(Photo provided by Tim Sheehy for Montana)

Montana Republican Senate candidate Tim Sheehy previously endorsed and attempted to utilize Chinese drones built by a company which was sanctioned by two administrations for leaking American data to the Chinese Communist Party.

The businessman regularly espouses “tough on China” rhetoric; Sheehy specifically decried the danger of Chinese technology in a recent debate with his opponent Sen. Jon Tester (D). He claimed that China has “spies outside of every single one of our bases, and they’re infiltrating our entire technology to where no one can walk around without a piece of Chinese microchips somewhere in their phone, their headset, their care, their cameras.”

Sheehy’s website also currently has a section on “National Security,” where he is critical of President Joe Biden for empowering “our adversaries like China.”

“We need to fund our military and stand strong against China, secure our southern border, and once again, make America energy dominant and independent,” the section reads.

In contrast to his recent words, Sheehy once conducted business with a Chinese tech company called DJI. In 2015, Sheehy personally petitioned the FAA for an exemption to allow his wildlife firefighting company Bridger Aerospace to utilize drones made by DJI. After this petition was granted the following year, DJI admitted to complying with the Chinese government’s request to hand over data collected by its drones. DJI has said as recently as January that the only information they keep is information that users consent to sharing.

Despite this potential data breach by Chinese technology that he now condemns, Sheehy continued to pursue DJI drones and highlighted the use of “a world class surveillance drone” on Bridger Aerospace’s website as recently as 2017, according to snapshots from the Internet Archive.

Just before leaving office in 2021, then-President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing U.S. agencies to outline security risks involved with the use of Chinese-made drones. In December 2021, the Biden administration specifically restricted the investment in DJI drones, citing ethical surveillance concerns.

Recent polling suggests a very tight race between Tester and Sheehy this November.