Congress, NASA, White House

Another step towards export control reform

Speaking at the annual conference of the Ex-Im Bank in Washington on Thursday, President Obama announced that a new proposal for reforming export control policies—the bane of the commercial space industry in the US for a decade now—is in the works:

Finally, we’re working to reform our Export Control System for our strategic, high-tech industries, which will strengthen our national security. What we want to do is concentrate our efforts on enforcing controls on the export of our most critical technologies, making America safer while enhancing the competitiveness of key American industries. We’ve conducted a broad review of the Export Control System, and Secretary [of Defense Robert] Gates will outline our reform proposal within the next couple of weeks.

NASA is also involved in the export control reform effort, deputy administrator Lori Garver said Wednesday at the Goddard Memorial Symposium. “This is an administration-led issue,” she said in response to a question on ITAR. “We are trying to get all the data we can about the kinds of things that ITAR restrictions have kept us from doing that have actually led to this nation being less secure rather than more.” She said that most people in the industry acknowledge that ITAR has been a “hindrance” to companies as well as organizations trying to cooperate with international partners on space projects. “NASA is one of the reasons why ITAR needs to be reformed, but not the only one. This is an administration-led activity we are active participants in.”

At the same time there are still efforts in Congress to pass legislation to enact reforms, such as HR 2410, the State Department authorization bill the House passed last year and is currently sitting in the Senate. “We do believe there will be legislative fixes as well, as we work with the Hill,” Garver added. “But right now we’re working on this administration effort.”

11 comments to Another step towards export control reform

  • CharlesTheSpaceGuy

    You know, I have to give President Obama the benefit of the doubt but it worries me to see him get involved with export reform! He does not exactly have the Midas Touch!!

  • Christopher

    Yeah, no lie. When is he going to stop messing around with this health care stuff so that he can start a couple of ill-advised wars?

  • Major Tom

    About damn time…

  • Doug Lassiter

    With regard to space exploration — both human and tele-human, achieving export reform would be the equivalent of a Midas Touch. International collaboration translates to money in the pocket for space exploration. ITAR has pretty much hamstrung that opportunity for for significant international partnership on cutting edge technology. Not to say we shouldn’t take a defensive posture with regard to such technology sharing, but much of what ITAR now renders hamstrung are cooperation on technology that is only vaguely defense-relevant. We’re talking reform, not removal.

    This was, of course, the rule in Constellation, where foreigners weren’t going to be allowed to participate in our lunar space transportation architecture, but were being invited to give us boxes we could transport to the Moon. Their lack of excitement about this was pretty understandable.

    The pledge by this administration to make space exploration an international partnership is a good one, and it can’t be done without export control reform.

  • Robert Horning

    ITAR regulations do make sense in a number of areas, and at the time the law was created it certainly made sense and was incredibly useful. There were technologies that had been developed within the USA that if given to potential enemies of the USA could do significant harm to not only the USA but also “friends” and allies.

    This said, a real dose of common sense needs to be applied here too, and far too much was declared a munition subject to ITAR regulations that was simply borderline insane. This was particularly true when it applied to concepts created strictly by civilians for non-military purposes that only tangentially could be applied as a weapon of war.

    I suppose that the Falcon 9 could in theory be turned into an ICBM if somehow Iran or North Korea got ahold of the vehicle including training on how to use it and to modify the technology. Still, it would be a rather lousy ICBM and not really do the job very effectively. How is it that something developed by a completely private company on their own dime can suddenly become “classified” by the military? That is the real question here, and wondering when something like rocket development ought to be an official state secret and when it should simply be published to the world for all to see.

    Even so, a bureaucracy has established itself in firm control over the regulation and movement of these sorts of “munitions”, and it takes an act of God (not Congress…. they are too wimpy to deal with this sort of real reform) to get these sorts of folks to release their grip once it is firmly in place. Bureaus and agencies in the U.S. government never go away except under extreme circumstances. Jerry Pournelle calls this the “Iron Law of Bureaucracies”. I’d have to agree with him. Shy of abolishing ITAR completely and considering it a horrible idea, I don’t think any substantive reform will really happen except a few modest and minor tweaks to the overall policy.

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  • Robert G. Oler

    The SpaceX hotfire seems to have been a success

    Robert G. Oler

  • common sense

    “The SpaceX hotfire seems to have been a success”

    :)

  • Space Cadet

    Yes indeed, ITAR makes us more secure. It protects information so secret that only 300 million people are allowed to know..

  • […] this month, in a speech at the Ex-Im Bank in Washington, President Obama announced that an export reform proposal was in the works and would be released by Defense Secretary Robert Gates “within the next couple of […]

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