There’s a similar issue in the UK now: turns out a bunch of retired RAF pilots have taken lucrative training contracts with the China’s Air Force.
The main focus of outrage is around national security, as China are very definitely not an ally and shouldn’t be being given insights into NATO doctrine but! they are also a genocidal dictatorship whose interest in air power is not purely defensive so… this is bad and should be stopped.
The OP sounds like a good idea in principle, but where do you draw the line? The UK has been mentioned, do they count as tyrants? Julian Assange may have a different opinion than many in the USA. Who in turn did not treat Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden much better. But the tyranny in the UK goes much further and deeper than single whistleblower punishment. The Guardian complains about the new protest laws, police laws and the such in here. Yeah, I know, ‘Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati’.
Which brings me to the real problem I see in the OP’s suggestion: No need to look abroad. What would the US Military Personnel be supposed to do in the unlikely (cough…) case of a tyrant becoming President of the USA? Wait a moment, come to think of it, some do claim that this is already the case, with this Biden usurper in the White House, while others fear a Former Guy may become the New Guy Again! If I understand it correctly, the Second Amendment does not include the military personnel, it refers to an independent militia! What would your suggestion be then?
Ah, yes, and don’t get me started about Saudi Arabia. Or the USA’s support for the Taliban, Iran, the domino theory, all those South American dictators and the such, I know it is such a long time ago that it does no longer count as true, but still. The role of the military is to repress the enemies of the government, and if necessary, kill them. All over the world. I see no American exceptionalism here.
Have you been on this board.
The flip side is that the UK will gain an invaluable insight into an enemy Air Force’s operations. Plus, lots of former pilots keep perishable skills intact that they can be recalled when needed.
In fact when this came out, I thought the Chinese were being the stupid ones.
Why should the UK mind
So? If their skills are valuable in Saudi Arabia, why not, say, Egypt? Or Ukraine? Or Japan?
Do you think these retired RAF pilots are coming back to the UK to debrief? Why would they do that?
Because KSA is hiring.
Same thing with the Chinese semi-conductor industry - they are hiring too. But, as of less than two weeks ago, it’s illegal for an American to work for them.
The same process can be applied here.
To tell you the truth, I’d be fine with drawing a line as thick and heavy as “no work overseas, no work for foreign governments.” And if there is a workaround to that… go ahead and outlaw that workaround too.
Again, none of these retirees is (or should be, anyway) strapped for cash. One of the reasons military retirement is supposed to be so generous (or so they tell me) is precisely that military service tends to lead to forced unemployment around middle age, with skills that are allegedly of minimal use in the civil sector.
If nothing else, we might consider making receipt of the US military retirement pay conditional on not working for foreign governments. A fairly minor trade compared to citizenship itself for private individuals.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think lots of servicemembers - maybe most of them - don’t stick around long enough to earn retirement pay. They serve three or four years, and then move on with their lives. Should people like that be prohibited from ever working abroad?
Who’s suggesting any such thing?
There are some frustrating aspects to the way this thread has developed:
If I’m paying for someone go gain expertise in military skills, I’d just as soon not see those skills purchased by a tyrant. This is hardly a big ask.
Military skills are different from, say, culinary skills, inasmuch as they involve how to kill people. While those skills can be helpful in the defense of a democracy, they’re exceptionally dangerous in the hands of a tyrant.
Sorry - quote mishap. I was replying to @ASL_v2.0 who had, in fact, suggested such a thing.
I said retirees. I meant retirees. Which, by the way, the WaPo article itself is largely about: a limited number of retirees with a very narrow set of skills and knowledge base not common to most former service members. Rest assured, I know the difference and I understand the nuances of military separation vs. military retirement.
To be clear, yes, I would be fine with a ridiculously broad and restrictive rule applicable to retirees at a minimum. To the extent that anything but a ridiculously broad and restrictive rule could be easily worked around (such as by signing up to work for a US company that merely “contracts” itself out to work overseas) I think the danger of military retirees selling their access to and influence with still-serving military leaders, in addition to their own personal knowledge of US military doctrine, to potential adversaries or even just all-around unsavory regimes is sufficiently real as to warrant such an approach.
First reign in the retirees (and particularly retired flag and general officers), and then maybe we can stop and ponder over whether some random former army sergeant working as a security contractor in Saudi Arabia is worth passing legislation over.
How are these former military personnel not violating ITAR restrictions? Talking to foreigners about many things is illegal.
Does ITAR govern working as “consultant” offering “advice” of a “totally not classified, wink, wink” nature, or does it govern technology?
It’s possible my company’s lawyers are extra-cautious, but it covers everything that is used by the military: hardware, software, doctrine, training, repair, etc. I’m not sure what advice military personnel could give that’s not covered by it. Probably the only legal use of former U.S. military personnel would be to lobby the government, which has its own set of regulations.
Fair–I missed that.
Thing is, using US tax dollars to train people who then go on to use their training to help tyrants kill their citizens is a bad thing. As I read ASL, they’re suggesting that the harm done to service-members who innocently want to work overseas is less than the harm done by the malefactors, and that if we can’t otherwise prevent the malefactors from malevolent behavior, that restriction is a price worth paying. Is that a fair paraphrase, @ASL_v2.0 ?
I’d much rather have a more finely-worded rule, but I’d rather have an overreaching rule in this case than an underreaching one.
If there’s a problem with pay for service-members, let’s fix that. Let’s not consider it fixed by allowing them to sell their services to tyrants.
It seems the easier thing to do would be to have a list of countries that ex-military cannot work for while retaining their citizenship.
When we could have arguments about what countries should be on that list, but that’s more productive than whether there should be a list at all.
Wouldn’t the easiest thing to do be to enforce the laws already on the books, and to stop rubber-stamping applications?
Pretty sure that is unconstitutional as per Afroyim v. Rusk.