there will be an implied “or else” attached to that carrot. if the reply was “bring it”, how would they respond? since this is literally a WMD, we’ve seen that truth and legality might, at best, weigh in only after the deed had been done. i’m guessing a smear campaign to depict Stark as too dangerous and proceeding from there.
the government has little to lose over any route they take to seize the suit. any damages they incur would be passed on to the tax payers, any bad PR would be whitewashed by the next electoral cycle. Stark on the other hand, would just invent something even better and keep it a secret this time round, like every other normal superhero.
The US government does not produce WMD itself, but pays contractors to do it. If the government seized the weapon and intellectual property to build it, they would simply allow other contractors to bid on it. And note that while the weapon itself could probably be seized easily, it would not be so easy to legally seize the intellectual property to build it. Committing crime is not enough to seize the patents, copyrights, and trade secrets of an individual.
Anyway, only in fiction would someone capable of producing an Iron Man suit be unwilling to sell it the government. The government would not imply an “or else” because it would not even conceive of the possibility of refusal. In the real world, no one builds superweapons for personal use, they build them to sell to the government.
So while it can be fun playing the “what if” game, the factual answer is that anyone in the real world building a superweapon does so with intent to sell it to the government.
They can find any pretext to demand to take and examine the suit, in detail, at their facilities. At the very least, an implication that a rocket was built and launched, the possibility that the rocket used high explosives (It doesn’t? We will find out for oourselves), unlicensed aircraft flying, uninspected aircraft, no experimental aircraft license, no approved plans for said aircraft, landing at an unapproved airport, violating flying/landing over built up areas laws, etc.
When some goofball flies too close to the White House or Pentagon, do you think they pull him over and look at his license? No, the SS takes the plane and goes over it with a fine-toothed comb to be sure there was no bombs or surveillance equipment onboard…
A simple request would be met with a barrage of lawyers; but a real defence contractor would not be making test flights or testing “knock down walls” without cossing every I and dotting every T on the legalities of their actions - which would mean the defence department would have a really good idea of the technology involved ahead of time; most likely would own a shar of it already.
Where someone like Iron Man would get into trouble would be resisting the “inspection” process physically. Like the Waco nutbars, once you physically resist the police/BATF/army, the gloves come off and you will get minimal sympathy from the public.
Search for the Wired article about the government using (stealing) the underwater fiber optic connector patent. The federal government has teh right to use a design without paying royalties, one of the perks of owning the patent system.
What government agency would want the ability to splice into fiber optic cables underwater?
Fine, great. Let’s get back to the OP’s question, okay?
The situation being put forward here is not equivalent to anything that has ever happened before in the history of the world. Currently the U.S. government pays companies like GE to make, say, nuclear weapons. But GE didn’t invent nuclear weapons and then have the US bid on them; they were given contracts to build something that had been invented by the U.S. government.
In our hypothetical scenario, an individual person, Tony Stark, has, totally on his own free time, invented a weapons system that makes obsolete all the conventional weaponry in the entire world. It is certain that the U.S. government would offer him a zillion dollars for it, with the caveat that he make and possess none of his own and sell it to nobody else. If he refused, they would find a way to take it from him, just as they would have found a pretext for taking nuclear weapons away from some brilliant inventor who’d come up with them on his own in 1938. The government cannot allow a private individual to possess more military might than the actual military.
As you point out, IRL these things would have bene built to government specs anyway. But that is not the situation being proposed; Tony Stark doesn’t want the government to have these things, for a variety of personal reasons explained in the first film.
Yes, the government can use patents without paying royalties, but they don’t do that, because they want industry to keep innovating. Industry won’t bother doing that if there’s no return on their investment. So the government pays.
And the government doesn’t “steal” technology. A prototype or design is useless to the government; they’re not in the manufacturing business. The government pays contractors to make whatever is needed. And when companies bid on the government contract, the original inventor often has a huge advantage–proven expertise in the field is important.
Three-letter agencies pay for their equipment to be built just like every other part of the government.
And that’s why it’s impossible to answer the OP with anything other than “things don’t work that way”. The government doesn’t have a policy on how to deal with a rogue superweapon inventor, because that has never happened and will never happen in the foreseeable future. There’s lots of things the government might do, but we can’t factually answer what the they would do.
In the case of the underwater fiber connector, the inventor found out that the government had contracted with a third party to make and deliver the connectors without offering any payment or notification to him. Technically, they did not “steal” it, but he had no legal recourse. They used it, they paid someone else to make it and gave them blanket immunity from his lawsuit.
the question isn’t just expropriate, as in “we own it”. the question is, can the government walk in and help themselves to the suit? They should have no problem getting a warrant to examine it, in which case it disappears into the labs for years. If the unit is sufficiently dangerous, it will be declared illegal enough (like say, owning a Stinger missle) that he’ll never get the suit back and cannot make himself a legal private version ever again. (yeah, congress may have to pass a law. What are the odds they would object?)
If the argument is strictly legal, yes, the issue will go back and forth through the courts. The suit and its use probably violate enough laws the government would have no problem getting a warrant. What they would possibly lose is on taking the technology without paying; but you would not be able to keep the tech secret and out of the government’s hands.
What I said was - the government can find ANY pretext to demand an inspection. Our society today is so overregulated, just turning on the suit, let alone flight testing it, will give the government plenty of valid legal reasons to “inspect” the suit, or take it as evidence until a trial happens in a few years.
Resisting arrest is what gives the government legal right to bring out the big guns.
It’s a step at a time…
“Can we see the suit please t inspect it?”
“No? We have a warrant to inspect it under suspicion of a crime”
“Resisting the warrant? Hiding the suit? Our marshalls will arrive to seize it.”
“Destroyed the marshalls’ trucks? Call the Army.”
OTOH, there was a guy in the 1980’s, IIRC, who built a home-built Starfighter jet. He collected scrap and surplus parts, and eventually someone donated the engine. He flew it a few times before he had to eject when a warning light came on.
(Pretty much what happened to the military versions, which is why he found so much scrap and surplus).
IIRC, he mentioned setting quite a few records, including speed, because the version he built did not include armour or weapons and so was substantially lighter. So the jet was not illegal, there are lots of private jets.
Harrier VTOL - that might be something the USAF/RAF doesn’t want too many other countries poking into…