Thread by @TrentTelenko

I did an interview yesterday (Friday 8 Nov 2024) with @esherifftv on the lawfare going on between the Biden Administration and @elonmusk SpaceX over the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).

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Being a old DoD Quality staffer, I brought powerpoint slides.🤣

This 1st slide shows how the ITAR law defines what a "US person" is, versus the Dept. of Justice discrimination lawsuit claims under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

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The second slide shows how "illegal exports" under ITAR includes 'foreign persons' - everyone not a 'US person' - seeing a ITAr controlled technical data package inside the USA counts as a 'export' to the nation an asylee or a refugee comes from.

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The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) did not modify the ITAR law.

DoJ claims that:

"...asylees and refugees can access export-controlled information and materials without additional government approval, just like U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents."

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...are not supported by the ITAR law as written.

I was a quality subject matter expert for DCMA Texas training quality specialists in how to audit defense contractors for ITAR compliance.

It took me all of 20 minutes to find the relevant laws for those slides.🤷‍♂️

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SpaceX's lawyers used those passages to get a Federal judge to bounce the DoJ lawsuit.🤣

To give you an idea of how kafkaesque the ITAR laws are, there are two ways to avoid ITAR penalties with an asylee or refugee as an employee.

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1. You go through a process with the Commerce Department for permission ahead of time, every time, for every ITAR covered part data package, which that takes 30 to 60 days and involves ITAR compliance lawyers.

For which, see an example link:



7/federal-lawyer.com/import-export-…

2. You use a special DoD exemption covering the defense trade between the USA and Canada.***

There are not any Canadian asylees or refugees.🙄

***There is a similar exemption being created for Australians under the AUKUS nuclear sub agreement.

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SpaceX using an asylee or refugee without doing those things incurs a criminal penalty of 20 years of imprisonment and $1 million of penalty per export per ITAR covered part tech data.

For example, say a Raptor 3 rocket engine with, notionally, 200 parts is seen by a...

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...'foreign person' incurs 4,000 years of prison time and $200 million in penalties for every person involved _AND_ for SpaceX.

These extreme penalties were due to the 1998 Loral missile tech transfer to China scandal.

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globalsecurity.org/wmd//library/n…

This Loral technical transfer waiver Pres. Clinton approved to get the Long March 3 as a cheap space launcher for Loral also gave China the tech for a reliable bus for multiple independently-targetable reentry vehicles.

OOPSIE!


11/ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Marc…

This scandal was very much a part of the GOP attempt to impeach President Clinton.

Then Speaker Gingrich didn't pursue those charges, rumor control has it, due to then GOP major fundraiser Haley Reeves Barbour getting Taiwanese campaign contributions for the elder Bush.

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Said Taiwanese being frontmen for the Chinese Communist Party.

Hence the whole Monica Lewinsky deal in lieu of real charges on China.

The Federal bureaucracy did its best to ignore ITAR for about 20 years...until it was figured out there was budget in ITAR compliance.

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It was dealing with that ITAR compliance bureaucracy that got me involved with training DCMA Texas quality specialists...

...and in spotting DoJ lawfare for @esherifftv.

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