I dunno, if the people they are discriminating against are “US persons” and not “foreign persons” under ITAR, then the whole ITAR argument for discrimination, whether its direct coverage or some kind of indirect risk creating something that Tesla wants to try to argue is a bona fide occupational qualification justifying discrimination, is cut off at the root.
> SpaceX recruits and hires for a variety of positions, including welders, cooks, crane operators, baristas and dishwashers, as well as information technology specialists, software engineers, business analysts, rocket engineers and marketing professionals. The jobs at issue in the lawsuit are not limited to those that require advanced degrees.
The fact that SpaceX deals in ITAR does not prevent them from hiring refugees for roles that do not handle ITAR.
For SpaceX to internally segment ITAR from non-ITAR is a huge bureaucratic overhead for them which leads to a possibility of mistakes. Doubly so since one of their explicit concerns is having foreign agents steal their trade secrets. And therefore they have to be guarding against intentional attempts to access what your job role says you don't have access to.
Given that, it makes a lot of sense for them to simply require ITAR compliance in all roles.
I've worked in or with companies doing mixed ITAR and non-ITAR work for my whole career, they've all managed it pretty well. If you have competent HR they mark people as ITAR-eligible or not. If you have competent facilities people, they install prox card readers or cipher locks for physical access control (if it's a shared space, if you can have separate buildings may not be necessary). And if you have competent IT folks, they use standard access control mechanisms to segregate ITAR data and ensure only ITAR folks (really, this is easy because it should just be project folks) can access it.
Is it a pain? Yes. But honestly other than HR tracking ITAR/non-ITAR people it's things everyone does already. You have physical access controls to keep people out of areas that don't need to be in them, and you use digital access controls for the same in your data systems today. So one extra group has to track one extra flag (ITAR/non-ITAR) and otherwise everything works as it already works.
This conversation is sort of beside the point. SpaceX doesn't hire any non-ITAR workers, and the DOJ has no problem with that - lots of aerospace companies don't hire non-US persons for regulatory reasons. The allegation is that they excluded asylum seekers and refugees who are U.S. persons
And what would be the benefit ? Which roles in SpaceX does not require access to ITAR data ? Would the world really be that much better if SpaceX could hire refugee non-ITAR HR people or janitors ? It is simply not worth it.
What is SpaceX is worried about a lack of current internal control to segment ITAR from non-ITAR? That seems like a plausible concern on the part of SpaceX.
I think you're avoiding the question posed by GP, to be honest.
Labor laws are arbitrary legal definitions. This lawsuit is the government enforcing labor laws. Notice they are NOT suing to force SpaceX to hire people non-ITAR individuals but rather to enforce the arbitrary legal definition of a US citizen.
> For SpaceX to internally segment ITAR from non-ITAR is a huge bureaucratic overhead for them which leads to a possibility of mistakes.
They decided to become an aerospace engineering firm in the US. ITAR security is part of the cost of doing business.
If the typical e.g. janitor or cafeteria worker at SpaceX has access to ITAR, as SpaceX seem to have alleged before they got caught, then their ITAR security is pure theater.
>If the typical e.g. janitor or cafeteria worker at SpaceX has access to ITAR, as SpaceX seem to have alleged before they got caught, then their ITAR security is pure theater.
Why? And why the smarmy elitist discrimination and condescension towards janitors or cafeteria workers? Why would they not be an important part of an organization, professionals capable of getting background checks, appropriate training, and being trusted to keep their mouths shut too?
ITAR isn't about security though, at least not the way you and GP seem to be thinking. Classified information is an entirely different kettle of fish. Any American HNer can head on over to Amazon or wherever else and order a FLIR One for a few hundred bucks with free shipping. Also said FLIR One:
>"The information contained in this page pertains to products that may be subject to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) (22 C.F.R. Sections 120-130) or the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) (15 C.F.R. Sections 730-774)"
ITAR covers a massive array of information and tech available off the shelf. SpaceX definitely will be segmenting heavily stuff specifically for the DOD, but their basic rocketry isn't some classified military project. At most they have useful trade secrets they want to protect but even that probably isn't that critical. They rightfully care about having a good, open, fast startup-like development culture for the rocket work, with animated cooler discussions and napkins being scribbled on during lunch.
But access to those physical assets is probably also controlled with a list of who is allowed to access it. A list that it would be trivial to filter by ITAR status. If not, I have a quick vacation to take.
I'm not sure we're seeing this the same at all. ITAR restrictions cover a whole lot of things. I don't see why ITAR controlled assets would have a "list of who is allowed to access it". In fact, I bet that list doesn't exist. In my experience in the aerospace industry, awareness of ITAR restrictions was the personal responsibility of the employee. For most things falling under ITAR control, there was no or little protections or controls beyond this. For example: "this spreadsheet of components obviously cannot be sent to our IT subcontractors in India."
The discussion was about physical assets. I'm willing to bet areas of SpaceX with interesting physical prototypes have controlled access - and that access can be limited to US persons. If that's not the case, I plan to go on vacation to walk through SpaceX and play with their toys.
This is where I think the disconnect. ITAR includes many things much more mundane than cutting edge spacecraft prototypes. It’s still ITAR whether it’s strapped onto a prototype for the first time or on its 800th flight in production.
I think the disconnect is that I intended it more as a statement that SpaceX had physical locks (and/or some forms of access control) on their physical stuff. They have allow lists for various areas. So, at a rough level they can say ITAR hardware is in section 5, so they can only allow people in the intersection of "need section 5 access" and "US persons" in. Because the list is almost certainly computer managed.
It's kind of a joke that if they don't have locks I would play with the prototypes. Just because that's what I would seek out. But yes, ITAR can cover the boring and probably mundane as well.
Sure, but shouldn't the government design them to minimize the cost created by the interaction? It seems silly that it's illegal to discriminate against some categories of non-citizens and illegal not to discriminate against other categories of non-citizens.
> Sure, but shouldn’t the government design them to minimize the cost created by the interaction?
That’s definitely an argument Tesla might want to make to Congress and the State Department (as the relevant regulatory authority for ITAR) as to what the law and regulation should be.
“We think a different policy than that embodied in the current law would be better policy” is less useful as an argument to escape the legal consequences of violating the existing law.
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.
> 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.
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.
>You seem to be confusing ITAR compliance with some sort of security classification
This is exactly it, that may be the source of their posts? Being covered by ITAR has nothing to do with whether an American could just go mail order it online let alone chat about it. As a regular American civilian with zero government clearance of any kind, I own a bunch of ITAR controlled stuff. As a category it covers a pretty wide array of technology even when it doesn't seem to be in any way particularly sensitive. All of my suppressors for example are subject to export control, or NVG or FLIRs even when it's ancient tech everyone in the world has. Apparently so can things like optics. It wasn't that long ago that the US government tried to insist that mere encryption was a munition subject to controls!
> Overall I think this is a net win, especially because I don't think this needs to be the end of the road for human illustrators, but this will force them to adapt and bring more sensitivity to the needs of their clients.
The advantages of AI that you crow over simply can’t be met by any human professional artist. A human can’t do hundreds of revisions profitably. There’s increased “sensitivity” and then there’s needing to read the client’s mind.
If you think this isn’t a death knell for human illustrators in this particular market, you’re deluding yourself.
Your definition of the needs does not have any requirements on the fitness of the output, nor on time spent on customer side. That does not seem realistic.
Author conflates legal and ethical options for preventing copyrighted work from being used to train ML image generators.
There’s nothing legally inconsistent about passing a law saying, e.g., “ML training is not fair use”. Doing so will not even reduce existing fair use rights being exercised by actual people.
The author’s argument is that doing so is philosophically analogous to human creative processes, but those are—and I can’t underline this enough—human. And the law is not (and cannot be, should not be?) consistent in such a way.
> There’s nothing legally inconsistent about passing a law saying, e.g., “ML training is not fair use”.
Is it still fair use to take inspiration from another artist's work? How can the courts necessarily tell if the art was made using AI or if it's just someone stealing another artist's style? Theft of style isn't currently recognized under the law, but it could be.
Some variants of “theft of style” are recognized by some courts already, please see the legal literature on music copyright and the recent 7-2 SCOTUS decision on Warhol’s Prince series.
I absolutely agree that an arbitrary line can be drawn; I don't see that that line can be clear and bright enough that forms the kind of precedence that can be relied upon by folks who don't have the money to fight an uncertain battle in court.
Can you give an example of a “clear and bright” line in copyright law that does protect “folks who don’t have the money to fight an uncertain battle in court”?
For context, I’m in the process of translating a work that I know for a fact is in the public domain (sole author died 90+ years ago) and I’ve still got legal questions that I’m going to have to hire a lawyer to solve.
The Chinese have made it clear through their economic and legal policies that international collaboration can only occur on their terms and under their unilateral control. Nuts to any corporation or organization that tries to achieve equitable footing with their Chinese branch.
I don’t think she’s substantially lip-syncing (maybe here and there, but not continuously). I was at the Detroit show and she confessed to having a bit of a cold during the interim into Evermore. And indeed, she coughed and sniffled a bit during other songs it was picked up by her mic. She also got a little short of breath during heavy dance numbers.
Maybe I’m easily fooled, but if she was lip-syncing a lot I don’t think they’d leave these imperfections.
It’s the same folk-interpretation of Marxism that always goes around. Now that Marxism is dead and can’t defend itself, it’s whatever anyone wants it to be.
States that were far closer to Marxism, like the PRC during the Cultural Revolution, decimated their universities and dispersed their faculties over the countryside, or to labor camps.
This article is not on the same planet as that madness.
Now I'm seriously confused - a major criticism, by communists, of the Cultural Revolution was the blow back against all intellectuals and the destruction of the education system in the PRC. In what was was that Marxist? I mean, I know the arguments the red guard made, but there were other Marxists that disagreed. Are you just saying the red guard interpretation was the correct one?
I’m saying that on the continuum of Marxism, the PRC circa 1965 is somewhere to the middle-far-left and the article above (that OP claimed was Marxist) is all the way on the far right.
I’m not super interested in whether or not their Marxism was “authentic”, and neither is anyone who goes around, as OP did, randomly labeling things they don’t like as Marxist.
It’s not related to the article, but the UK is currently restructuring its farming subsidies to, among other things, encourage sustainable farming and mitigate food security risk.
Basically everyone is unhappy about it for some reason. Some sheep farmers were told to reduce their flock by 90% or so.
But on the other hand, the pastures they’ve traditionally used to graze can no longer sustain such flocks (although this is controversial, it seems borne out by my reading). So if they continue to consider only profit motives, the pasture will end up dead and they’ll be out of work anyway.
It’s a hard problem that ought to have been solved decades ago.
> is currently restructuring its farming subsidies to, among other things, encourage sustainable farming and mitigate food security risk ... reduce their flock by 90% or so
That seems reasonable to me. The UK has experienced heavy deforestation and holds one of the highest percentages of land dedicated to animal farming, if I recall correctly. Animal ag is a very inefficient and polluting way to feed the population.
> is currently restructuring its farming subsidies to, among other things, encourage sustainable farming and mitigate food security risk
In my opinion, the best approach would be to reforest or rewild those pastures. After all, those pastures were mostly forests in the past. This protect biodiversity and wildlife, improve local microclimates, and help the country achieve its climate goals. Although grazing is sometimes promoted as a regenerative technique, scientific evidence suggests otherwise.
A potential solution could involve government subsidies for afforesting those pastures, similar to what New Zealand is doing.
Promotion of afforestation in New Zealand’s marginal agricultural lands through payments for environmental services
"We find that even without PES, 56% of these agricultural lands present lower economic returns than forestry. When PES are considered, results suggest that, depending on the PES schemes and carbon prices, 77–100% of the low-productivity grassland areas could financially benefit from afforestation."
> It’s a hard problem that ought to have been solved decades ago.
I completely agree. Good to see those first early-but-late birds, though.
Regardless, the ITAR issue is secondary; they hire for roles that do not touch ITAR.