Ah, export control reform. The space industry has talked about the subject for over a decade, since shortly after Congress put satellites and related components on the US Munitions List in the late 1990s, subjecting them to the far more rigorous requirements of ITAR. While there have procedural changes during this time that have helped streamline the export licensing process, efforts for more fundamental changes, including removing satellites and their components from the USML, have so far fallen short. But that doesn’t mean people haven’t stopped trying.
Last week Rep. C. A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger (D-MD) introduced HR 1727, the “Strengthening America’s Satellite Industry Act”. (The legislation was oddly squeezed in between two other unrelated bills introduced by Ruppersberger the same day, the Child Care Protection Act of 2011 and the Right Start Child Care and Education Act of 2011.) The bill covers a variety of issues associated with export controls, but the key provision of bill for the satellite industry is section 5, which states that “the President is authorized to remove satellites and related components from the United States Munitions List”. That’s similar to a provision in a State Department authorization bill in the previous Congress; that bill passed the House but died in the Senate. Both the older legislation and Ruppersberger’s new bill include language that would still ban the export of such components to China. If passed, the bill would likely support ongoing export control reform efforts by the Obama Administration, which seeks to reduce the number of items on the USML but increase protections on those items that remain.
Export control reform will also be featured this Thursday in a hearing by the full House Committee on Foreign Affairs, although it’s not clear if the hearing will get down to details such as satellites. Separately, the Export Controls Working Group of the FAA’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) will be meeting this afternoon, featuring a panel discussion on the “politics of export control” with two congressional staffers.
Non-US manufacturers like Thales advertise in headlines products that are “ITAR-Free” as though it were a curse. This law, originally adopted to prevent Iran from buying US missile technology, has so far as I can tell served no useful purpose.
It has served a purpose. It has demonstrated to the world that a nation can still engage in a Cold War10-15 years after it ended.
Dutch†Ruppersberger (D-MD) introduced HR 1727
Leave it to the democrats to attempt to stealthily dissolve a security structure that has served US interests well. Why is it in the national interest to hand the Chicoms another graduity?
Aremis Asling wrote @ May 10th, 2011 at 8:21 am
“It has served a purpose. It has demonstrated to the world that a nation can still engage in a Cold War10-15 years after it ended.”
you dont get it. The right wing has been fighting the cold war for the LSAT 20 years…they are just trying to find new enemies to plug into the place the Soviet Union had.
To people like Wind and Whittington, the cold war never ended.
Robert G. Oler
To people like Wind and Whittington, the cold war never ended.
How is 2011 different than 1988? Russia and China are still the main strategic threats to the US. They target large numbers of nuclear missiles at us. They forcibly occupy their neighbors. They relentlessly work against our strategic interests. Collaborating in space with China and Russia is nothing but a distraction. It is supported by a NASA leadership that doesn’t know what else to do.
“…a NASA leadership that can’t afford to do anything else.””
FTFY.
I thought that Space was exempt from military use. What is the UN Space Policy? I read that the Chinese and the European are cooperating at greater levels than the USA. Our policy makers do think that they have the best interest in mind for their constituents and campaign donors. However, look around and look at the Income – Loss statement for a change. After all the Business of America is Business to misquote Calvin Coolidge
@ amightywind wrote @ May 10th, 2011 at 8:53 am
“Leave it to the democrats to attempt to stealthily dissolve a security structure that has served US interests well. ”
Yet another moronic comment. Ever worked with ITAR restrictions? Do you know the extent of those restrictions? Do you know what “export control” mean and entail? Please say yes for once.
“Why is it in the national interest to hand the Chicoms another graduity?”
Hmm Where does it say that? Where?
Man I’d rather read your diatribe about socialism and capitalism than your attempt at policy interpretation. Come on! A little effort? What about the marxist thugs selling government technology inside the US to crony capitalists? You probably can do better than I. Please.
“Why is it in the national interest to hand the Chicoms another graduity?”
Per Mr. Foust’s original post:
“Both the older legislation and Ruppersberger’s new bill include language that would still ban the export of such components to China.”
Read, comprehend, and think before you post.
Sigh…
As a point of information, to my Chinese friends the Communist and Kuomintang (nationalist) parties are no more different than Democrats and Republicans. Nobody is an ideological Communist anymore, and China is second only to the US in the number of billionaires.
@ vulture4 wrote @ May 10th, 2011 at 12:20 pm
I am afraid it is irrelevant to those who seek to alienate China and the rest of the world. Those seeking an enemy to define their lives.
amightywind wrote @ May 10th, 2011 at 9:58 am
“How is 2011 different than 1988?”
Throughout the Cold War the threat was accumulation of land through the use of armed conflict.
Today the threat of armed conflict between the major superpowers has gone away, and so the new challenge is economic in nature. You can extract more natural resources from a country by signing a contract and building some roads than you can by invading them.
“Russia and China are still the main strategic threats to the US.”
Yeah right.
Russia has been relegated to the level of a regional power, down from when it was arguably a superpower. It can’t even reliably field it’s military outside of it’s region.
China is an economic superpower, but not one militarily. Militarily it has regional influence for sure, but it also knows that the best way to expand economically is through money, not guns.
You my Windy friend are a relic of the Cold War, and until you understand that the future will be determined by the strength of national economies instead of the number of stealth fighters, you will continue to be behind the times.
Russia at least has the fundamental institutions of Democracy that could eventually lead it to being a full and free country if they are continued to be pressured by the US and Europe.
The ruling oligarchy in China, however, has no intention of going down that road since they know that a majority of the Chinese people really don’t trust them. So the Chinese Communist Party is content with being a ruling plutocracy where most of the folks who get rich either belong to the communist party or are related to members of the communist party.
The solution to the this problem is to heavily tax imports from countries that– are not– free and democratic while lowering or eliminating tariffs on imports from nations that are free and democratic. Money makes the world go around. And only the threat of lost exports to the free world will change an oppressive country like China that thinks it can simply buy the obedience of its own people and the people of the rest of the world.
you will continue to be behind the times.
Do what the herd deems fashionable then. It would be no change for you. I will continue to evaluate China based on reason.
I will continue to evaluate China based on reason.
Well, that would be a novel approach, for you.
@ amightywind wrote @ May 10th, 2011 at 3:10 pm
“I will continue to evaluate China based on reason.”
Useless article. Where are his suggestions then? Except than to say “nonsense”. The Rush Limbaugh of foreign policy maybe?
A reminder that this post is about export control reform policy. It is not for general discussion about US-China relations or other unrelated topics. Thank you for your cooperation.
We have other laws that restrict the export of classified equipment. ITAR simply hobbles US manufacturers who want to sell satellites. If we cannot meet the world’s demand, it will be met elsewhere. I would suggest that space enthusiasts lobby for its repeal.
@ vulture4 wrote @ May 10th, 2011 at 5:16 pm
“ITAR simply hobbles US manufacturers who want to sell satellites. If we cannot meet the world’s demand, it will be met elsewhere. I would suggest that space enthusiasts lobby for its repeal.”
If it only were satellites…
@ Sidney Clouston:
“I thought that Space was exempt from military use. What is the UN Space Policy? ”
That can be found here:
http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/SpaceLaw/outerspt.html
http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/SpaceLaw/gares/html/gares_21_2222.html
It refers only to ‘nuclear weapons or any other kind of weapons of mass destruction,’ not ‘weapons’ in general, or ‘military use’ in general, a distinction lost on, or simply not known to many people.
Indeed, you could not have meaningful verification of other treaties, as their reference to ‘national technical means of verification’ mostly means reconnaissance satellites, and many of those have a military component of one kind or another…
OK, Jeff, we’ll try to play nice,…Right guys??,……Guys????
The use of restrictive policies like ITAR has always been something that should be strongly limited in an industrial world where participation in world-wide trade networks has been the primary generator of new wealth. When we refuse to trade, which is what ITAR was *supposed* to do in *very* specific instances, we restrict those network’s ability to generate wealth for all of us. However, there is another aspect of damage from ITAR that mirrors what the USSR did to itself during WWIII.
That is the hope that we can get long-term benefits from restricting the flow of technology, so that we need not invest so much in new technology development. In fact, the benefits of keeping any large nation from getting from us a particular bit of technical capability is seldom effective for longer than a decade. Why? That is about the maximum amount of time a determined national effort to build a parallel technical capability would take another major country that has lots of first class engineers. Then why do it? The deranged hope, among those who would control our society that they need not focus so much of our resources on technical development, so it can be available for pork that buys votes.
That’s right. IMHO, the long-term gain of these restrictions is not to the Republic as a whole, but to those politicians who think they “need” to keep the international competition weakened. Thus and so, they need not bend to the demand for new technology development in the very most competent hands we can get, instead of sending pork to those hands that will pull the right voting levers. This comes about when we “buy” most of a technical developmental effort through oligopsony, or in some fields, monopsony.
Note: Monopsony means single buyer, usually a bureaucratic hierarchy, and it has just as many agency costs as the better known “Monopoly”.
Even airliners have seen both major regulatory and financial and technical interventions by government, but the Federal technical monopsony was not present, and airliners moved forwards in productivity, responding to market demands. In contrast, the Federal monopsony on almost all rocketry technology has stagnated the productivity of rocketry, in large part because the pols controlling that monopsony have little real interest in settling the solar system, the primary long-term use of human spaceflight. That is what we see in the dispute over the desirable emphasis at NASA on technical development versus the stagnant focus on the 40 years old technology the Senate emphasizes.
BTW, this applies to defense technology just as much as it does to technology with commercial potential. This is particularly true of ballistic missile warfare. ITAR has become a vague and weak substitute for better Ballistic Missile Defense that should have been in continual development since the mid-1950s, but has been slowed nearly to a halt time and time again. How is this a mirror image of the USSR?
In the USSR, the Party would often mandate the use of stolen foreign designs. At times they would even do so when their own scientists produced better work. That way the Party would not become dependent on the technical competence of a “class” that had a habit of rigorous thought, and which paid attention to truly objective results instead of politics. Where the Party could pick and choose between foreign stolen technology and domestic technology, they could tell their brightest technical people to shut up whenever they became uncomfortable, with little damage to the USSR’s own defense. In that way, they could raise the personal price to technical people of any tendency by their best technical people to demand reforms, as Sakharov did, anyway.
The mirror image in the US is that pols seek to keep technology that the monopsony has paid for from “escaping”. They seek to do so not to negate a group’s political power, but to focus it behind them at election day, by handing them a paycheck. They cannot do that where a technology “escapes”, placing the Republic in a position of possible future danger so that those less politically useful must be used for developing yet newer technology, because they are the best techies, not the most politically reliable. Neither political oligarchy wants to be dependent on techies, but very much want to have the techies dependent on them.
We are fools to believe this tendency is confined to any one Party. So, what’s the solution? Number one solution, get rid of the monopsony! That means the pols are not in the loop for technical decision-making, because NASA people cannot wage turf wars against commercial start-ups, as happened from 1979-2004. The implementation of this has begun. Number two solution, get rid of the belief that we are miles ahead of the world, and can afford to waste kid’s time with all the multicult diversions and market distortions advanced over the last 40 years to get us to feel better, and earn more money, when doing almost anything other than business, science, and engineering. This awaits the introduction of wide-scale competition into K-12 education. Number three solution, restrict ITAR to the control of specific technologies within the aerospace field, rather than today’s general obstacle course to US participation in the world-wide networks of Space Technology sales and development. We will not benefit from Spaceflight, if we do not participate in those markets.
@Tom Billings wrote @ May 10th, 2011 at 8:40 pm
Interesting. Tried to steer the nephew into space R&D for college & post grad work as he’s a science/math whiz at the top of his class but he balks at space research as a ‘dead end’ career path these days and opted for bioengineering as a more promising and lucrative field with a more ‘rewarding’ future. No doubt a lot of kids see where the money will be, both in terms of research grants and salaries.
Yeah except those heading for SpaceX!!
When an export restriction applies to a technology available only from the US then it can be effective in preventing the acquisition of that technology by a country from whom we want to withhold it.
But when a technology is available from non-US vendors, the goal of restricting the technology is not accomplished. What does happen is that US employers are prevented from competing in the global marketplace and the US loses revenue and jobs. The placement of widely-available commercial space components on the Munitions List has left the US space industry crippled in the international market. Companies refer to US components and software as “ITAR contamination”, since if they include even a single chip, screw, or line of code from a US supplier, they are then unable to sell their satellite. Commercial space on the Munitions List is the “Buy Anywhere But American Act”.
Space Cadet wrote @ May 11th, 2011 at 11:25 am
“The placement of widely-available commercial space components on the Munitions List has left the US space industry crippled in the international market.”
Once you understand that all countries want to “steal your technology”, then it becomes easier to understand that the best way to “beat them” is to out compete them. Without a strong and vibrant export market, we will continue to lose marketshare on the global marketplace, which means that our “enemies” become stronger by just watching our silly attempts at restricting trade.
We need to come up with more common sense restrictions, and review them frequently. The unintended consequences of the current ITAR restrictions seem to be worse than doing almost nothing.
Coastal Ron wrote:
Once you understand that all countries want to “steal your technologyâ€, then it becomes easier to understand that the best way to “beat them†is to out compete them.
Let’s not overlook that American capitalists are certainly capable of stealing technology from other countries, as well as our own people.
I’m sure many of us have had to sign agreements upon employment that anything we conceive while at work automatically belongs to the employer, whether they had anything to do with it or not.