New Executive Order Seizes Control over Civilian Activities

[Igel]

36. Complementary, perhaps.

Not really a continuation.

The national-emergency govenment-continuity EOs go back to at least Kennedy. * signed one, as did every other president, and DU went bananas until this became clear. They're reasonable.

This one's also largely reasonable, although they keep expanding, as befits a Manager in Chief in the White House. (It's a role we are as happy to foist on the Presider in Chief as he is to take it. Few presidents have said, "No, I'd really like to have as little power as possible." That requires humility few politicians can evince.)

Take a rocket engine that Pratt/Whitney was licensing. It was Russo-Soviet in design. It was produced in Russia. Nifty bit of re-engineered technology: Not cutting edge, it was cheap, functional, versatile, and reusable, relying on cheap, handling-safe, and fairly non-toxic fuels. Much to commend it. But it would be used for launching US telecommunications satellites. And that meant, at some point, launching satellites used in US intelligence activities or things like the GPS or weather satellite system. To be reliant on a potential enemy for such things is problem, and it might take a few years to actually reverse engineer a similar rocket engine, design the production facilities, and get production started.

Under the authority of an EO, as authorized by a Congressional Act, the government required P/W to have a parallel production facility to the point where it could be up and running in plenty of time to meet any need for replacement engines. This meant obtaining production documents and very detailed tech specs and having them (10s of thousands of pages) translated. It meant siting a production facility and having all the EPA reports and permits on hand. It meant having the building and necessary equipment available, even in use on other production lines of less importance. If the Russians said "no" when there was a pressing need, P/W has to certify and demonstrate that it could independently meet that need.

This made the technology more expensive. It slowed things down. It's Executive interference in what's primarily a commercial activity, because government security functions might be affected. Yeah, it created American jobs--but while this was going on, there were problems with the NOAA satellite network because of too few satellites being launched, telecom resources were stretched thin, and the GPS system was threatened. In trying to ensure security, it risked a few things. The EO couldn't compel companies to meet demand when meeting demand was too expensive and would be too short-term.

More disturbing is the idea that this could be an open-ended back-door boondoggle. By using national defense as a catch-all for justifying loan guarantees to develop cutting-edge and new technologies, or even placing advance orders for them, this can easily allow, say, Chu to help firms in ways that are technologically alluring but not really so promising from either a tech or peacetime cost/benefit standpoint. Suddenly a plausible threat to national becomes not a thumb but an elbow on the cost/benefit scale, or this EO authorizing the advancing of tech initiatives that investors don't think are promising but which some political employee likes. Not that this is a problem just with this particular instantiation of the EO.