| It looks like SpaceX may have messed up in terms of how only some, but not all, refugees/asylees are barred by ITAR. Reading deeper into 22 CFR § 120.62 [0] and linked regs shows a complex situation, but that's no excuse for SpaceX at this point who are plenty big enough to have good lawyers on this. But that is separate from your assertion about those who are restricted by ITAR: >The fact that SpaceX deals in ITAR does not prevent them from hiring refugees for roles that do not handle ITAR. This is way too casual a statement. At a company like that there won't necessarily be anything that doesn't potentially involve ITAR short of serious company reorganization, which is serious-business regulation and actively enforced. To take a simplistic example, even janitors might potentially have access to ITAR controlled materials if engineers threw them out into a bin bound for a shredder/incinerator and janitorial staff are trained and trusted parts of the disposal chain (which they should be!). Anyone might be able to overhear water cooler conversations. Etc. At this point SpaceX might have some roles that can be segmented safely, completely firewalled from the rest of the organization. Tier 1 Starlink customer support perhaps. But it's not trivial when dealing with serious restricted tech to just say "oh these roles do not handle ITAR", because it's not about handling. Read "§ 120.56 Release" [1]: (a) Release. Technical data is released through:
(1) Visual or other inspection by foreign persons of a defense article that reveals technical data to a foreign person;
(2) Oral or written exchanges with foreign persons of technical data in the United States or abroad;
(3) The use of access information to cause or enable a foreign person, including yourself, to access, view, or possess unencrypted technical data; or
(4) The use of access information to cause technical data outside of the United States to be in unencrypted form.
It's quite broad.So yes, if SpaceX incorrectly excluded a group of people not covered by ITAR, they screwed up and will likely face some sort of fines/consent decree. But that doesn't mean it's trivial to then go and hire people who are covered by ITAR. ---- 0: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/22/120.62 1: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-22/chapter-I/subchapter-M... |
As I mention elsewhere in this thread, if this is really how SpaceX operates then they’re already in (ethical, if not legal) violation of their duty to protect ITAR from dissemination. ITAR documents should never just be sitting in an unsealed bin waiting for disposal. Employees shouldn’t casually be discussing ITAR around the water cooler.
Assuming everyone around you is permitted to handle ITAR is a recipe for disaster.