Arms Export Control Act

The hope was twofold, to cultivate supposed moderates inside the Islamic Republic and to pressure Iran's allies in Lebanon to free American hostages held by Hezbollah-linked kidnappers.

The sales violated the Arms Export Control Act and contradicted Reagan's own stated refusal to deal with state sponsors of terror.

The results were meager.

A few hostages were released, but new ones were seized, leaving the net counts roughly unchanged.

It also, it also kind of, it also kind of positioned the US to deny, you know, gave him deniability.

Routing the weapons through Israel let the U.S. evade its own laws and policies while keeping Reagan's fingerprints off the shipments.

A direct U.S. sale to Iran would have openly violated the arms embargo and the Arms Export Control Act and shredded the stated policy of never arming terrorism sponsors.

The arrangement, Israel ships U.S.-made missiles from its own stockpile to Iran and the U.S. replenishes Israel's inventory afterwards.

Pretty Good Privacy or PGP is a cryptographic software application that was invented by Phil Zimmerman in 1991 as a way to bring strong encryption to ordinary email users.

at a time when the US government heavily restricted civilian access to strong cryptography, and it became famous because Zimmerman distributed it for free on the internet before the US government had officially allowed strong encryption for civilian use, which made him a controversial figure and led to criminal investigation under the Arms Export Control Act since strong encryption was classified as a munition.

though he was ultimately not prosecuted because the government decided that prosecuting him would create too much public attention to the issue of encryption itself and would only make the technology more popular.

PGP uses a hybrid encryption system that combines the strengths of symmetric and asymmetric encryption.

Well, you're not going to find that step anywhere in the CMMC program or in the NIST controls because it doesn't come from there.

The ITAR empowered official, which is somebody, if you are ITAR certified company, if you perform ITAR work, you should have an ITAR empowered official, should have a letter like this one, right? And that's all governed by the Arms Export Control Act and your National Traffic and Arms Regulation, right? It has nothing to do with CUI, but ITAR data is a kind of CUI, right? So you gotta be careful not to build a program that just says, okay, well, I'm worried about CUI release, but hasn't taken into account the other regulations you must abide by this goes back with what i'm talking about it being an operational puzzle and not necessarily an i.t puzzle another good example that we deal with here is naval nuclear repulsion information an npi is a type of cui straight up and our system is fully certified and assessed to be able to handle cui with no problem however NNPI is not governed, and the way you handle NNPI, even though it is CUI, is not governed by NIST 800-171.

It's governed by Op Navins 9210, which says that you have to have an authorized IT system through an entirely different program to have NNPI.

And this is all governed under the Atomic Energy Act.

So we suggest strengthening ethics rules, so for example, by expanding the rules to include, uh, executive branch officials' adult children.

So we suggest subjecting particular products, so things like high-end semiconductors, to a congressional notification regime, so something like the Arms Export Control Act.

Ashley mentioned, you know, the US military exports have been used as bargaining leverage before, but in a statutory framework.

That's the Arms Export Control Act.

And I think our, our single biggest recommendation is, again, to ban the pay-to-play deals.

So there are already constitutional and statutory notification regimes for, you know, certain things, but here, if you just ban the exports, that is, that is a clear, uh, step Congress could take.

In December, the Biden administration notified Congress of proposed sales to Israel of tank cartridges, one hundred and six point five million dollars on December eighth, and artillery shells, one hundred and forty-seven point five million dollars on December twenty-ninth.

In both instances, the administration said it was invoking emergency authorities codified in the Arms Export Control Act, twenty two USC two seven seven six.

That allow the president to waive congressional review of an arms sale if the president states in a formal notification to Congress that, quote, an emergency exists, end quote, requiring an immediate sale, quote, in the national security interests of the United States, end quote.

According to the Department of Defense, DOD, both sales will be from US Army inventory or US Army stock.