them that much more difficult to counter.”

Generative AI is an emerging subfield of the technology underpinning the making of large language models that can generate audio, code, images, text, videos and other content when prompted by humans. ChatGPT, which has made headlines and exploded in popularity, is one prominent example of generative artificial intelligence technology.

From Haines’ perspective, these nascent but rapidly evolving tools are “making it easier to be surprised by significant developments” for members of the intelligence community. 

“And there’s just no question that with generative AI you can be far more sophisticated in your production of misinformation and disinformation,” she said.

China, Russia, Iran — and now, increasingly other nations — are also using internet disruptions as a tactic to silence dissenters or repress certain communities, she noted. Often, they’ll do so during protests or elections.

“In fact, last year, governments and other actors shut down the internet at least 187 times in 35 countries, which was a new record,” Haines confirmed. 

While highlighting what ODNI views as the Chinese, Russian and Iranian models for applying technology-based mechanisms for control within and beyond their own borders, Haines called China “the global leader in digital repression.” Beijing “has a comparative advantage in the global export of facial recognition and AI,” she noted. Moreover, “autocracies and weak democracies are more likely to acquire this technology from China than from other countries,” Haines said, including during periods of political unrest.

Broadly, the national intelligence chief expressed her team’s desire to help prompt innovative thinking on technical standards, frameworks and more intuitive design approaches that can incorporate and promote “resilience” practices aligned with freedom of expression and open governance.

“We have a lot of ‘building into our design’ for cybersecurity that we’re trying to promote. You should also be doing that for democratic resilience, in a sense, right?” Haines said.

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Under President Biden’s direction, the balloon was shot down by an F-22 fighter jet at 2:39pm EST Saturday, senior government officials told reporters in a briefing shortly after that “engagement” to wipe out the platform. 

Multiple U.S. weapons were mobilized for the operation, but the gigantic balloon was hit by a single AIM-9X missile shot from the jet, approximately six nautical miles off the coast of South Carolina. Although the People’s Republic of China previously released a statement claiming the system was blown off-course in the midst of a weather research mission, the U.S. has maintained that the balloon enables the Chinese to conduct intelligence-gathering and surveillance since it was first acknowledged by the Pentagon on Thursday.

On Wednesday, Biden authorized the U.S. military to take out the balloon as soon as the mission could be performed without posing a threat to people on the ground. That opportunity came Saturday, the officials confirmed. Before that, though, the U.S. government and military “took immediate steps to protect against the balloon’s collection of sensitive information,” they said.

“In addition, shooting the balloon down can enable the U.S. to recover sensitive PRC equipment. I would also note that, while we took all necessary steps to protect against the PRC surveillance balloon’s collection of sensitive information, the surveillance balloon’s overflight of U.S. territory was of intelligence value to us. I can’t go into more detail — but we were able to study and scrutinize the balloon and its equipment which have been valuable,” a senior defense official said during the briefing on Saturday.

The Pentagon has assessed that there is also now another alleged high-altitude Chinese spy balloon transiting across Central and South America at time of publication — and other unmanned aerial systems like it also have been spotted across five continents in the last few years.

“These balloons are all part of a PRC fleet of balloons developed to conduct surveillance operations, which have also violated the sovereignty of other countries. These kinds of activities are often undertaken at the direction of the People’s Liberation Army,” the senior defense official said, later noting “we have notified the PRC about our action, and we are briefing allies and partners.”

A large payload connected to the bottom of the now-downed balloon is anticipated to be the main component that likely hosts much of the platform’s reported intelligence gathering capabilities. During the call, officials were vague about how long they expect for the ongoing, multi-partner recovery mission to take to salvage as much of the balloon’s components as possible for future study.

“The timeline for recovery, at this point, is relatively unknown. We have multiple U.S. Navy vessels and Coast Guard vessels in the region right now establishing a security perimeter and a conducting searches for any debris that may be underwater,” a senior military official said on the call. 

Navy divers are prepared to go support the recovery operation, if needed. 

“We’ll also have unmanned vessels that can go down to get the structure and lift it back up on the recovery ship. [This is] a collaborative effort — we’ll have the FBI onboard as well under the counter-intelligence authorities to also be categorizing and assessing the platform itself,” the senior military official said.

Once it’s recovered, U.S. researchers will deeply study the system’s components to unravel the technology and puzzle out what was surveilled — particularly over sensitive military nuclear sites.

The Pentagon’s early assessment is that the balloon “was not likely to provide significant added value above other PRC intel capabilities such as satellites in low Earth orbit, for example,” the senior defense official said. But, “we’ll learn more as we pick up the debris,” they added.

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That’s according to a new Air Force request for information, seeking contractors capable of providing such an AI-driven surveillance system so that force protection personnel will not have to watch “other country nationals,” as the solicitation refers to them, while they work on Centcom’s forward locations.

To be specific, the Air Force wants information about contractors that can “deliver, assemble, build, and fabricate a fully functional artificially intelligent (AI) enabled monitoring system for specific site(s) located in US Central Command (USCENTCOM) Area of Responsibility (AOR) using real-time digital twins with computer vision and IoT sensors.”

Such a system would augment the Air Force force protection personnel whose job it is to watch these nationals, according to the service.

“This Artificial Intelligence system would replace the need for in-person monitoring and reduce up to 75% of those billets, enabling USAF resources and Force Protection assets to be employed against higher priorities,” the RFI states.

The AI capability would ideally use “automated alerts, digital twin of the site(s), AI
predictive monitoring, and ability for global monitoring all to detect/track the [other country nationals’] pattern of behavior in and around the designated/approved site” and “integrated automation -by layering in artificial intelligence- to address safety and/or security concerns as required,” the procurement documents explain.

The system would primarily be used at Al Udeid Air Base but could be deployed at other Centcom facilities as well.

Responses for the RFI are due by Feb. 10.

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