THE GLOBAL IMPACT OF ITAR ON THE FOR-PROFIT AND NON-PROFIT SPACE COMMUNITIES

摘要

Since its inception in 1976, the International Traffic in Arms Regulations' (ITAR) content and implementation has evolved in response to changing international relations, political climates and security requirements. In 1998, U.S. lawmakers responded to an increased technology transfer threat by placing all satellite technologies under the jurisdiction of ITAR. To this day, satellite technology remains a tightly controlled, sensitive item on the U.S. Munitions List, a classification that has significantly impacted the U.S.'s ability to collaborate and communicate with the international space community. In this paper, we will describe the evolution of export control as applied to satellite technology, use this historic context to illustrate ITAR's impacts on both the domestic U.S. and international space communities, and present recommendations for a future ITAR reform that would enable the U.S. to participate more actively and collaboratively in a global context. In this work, we consider the impact of ITAR policies on two different groups: the for-profit and non-profit space communities. In the for-profit community, data from commercial satellite providers exists to document the U.S. commercial satellite industry's loss of global market share since 1998. However, the data available are not sufficient to conclusively determine whether this loss of market share should be attributed to ITAR or to an increasingly competitive international market. Through a comparison of U.S. and international commercial satellite technologies, we assess whether ITAR is hindering the U.S's ability to compete in an international marketplace and to enhance its domestic products through increased collaboration with international firms. In the non-profit space community, ITAR restricts the ability of international students and researchers to collaborate with their U.S. colleagues. Broad interpretation of ITAR applicability and the placement of compliance burden on the technology creator lead to a constrained environment for intellectual collaboration. We show how ITAR restriction affects hiring practices, contracting, foreign collaboration opportunities, the type of research that can be conducted, and the research process within the non-profit community. Through combined analyses of ITAR's impacts within the non-profit and for-profit space communities, we provide detailed assessments of the policy's effectiveness on a global scale. We conclude by deriving five specific policy recommendations – Reclassification and Deregulation, Capability-Based Licensing, Project-Specific Licensing, Trusted Partner Export, and Eliminating ITAR – and evaluating the impact of each on a defined set of stakeholder values. We conclude that deregulating key technologies from the ITAR would be the best near-term option that will enable the U.S. to become a more active and collaborative participant in the global space community.