From Safe Product to Secure Product. A Challenge for International Relations: The Case of Drones

The “drone security challenge” is a key case that reveals the continuity from quality to safety through security after the shift from safety to quality that took place during the 1990s. This shift, triggered by Japan, revealed the main strategy levers of the globalization era: delocalization, just in time and total quality management. Briefly, after the mass consumption trend after World War II, the safety issue became the major challenge to the firm reputation with the consumer movement in the 1970s. Then, the rise of the Japanese economy as the 2nd world economy at the beginning of the 1990s, illustrated the shift from safety toward quality as a strategic tool to conquer foreign markets, for example by the Japanese automotive industry. Today, the large scale digital breakthrough introduces by reliable and affordable high tech products like the smartphone or the drone, rises the problematic of security, either personal data security or airspace security, as a strategic challenge for both the State and the firm. The security frame to address this challenge will make possible to reach the billions of dollars of wealth promised by the digital revolution underway. The case of the drone is particularly interesting as the Chinese company DJI, the main drone manufacturer, implements a security strategy that carry a strategic opportunity through the OBOR framework in order to mass produce « secure product ». The new shift toward secure products is highlighting the main feature of the mutation of the economic and liberal order. The manufactured firms of digital products highly connected will be security provider to customers and States at a global scale…