ITAR is all over the lathe/CNC world - I'm an industrial/controls engineer, and have to do compliance reviews, "production of arms" forms, and "destination con

ITAR is all over the lathe/CNC world - I'm an industrial/controls engineer, and have to do compliance reviews, "production of arms" forms, and "destination control statements" for the machines we build. The main difference is that cheap 3D printers are $200 and can be carried to your bedroom, instead of $200k+, requiring riggers and 3-phase power. Yes, you can buy old Bridgeports and Pacemakers on Craigslist, or cheap mini-mills and mini-lathes at Harbor Freight, and run them in your garage, and yes, those would be infinitely more valuable in the making of a firearm. No, this law won't prevent someone clever and determined from building a 3D printer with some aluminum scraps, an Arduino, and a few steppers. Similarly, those ITAR PoA forms don't prevent me from buying some servos and bearings from AliExpress, bolting some steel together, and downloading LinuxCNC to make a 5-axis machine that ITAR would say could be used to enable nuclear proliferation. Many in the industry [1] agree that all these restrictions are ineffective and harmful. The good news for this law is that while a nation state can probably devote a couple engineers and dismantle some obsolete equipment to build a custom 5-axis mill, a New York gangster is more likely to be deterred by this obstacle. But whether these restrictions are completely ineffective political posturing, an opportunity to add a charge to a separate conviction, or an obstacle in front of would-be criminals that is actually effective at reducing crime, is a social question, and unfortunately answers probably depend more on your political preferences than on anything measurable. [1] https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/documents/technology-evaluation/138-five-axis-simultaneous-control-machine-tools/file https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/documents/technology-evalu...