111–120 of 147 posts
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- "No one harmed individual is suing SpaceX." I think it is right and proper that low-income victims of labor law crimes don't need to be able to afford attorneys to resolve grievances, and that there exist public institutions that litigate on their behalf, for free.
The DoJ should not be representing non-citizens against citizens. This is not in dispute.
Meanwhile 'Uncle Sam' will also not let SpaceX hire non-citizen PhDs from US universities. Sometimes it feels like various branches of the US government are set up to sabotage each other.
> Sometimes it feels like various branches of the US government are set up to sabotage each other. Not sabotage each other, but sabotage people they no longer like.
In this case though, Spacex is enormously important to US national security and NASA.
It's effectively NASA skunkworks.
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I am not saying the government has made a technical mistake, I'm saying the regulation is nonsense. Sneaking in spies as refugees is a fairly common strategy.
> Sneaking in spies as refugees is a fairly common strategy. Is it really? Are there any examples we can point to? Refugees are often dispossessed and struggling to build a new life. I guess if you want your spies to gather intelligence on what it's like to drive a cab or bus tables in your geopolitical adversaries, then it might be a great cover identity.
https://theprint.in/defence/china-luring-tibetan-refugees-in...
https://safeguarddefenders.com/en/blog/tibetan-refugee-who-t...
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2018/2/26/are-eritrea-gov...
https://www.nytimes.com/1960/04/22/archives/refugee-held-as-...
https://www.tibetanjournal.com/india-arrests-suspected-chine...
https://apnews.com/article/travel-sports-crime-figure-skatin...
https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/544604/Description
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11611165/Chinese-sp...
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/us-government-turned-...
https://www.reuters.com/world/aid-workers-face-trial-greece-...
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Do you think rocket scientists are just… immune to war?
I think that rocket scientists are usually cherished by totalitarian regimes, not persecuted.
https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/scientist-refugees-and-manhatt...
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I’d absolutely plant cab drivers to spy on my geopolitical adversaries. People who have a plausible explanation to be in and around hotels, airports, industrial areas, and a legitimate reason talk to lots of different people would seem like quite good candidates for spying. Maybe a bit too obvious.
Countries indeed used cab drivers as spies, ie USSR
https://eng.lsm.lv/article/society/crime/18.08.2023-suspecte...
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It’s not on their dime. If they are housing sensitive material to keep away they got an extremely lucrative contract that is likely extremely bloated in their favor.
Or they could get that extremely lucrative contract AND not have to deal with all the overhead and hassle that results from hiring non-green card holders. If you could have a rule that tremendously simplifies your hiring process and saves you a lot of headache in the future it makes sense from business perspective, especially when there’s already a lot of grey area.
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I'm not really sure what you're trying to communicate here. If this is the requirement for the type of business someone ones, it's expected they are following the law, and corrected when they are not. Ignorance might grant some clemency, but you still need to follow it. My above post is not commenting on the validity of the regulations surrounding ITAR, SpaceX, etc, it was responding to the implication that this effo…
Yes it is extremely difficult and expensive but thats besides the point, what I'm getting at here is its unworkable/unfeasible. You will inevitably break ITAR, this is why most companies under ITAR (& gov agencies like NASA: https://www.nasa.gov/careers/working-with-nasa ) does exactly what SpaceX is being prosecuted (persecuted) for. This is a cut and dry case of political persecution. Not only was this practice not…
NASA employees are in civil service, not the private sector; there are different rules.
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Yeah, a refugee who is also a highly qualified rocket scientist should raise some healthy suspicion at the least.
Von Braun was a Nazi spy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun#Religious_co...
> spying
To whom do you think he was sending his coded messages? A secret nazi base under Antarctica? The fuhrer was dead, Germany was occupied and divided. Get real.
Reaction I: This story is only newsworthy "because SpaceX". Reaction II: The statements by the DoJ ("can't discriminate against") and Elan ("at least a green card to be hired") may both be correct...from their respective PoV's: The DoJ is technically right on the law. Vs. Elan knows that any asylees or refugees he hires will, over time, be 100X the legal and security grief that SpaceX has with green cards and citizen…
Elan knows that any asylees or refugees he hires will, over time, be 100X the legal and security grief that SpaceX has with green cards and citizens Hiring managers who wish to discriminate against physically disabled applicants (and women!) often use the same flawed reasoning. I am glad those laws exist to protect those groups!
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>> The last option is more rare because smart people are less susceptible to propaganda This is actually bullshit, you can easily manipulate smart person, by appealing to their perceived smartness :) Anyway, just because someone is smart does not mean that they are also highly moral. It's often like: give a person opportunity for professional growth ("you'll be working on our moon landing program") and they will sell…
It does not mean they are moral, it means it's more likely they are moral because they know more (know to check their sources, follow the money, less susceptible to conspiracy theories etc) and also they due to being smart don't need to worry as much about financial security or where their next meal comes from and can worry about higher things Working on lunar landing is great but when you have the smarts to see that…
Von Braun was happy to use jewish slave labor to develop his rockets. He thought that humanity going to space was important enough to justify that.