Every image that can be captured by a dji drone is already available on Google Earth!!!
We all know that's not accurate, but I do agree there is lots of data there. And I hope we have even better satellite imagery of China at our CIA's immediate access.
what is the possible gain.
The gain is increased quality and quantity of photos, providing higher quality aerial angles not available from satellites, as explained in post #14.
Using Google maps satellite view, looking at Palos Verdes peninsula, south of Los Angeles, you can zoom into Albalone cove. You click the little yellow man in the lower right corner, which overlays about 50 or 60 little blue dots on the satellite aerial image. This gives clickable links to spherical LAND photos, available today. You can even hold CNTL and drag the mouse to get a 3D view, seeing the cave in the side of Portuguese Point.
Now just imagine, to augment Google's currently available data, clicking a CCP flag
, next to the yellow man, and up pops thousands of red dots overlaying the same area, providing thousands of AERIAL drone images of the same area. That particular data might not be super valuable, because of location, but drones can go where you cannot walk or access in many areas of our country. These images can be in places nobody can access. And yes, some people fly where they shouldn't, because they can, not to mention government workers flying DJI drones in secure areas (this has been stopped) with FAA waivers, unlocking the DFZ restrictions.
With all of the newer DJI drones capturing video to the iPad in 1080 resolution, random screen captures would be pretty nice quality, way better than satellite captures. CCP could acquire billions of these screen captures, collected over time. If China did this, the CCP would have instant access to views of our country from their computers that our own government would not have. This I believe is doable. Is it being done today? I don't want to think so, and I "hope not".
An analogy would be, seeing a beautiful wife in the shower behind a bubble hazed glass door. You can see her body outline, and color of her skin, but you don't have a clear view. Then replacing the hazed glass with clear glass. Now you have a view that's more interesting, augmenting the previous view with valuable, detailed, actionable data. Much more data!