hi everyone this is charles hoskinson broadcasting live from warm sunny colorado i'm right now live in the iohk bunker right now we're doing construction in the office and so i'm in one of the sub offices because i've been kicked out of even the main areas so i don't even have my eagle i just have a spare room that we use to store stuff but there's an unlimited supply of good coffee because i'm right next to the coffee machine how about that i really wanted to talk about something today that was just so bizarrely out there that i could not resist but make a video so i i'm kind of working my way through the news of the day while waiting for another meeting and i came across my desk that the department of justice is examining spacex's hiring practices for having a bias towards hiring american citizens as an international employer i i figured i should comment on this first off spacex as the company they don't make potato chips they make rockets and not just any kind of rockets the kind of rockets that can go deep into space that type of technical acumen and know-how is considered an advanced weapon system under us and international law the export of that knowledge and those materials that know how is tightly regulated and it is illegal for spacex to go and just arbitrarily sell it or export it okay so second spacex has deep relationships with both nasa and the us air force and actually does get paid to launch spy satellites which means that at least some cohort of people within spacex must hold top secret clearances and guess what you have to be a citizen for that uh they don't generally hand those out to people that weren't born here or got a citizenship here it's very uncommon almost unheard of and then the other thing is that there's a huge amount of industrial espionage china for example and russia they actively try to recruit people to join weapons contractors and aerospace companies to steal information so of course there's a bias towards u.s citizens in that particular case in permanent residence green hardcore green card holders first because of regulation it's illegal not to and second because of common sense and third because the nature of the work environment and the career progression of people especially if they're excluded from work because they can't get the requisite clearances to do that work and then also it's not a good idea for weapon systems that right now are used for peace and peaceful space exploration but also could be used for other nations for icbms to be exported from the united states those are tightly regulated controlled things like designs for breeder reactors come on guys common sense now i'm an international employer io global we have people in georgia we have people in mongolia we have people in africa in places like ethiopia and so forth we have people in uk and here's what happens when i talk to a government like the government of georgia or the government of ethiopia and we talk about a government contract they always ask how many people in our country are you going to hire to make this happen they're fighting for their people in switzerland for example you can't just go and set up a company you have to have some form of swiss nexus some swiss citizen or a permanent resident who's attached to that company and there's an expectation that you hire swiss people for your company but apparently in the united states this department of justice wants to say that despite the fact that your company is doing secret work for our government that requires the utmost vetting and trust you should not have a bias between citizens and non-citizens and your point is not as an american company operating in america to create jobs for american citizens that's now illegal under this regime i'm just blown away absolutely blown away it's not how it works in any other country in the world when i do business in those countries the last thing in the world they want me to do is create jobs for americans in georgia they want to create jobs for georgian citizens and when i do business in ethiopia the last thing in the world they want me to do is create jobs for americans they want me to create jobs for ethiopian citizens because that's what governments do they try to take care of their people and apparently our government has the opposite policy and this is just unbelievable to me and it's just extraordinary in every aspect and dimension from uh weapon secrecy to export controls and guidelines to standard practices and security clearances to just common [ __ ] sense and also what does it say apparently we have to vet the entire world if they're here or not citizen or not before every job that we have and if not that's not considered equity that's the regime's view of these things crazy absolutely crazy so crazy my mind is so blown from this that i have to do a five-minute rant on twitter and so forth like all the other people um and i guess the broader point of this is that you know in a democratic system a republic you have to express your discontent when you see things that are crazy and shake the tree a little bit because usually if enough people do that the bureaucracy backs off it's when we stay silent when we see crazy things happening uh that the bureaucracy gets away with a lot of nasty things and i get a feeling we're very early in this relationship we only recently started dating the the writing with bryden crowd that there's going to be a lot more of this coming down the pipe not just in the aerospace industry with spacex but in the cryptocurrency business my industry and many others i'd like my country to stay competitive and i'm a little worried that regulation tax law may not make that happen and it may create more problems than good and i'm just blown away by an investigation to unfair hiring practices to a us rocket manufacturer for having a bias towards u.s citizens yeah when i was growing up we call that a patriotic company you know we used to yell at companies for outsourcing jobs and in every country i do business and they sure as hell want me to hire people there create substance there create a business there pay taxes there and hire people who are citizens of their countries i guess that's not the standard anymore in the united states all right good to know alright cheers
