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The Trump administration is preparing a $500 million effort to develop anti-drone security measures ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which will be co-hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico.
Andrew Giuliani, director of the White House’s FIFA World Cup 2026 Task Force, described the plan in an interview with Politico.
“Everybody from the governors to different commissioners of the police in these different cities to the stadium chief security officer say that this is something that they need in order to protect the [World Cup] sites,” Giuliani said.
The funding will be made available to all 50 states, but the White House says the primary focus will be securing the 104 matches scheduled in U.S. stadiums. According to the report, local law enforcement agencies are expected to use handheld devices capable of detecting drones or other aircraft, then either disable them with signal jammers or force them to return to their origin.
The initiative will be financed using resources from the Department of Homeland Security as part of the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” the tax-and-spending package signed by President Donald Trump in July.
“Drones are a disruptive technology. They have an amazing potential for both good and ill,” Seb Gorka, the Trump administration’s senior terrorism official, previously said, according to Politico. “We will increase the enforcement of current laws to deter two types of individuals: evildoers and idiots — the clueless and the careless.”
The National Governors Association also addressed drone concerns last month in a letter to congressional leaders.
“While the use of drones has proven valuable to governments for a wide variety of important purposes, including public safety and law enforcement, disaster recovery, and environmental monitoring, these systems are also increasingly being used for things like espionage, stalking, and other kinds of attacks,” the governors wrote.
Though the announcement is new, it builds upon warnings issued earlier by the White House.
“With large-scale public events such as the Olympics and the World Cup on the horizon, taking action on airspace security has never been timelier,” White House Office of Science and Technology Policy chief Michael Kratsios told reporters at the time.