I thing the executives are getting off too easy.
Posted on 03/27/2007 8:24:54 AM PDT by joinedafterattack
NBC News has learned that the Justice Department on Tuesday will announce a $100 million fine against defense contractor ITT Corp (ITT) for allowing China to obtain the design for the latest generation of night vision goggles. US. officials charge that in order to save money, ITT U.S. to Fine ITT For Allowing China to Obtain Night Vision Goggles outsourced some of the manufacturing to a company in Singapore. That company, in turn, subcontracted some of the work to companies in China. "They have all our technology now," a law enforcement official told NBC News. Full article here: http://www.cnbc.com/id/17757567
The dangers of outsourcing.
Poor Taiwan.
Why do we capitalists continue to sell that rope?...JJ61
Could someone please tell me again the value of outsourcing our latest defense technology?
This stuff drives me up a wall, now we may have to pay to design a whole new generation of NVD goggles just so ITT can save few bucks.
The capitalists are just looking to make a buck. The Chicoms are actively working to subvert the process.
The upshot?
The commies get the current "next gen" night vision technology.
The US gets a new "next gen" that's even better.
The Taiwanese get screwed.
Fines become a cost of doing business. To get a company's attention, individual executives need to be charged or the company broken up or bankrupted.
You don't need to write them. Just send a letter to Bill Clinton and Al Gore, thanking them for opening the door for China.
One man is paying attention to this problem!!!
Duncan Hunter:
"Now, if you want to find where our Arsenal of Democracy has gone, you must look in places like Korea, France and, perhaps more ominously, China.
China is cheating on trade. They are piling up over 200 billion U.S. dollars each year as a result and they are buying ships, planes and missiles with American trade dollars."
"It's not in our interest to have a one-way trade street with China that sends billions of surplus dollars to China every year that they use to buy military equipment we may face one day on the battlefield," he said.
" Well, whichever side of this debate one is on, everyone here has to concede American dollars are arming Communist China today. Let us look at what they have done with the $350 billion that they have amassed in trade surplus over the last 8 years. The Sovrenny class missile destroyers, straight from the Russians, designed for one purpose, to kill American aircraft carriers, were purchased with American trade dollars. The SU-27 fighter aircraft, high performance aircraft, capable of effective warfare against America's top line fighters, were purchased with American trade dollars. On top of that, kilo class submarines, AWACS aircraft, air-to-air refueling capability, sophisticated communications equipment, all purchased with American trade dollars, and compounding the danger, China's own sales to nations like Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria and North Korea of components for weapons of mass destruction."
"America is handcuffed by unfair trade deals, Hunter said. Giving an example, Hunter said if a product cost $100 to produce in China, the Chinese government will subsidize the business $17. The Chinese are also devaluing their currency, which makes their goods less expensive."
"We're down to one-sies and two-sies on critical aspects of the defense industrial base. This is a security problem! I have two reasons for wanting to maintain a strong industrial base in this country. Number one, good high-paying jobs for our people and good profits for our businesses so they can continue to make capital investment and, secondly, national security. It could get to the point where it is primarily a national security problem." (On China.)
"This testimony is very disturbing," said Hunter. "A security guard in any local department store would be fired for the lack of responsibility demonstrated at Los Alamos. DOE Secretary Bill Richardson recently made the claim that people can sleep well knowing our secrets are safe. How can this be when vaults containing our nuclear secrets are being left unattended, without cameras or personal identification devices, while custodians are taking lunch? How can the administration explain leaving an identified spy at his position for over a year because nobody remembered to have him removed? The ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, Congressman Ike Skelton, characterized the situation best when he referred to the DOE as the Keystone Kops."
I don't think that it does our forces any good to go to a new generation design. The reason NVGs are a force multiplier is that the enemy does not have them. The ones we have now a so good that there isn't much more that can be done for a new generation to overcome the enemy's acquisition of the technology.
At least we know that with an army the size of the chicom's that current Generation NVGs won't be as widely used as they are with our forces, it's something but it isn't much.
Sad isn't it?
bump!
There's plenty of folks on FR that imagine the only thing that matters is the cost of products, i.e., where or how they're made matter not at all...
For instance the only plant in the world which manufactures the guidance gyros for America's cruise missiles is _China_. Somebody is way lost and the predators are ready to gobble them up.
Go after individual executives.
Good point, and I fully agree with this.
Just read an article last night that a new company is working on the next generation NVE: full, accurate color.
They'll be expensive as heck at first but oh so tactically superior.
Go after individual executives.
Indeed, one has to wonder if the Rosenbergs would have been prosecuted today.
There will not be a single free trade cheerleader that will dare have the intellectual honesty to defend their advocacy for outsourcing.
How does one chart defense tech stealing in dollars anyway?
This is why conscious-free trade is a bad idea. Especially if you sell high technology to a hostile nation.
I thing the executives are getting off too easy.
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