Can the US build a DJI? We tore down @DJIGlobal 's 2019 and 2023 Mini drones and priced every part. It's the first public cost breakdown of either. Here's what we learned: DJI earns SaaS-like margins on hardware: ~79% gross margin on a $139 parts BOM. For comparison, Apple makes 53% on the iPhone. We estimate US-sourced parts would cost 2-3x more, cutting margins to 37-58%. The result: US drone makers can't compete in consumer, and focus on premium enterprise and defense. Sovereign silicon: DJI is building its autonomy lead starting at the chip. In 2019, the drone's key chips were American and Dutch. By 2023, all four were DJI's own. Custom silicon jumped from 1% to 26% of the parts bill. Nobody else can buy these chips. One notable exception is the GPS chip, still from Swiss firm @ublox . Chinese alternatives exist, but DJI's flight software is built around u-blox. In modern hardware, lock-in lives in the software. "Cheap China" is an outdated perception. DJI paid more for lighter Chinese batteries, then spent the saved grams on sensors and compute. Their first priority is capability per gram, not cost. Better battery tech → lighter weight → more onboard autonomy. US-made @SkydioHQ has better autonomy, but needs a heavier drone and a $399 chip to get it. We lost the war on cost. The next battlefield is autonomy. DJI's real moat is speed. Shenzhen gets new circuit boards in hours, the US in weeks. "Move fast and break things" works for hardware in China, not America. Banning DJI doesn't close that gap. Faster iteration does. We ran this teardown with our FDEs and Atlas, our engineering agent platform. See our full analysis: arenaphysica.com/publication… Thanks to @JonathonPSine @AkhilIyer1, Maggie Gray and Shaun Donovan for reading drafts of this.