Wow, there is a ton of confusion in these comments about U.S. export law, and what this suit is about. U.S. export control law is intended to prevent technolog

Wow, there is a ton of confusion in these comments about U.S. export law, and what this suit is about. U.S. export control law is intended to prevent technologies that have military significance from spreading beyond the U.S. There are two relevant regimes: Export Administration Regulations (EAR), administered by the Department of Commerce, and International Traffic in Arms regulation (ITAR), which is administered by the Department of State. ITAR regulates weapons and weapon-adjacent technologies, EAR regulates a much larger set of technologies with military significance. The provision of these export control laws that's relevant here is that U.S. companies can only allow "U.S. Persons" to access export-controlled technology. A "U.S. Person" is a technical term that currently includes four categories: U.S. Citizens, U.S. permanent residents (green card holders), asylum seekers, and refugees. Anyone not in these categories can only access export-controlled technology with a waiver. SpaceX, like many aerospace companies, deals with ITAR-regulated technology. (A rocket is the same thing as a missile, except for the bomb on the end). So, they hire only U.S. Persons. This is legal and quite common in the aerospace industry. It sucks for international engineers (there are so many amazing Iranian RF engineers ugh), but it's much easier to not need internal ITAR controls. The DOJ is alleging that SpaceX hired only the first two types of U.S. persons, and excluded asylum seekers and refugees, even though they're treated identically by export control law. Which, honestly, is a really common misunderstanding in the industry (and in these comments too). People have a sense of "ITAR is strict" and think that only U.S. citizens are allowed, and they forget about the other three categories. SpaceX is definitely wrong - they unlawfully discriminated against candidates based on national origin and citizenship. The DOJ is definitely right, and I have to assume SpaceX will settle rather than contesting the suit. It is possible that SpaceX deliberately discriminated against refugees and asylum seekers. But I suspect what happened is that they misunderstood export control law early on in the company's history, and their HR/Legal for whatever reason did not correct the wrong claims about export control law. (Though it is odd that the DOJ alleges discrimination in 2018-2020, SpaceX was a huge company at that point and should have clearly understood export control law). Source: A lot of export control briefings during onboarding at companies, hiring engineers for EAR-controlled roles. I also made that mistake myself by writing a posting that specified only U.S. citizens or permanent residents, though in my case HR caught it and corrected it.