Although I didn’t see the movie, I read about it, looking up spoilers and such, and I have a question about something if Tony Stark and the Iron Man suit were real.
OK, say in reality there was a Tony Stark who built an Iron Man suit. Would there be a congressional hearing about whether or not take Stark’s invention? In reality, wouldn’t the military just send in some troops, maybe roll a tank or two, and say that in the name of national defense they were taking over?
I’ve always been under the impression that if somebody came up with a powerful weapon, or something that could be used as a weapon, that the military would simply take it. Am I right or am I mistaken?
Congressional committees can hold hearings about whatever they want, or not, it’s up to them.
If the military were to seize a powerful weapon developed by a billionaire playboy, they would have to do so under some sort of legal framework. The military can’t legally act in a law-enforcement capacity within the US without authorization from Congress. Even then, you’d still need some sort of statute that gives some federal agency power to arbitrarily seize new inventions in the name of national security. (There very may well be such statutes, I have no idea.)
In that case, you could simply ask the guy to turn it over. If they refuse, you get a warrant or executive order to seize it, citing the statute in question. Then you send in the guys with big guns to get it.
This process is largely simplified in you live in a dictatorship. Or a comic book movie.
In real life, the stockholders at Stark Industries (and Wayne tech for that matter) would demand an audit as too how Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne was spending the money, and vote to start selling the tech to the highest bidder.
And if Tony or Bruce was the sole stockholder they would run out of money pretty fast to support their hobby.
For a major contractor like Stark Industries, Congress, DoD, and possibly DoJ are going to want to know whether any of the technology that went into that suit was developed using federal funds.
Yea, but still for Tony Stark to fund the Avengers even his deep pockets are not deep enough.
I also suspect the IRS would find an interest to see if Stark is funneling money any place else.
And if he files any patents, his competitors would quickly find a way to make their own copies of the technology. And if he does not file patents how does Tony prevent the DOD form reverse engineering the suit?
What stockholders? Something that’s come up, at least for Stark, is that he owns the place. He’s not the “major stockholder” or the “CEO”, he owns it stock, lock, barrel and laboratories. The firm is big enough that the money he diverts to the hobby is a drop in a bucket (when the plot doesn’t call for a hostile OPA by SHIELD).
In the first movie, doesn’t Stane tell Stark that the Board of Directors is forcing him out? Not something you’d expect if he’s the sole owner. I have no idea what the deal is in the comics though.
And the DoD can classify as “Secret” or “Top Secret” your research/invention without your consent or control, whether or not you were working for them at the time. They’re supposed to reimburse you for lost revenue, but from what I was told by a guy who it happened to, it’s very difficult to get them to pay up. There’s an obvious difference between a postdoc doing crypto research and a billionaire defense contractor though.
If we’re literally talking about a weapon on the scope of the Iron Man suit, then it should be obvious that sending in “some troops and maybe a tank or two” is not an option. Either he willingly gives up the suit, in which case the troops and tanks are unnecessary, or he’s not willing, in which case you’re just throwing away money.
But then from a legal standpoint, isn’t there something forbidding civilians from acquiring military technology? I remember this came up back in the day when some kid earned enough pepsi points to get a harrier, as per their commercial.
Well, presumably weapons contractors have some sort of ability to possess military tech, since it would be hard for them to work if they couldn’t keep proto-types and the like. So I’d fanwank the suit legally belongs to Stark Industries, and Tony just keeps it in his house on their behalf.
I don’t know about the law, which I’m sure exists, but in that case I believe it was a group of college students who saved up only to be told that the Harrier really wasn’t being offered as a prize. It was just a joke.
I don’t know if they’d send in the troops, but they’d certainly be interested enough to ahem lean on the inventor. Look at how interested the US government was in PGP:
My google-fu is weak today (damn the credit crisis for filling the internet with glurge stories about “sub-prime numbers”), but I believe* one of the govt agencies (NSA, probably) classifies large prime numbers as “ordnance” and offered/offer rewards for anyone who finds one.
I.e. I overheard a rumour that there was a story to that effect that someone once spoke to someone who told them that they… DYOR
In the movies, remember that Stark builds his Iron Man suits completely without using his corporate resources. That was totally his personal time, effort, and money. As such, the company doesn’t have any legal claim. Thw worst they could claim was that, in another country, in a situation where law didn’t apply, a prototype was constructed which may have included some Stark Industries components. That’s a thin legal leg to stand on.
Likewise, the military didn’t really have any elgal way to take Iron Man’s stuff. The DoJ might have prosecuted him for “waging war” on his own enterprise (the first and second movies imply he’s taking out various bad guys in his impregnable butt-kicking super-suit). However, it’s hard to prosecute a guy for “waging war” by himself against the scum of humanity. Even with that, however, the suits would remain his personal property and would presumably have to remain in the custody of legal officials as evidence. It would be… politically dangerous to push Stark too far and even more dangerous to try and nab the suits without permission. That’s why
Rhodey gets pushed too far and takes one, but even then Tony basically set the whole thing up and deliberately made it happen, even if he didn’t want to admit it.
Another aspect to this discussion is that Stark industries seems to be a large multibillion defense contractor, equivalent to Boeing or Lockheed Martin. Unless the activity is clearly illegal, there would probably be a protracted legal dispute before anything like a seizure would occur.
DYOR