I’m no fan of Musk, not by a long shot. Working in the aerospace industry, the vast majority of us have an extreme dislike of the guy, especially for stealing credit.
But what SpaceX does for hiring is correct. This wasn’t them arbitrarily deciding things, pretty much every aerospace company that does work with ITAR or EAR material gets told that American citizenship is required if the person will be anywhere near that kind of material. Even if your job function isn’t related, if there’s a chance you can see it you need to be able to legally do so.
Seems strange for the DoJ to go after just SpaceX in this one since I know LHM, Boeing, NG, Raytheon, etc, if you’re in a facility that has ITAR/EAR stuff you need to be a citizen.
Does ITAR apply when it’s independently developed product for commercial use like SpaceX, as opposed to some form of government owned IP with those other companies?
I’m sure there’s differences. I would think SpaceX has wayyy less export controlled info, so hiring foreign nationals shouldn’t be a deal breaker.
From briefly having worked on a project where this was a relevant issue, and I had to throw good people of foreign nationality off the team due to higher up NASA decisions: ITAR also becomes relevant when you want to access data and hardware that is ITAR regulated for use in your mission. This is the case for all space missions – even for SpaceX, who likes to do things in-house – since the advanced electronics, alloys, etc. will come from elsewhere and fall under regulation.
Is there a specific law for this?
It’s not one specific law, it’s a whole ton of them. ITAR (International Trade in Arms Regulations) is the keyword to use if you wanna look into it.
On a completely unrelated note, does your username have a fishing or musical origin?
The b is a typo.
Lol
Music
Then we’re cut from the same cloth friend :)