<p>-</p>
<p>Hello Dear Ben G,</p>
<p>One thing that impressed me about CalTech is the proximity/presence of NASA JPL.</p>
<ul>
<li>Does this factor count on as positive in the Aero-astro domain?</li>
<li>Are the students of CalTech permitted to work at JPL? Does any restriction exist for international students in this regard?</li>
</ul>
<p>Yours truly,
SHABIN
July 12, 2oo5.</p>
<p>-</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Does this factor count on as positive in the Aero-astro domain?
Sure, whatever.</p></li>
<li><p>Are the students of CalTech permitted to work at JPL? Does any restriction exist for international students in this regard?
Yes, but only if you're an American citizen. International students get the shaft because some of the technology at JPL is considered sensitive or classified.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>So an American citizen can be trusted but an international one cant with "sensitive" information? That sounds rather dubious...</p>
<p>That's not Caltech or JPL -- that's the US Government. I worked at Lockheed, and there were a million and one restrictions on what I could tell the international company we were contracted by. It's called export control -- there are certain technologies (usually with military applications) which the US government controls the export of to other countries. Telling any member of another country is considered exporting the technology (hence the restrictions on international students working with classified technology).</p>
<p>
[quote]
So an American citizen can be trusted but an international one cant with "sensitive" information?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, if it's American defense secrets in question, that doesn't seem much of a stretch to me... maybe you live in some different world, would your country just give away military technology to foreigners?</p>
<p>-</p>
<p>BenG: "would your country just give away military technology to foreigners?"</p>
<p>Well Ben G, it depends on the countries and the level(s) of trust between them.
-USA provides Patriot Ballistic Missile Defence Shield to Taiwan.
-Russia had been giving Mig class and Sukhoi class Su-30MKI fighter aircrafts to India.
-Russia recently provided India with complete technology of the worlds only supersonic cruise missile called BrahMos with a range of 290 km capable of carrying Nuclear payloads as well at nearly or above 2Mach.
-Russia had been giving India its Akula class deterrence submarines on lease for some years.
-Israel has shown its interest in providing advanced early warning systems to India.
-USA is lobbying at the Indian power circles to sell F-16 Falcon and F-18 Hornet.
-Packets of information are said to have been exchanged between North Korea and Pakistan regarding "Missile Stuffs" and "Fissile Stuffs".</p>
<p>So, the question's answer depends on the relationship between countries.</p>
<p>Hence another QUESTION:
-> The students of CalTech are permitted to work at JPL, as pointed out earlier. Does any restriction exist for international students from countries with which USA has Technology Sharing or Transfer in this regard?</p>
<p>Yours truly,
SHABIN
India
July 14, 2oo5.</p>
<p>-</p>
<p>
[quote]
-> The students of CalTech are permitted to work at JPL, as pointed out earlier. Does any restriction exist for international students from countries with which USA has Technology Sharing or Transfer in this regard?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Oh my. That is a very good question. From what I've heard, they're pretty strict about having to be a citizen but I might be wrong. Caltech employs some people specifically to deal with these issues, so I will look up their information and you can write them, since my expertise has obviously been exhausted.</p>
<p>The PATRIOT antimissile system doesn't actually work, so it's good foreign policy on our part. They think they're safe and we get to sell it to them at a no doubt ridiculous markup without giving away anything useful.</p>
<p>SHABIN: You have to be a US citizen (or permanent resident according to the directives for JPL SURFs). Even Canadians can't work at JPL.</p>
<p>Shabin,
You don't understand the way it works. There's a difference between selling a country the use of a technology, and actually giving them the technology itself (such that they could reproduce it if they wanted). Think of it this way. When you buy a Dell PC, you're given the rights to use it, but you're not given the architectural details of how the components fit together, or the source code for the operating system, etc. So, with what Dell is selling you, you couldn't build a pc of your own from scratch.</p>
<p>This is the same thing -- we'll sell other countries the finished product, but we won't show them how we did it. Anyone working at JPL has access to latter, which we won't give to foreign countries or their citizens.</p>
<p>You are right that there are some countries (or foreign companies) that we have sold technology to. However, in my experience these are always incredibly specific agreements dealing with the project at hand. For instance, I worked on a project which produced training jets (with old F16 technology) being sold to Korea. There were agreements in place for the export of some of the technology, which we gave to the Koreans working with us. However, all of those Koreans were actually employees of the Korean company we were working with. I knew of no Lockeed employees on the project that were Korean. </p>
<p>I would bet money that at JPL there's a policy that they won't hire any foreign nationals. Otherwise, for every foreign national, they'd only be able to employ them on a specific project, and they'd have to restrict their access to certain parts of that project. (For instance, sometimes we'll give a foreign company the object code for one part of a project, and the source code for another). Furthermore, they have to restrict the movement within the facility of all foreign nationals. At Lockheed, foreign nationals were not allowed to walk around unescorted. That would greatly hamper the usefulness of an intern.</p>
<p>So in summary, by all means, use the contact info that Ben posts, but don't get your hopes up.</p>
<p>SteelPangolin: "The PATRIOT antimissile system doesn't actually work, so it's good foreign policy on our part. "</p>
<p>I knew it by the end of Gulf War of 1991. Shooting down a missile with another missile is like shooting down a bullet with another bullet, which even Clint Eastwood can't do, I bet.</p>
<p>From Wikipedia:
"On February 25, 1991 an Iraqi Scud hit the barracks in Dharan, Saudi Arabia, killing 28 soldiers from, Saudi Arabia, killing 28 soldiers from the US Army's 14th Quartermaster Detachment.</p>
<p>A government investigation revealed that the failed intercept at Dharan had been caused by a software error in the system's clock. The Patriot missile battery at Dharan had been in operation for 100 hours, after which time the clock had drifted by one third of a second, equivalent to a position error of 600 meters. The radar system detected the Scud and predicted where to look for it next, but because of the time error, looked in the wrong part of the sky and found no missile. With no missile, the initial detection was assumed to be a false alarm and the missile was removed from the system. The Israelis had identified the problem and informed the US Army and the Patriot Project Office (the software manufacturer) on February 11, 1991. The Israelis recommended rebooting the Patriot system's computers as a workaround; however, Army officials did not understand how often they needed to reboot the system. The manufacturer supplied updated software to the Army on
February 16. The updated software arrived the day after the Scud struck the Army barracks.</p>
<p>On April 7, 1992 Theodore Postol of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Reuven Pedatzur of Tel Aviv University testified before a House Committee stating that, according to their independent analyses, the Patriot system had a success rate of below ten percent, and perhaps even a zero success rate."</p>
<p>An excellent account of the above can be found in the book The Guinnes Book of Military Blunders by Geoffrey Reagan.</p>
<hr>
<h1> SHABIN</h1>
<p>Alleya,</p>
<p>I would like to thank you for the clarification about the access to foreign nationals to JPL.</p>
<p>QUESTIONS:
-ARE NOT FOREIGN NATIONALS ALLOWED WORK ON PROJECTS AND RESEARCHES UNRELATED TO THE DEFENCE INDUSTRY?</p>
<p>-OR ARE THEY TOTALLY FORBIDDEN FROM ENTERING/SEEING THE JPL EVENIF THEY ARE STUDENTS OF CALTECH?</p>
<p>-WHAT ARE THE AVENUES OPEN TO INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS AT CALTECH TO GET HANDS-ON PROJECT AND RESEARCH EXPERIENCE?</p>
<p>CLARIFICATIONS:
The Indian-Russian relationship going on to higher planes with the complete technology transfer of Russia's front end fighter aircraft Sukhoi-30 MK which will be called Suknoi-30MKI (I for India). The first batch of Su-30 MKI have been inucted into the Indian Air Force.</p>
<p>The BrahMos supersonic missile technology has been sold to India, though called `joint development', and India is making the missile on its own and plans are up for its sale to third countries as well.</p>
<p>People from Lockheed Martin were in India a few weeks ago to convince the Indian side to buy the <code>finished' F-16s but India is asking for the technology. And if GW Bush continues as the president for some more time, you may be able to see some F-16 flying with a</code>Made in India' tag.</p>
<p>I think that F-16s are already being made in Israel and India had approached Israel some years ago for the technology of the same. But by then, USA came forward and pushed Israel out of the field.</p>
<p>Yours truly,
SHABIN
India
July 14, 2oo5.</p>
<p>-</p>
<p>Dear All,</p>
<p>I am sorry for the postings unrelated to the topic.
Please, everybody get back to the topic.</p>
<p>PLEASE CLARIFY THE ABOVE QUESTIONS.</p>
<hr>
<h1>SHABIN</h1>
<p>First of all, just saying F16 is misleading. F16s have been around for 20 years or so, and they're upgraded every year. I can promise you that the F16s rolling off the line now for use by the US have more advanced technology than any technology rights sold to another country, and they're all produced in the US. Furthermore, a plant building an F16 in another country doesn't have any more access to the technology than if they were built here -- the technology isn't in the shell of the plane, it's in the software and other components but into that shell. It's that that US government restricts. (After having to read an 80 page document on my first day of work about what I could and couldn't tell the Koreans I was working with, believe me, I know how restrictive it can be. For some components, all we could tell them was the dimensions and what temperature it needed to be kept at. Sometimes we weren't even allowed to show them the output of the component.)</p>
<p>"QUESTIONS:
-ARE NOT FOREIGN NATIONALS ALLOWED WORK ON PROJECTS AND RESEARCHES UNRELATED TO THE DEFENCE INDUSTRY?"</p>
<p>At JPL? Probably not. And it may be that for actual employees, they CAN be foreign nationals, but there's some terribly complex paperwork and stuff. </p>
<p>"-OR ARE THEY TOTALLY FORBIDDEN FROM ENTERING/SEEING THE JPL EVENIF THEY ARE STUDENTS OF CALTECH?"</p>
<p>Um... I think you need to be a citizen to enter, unless you're a special consultant or something. I toured (before I was a tech student), and my family and I needed proof of citizenship. I'm doing a surf at JPL this summer, and I recall them mentioning a special badge for foreign consultants/assistants/researchers, and they needed to be escorted EVERYWHERE by their hosts. </p>
<p>"-WHAT ARE THE AVENUES OPEN TO INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS AT CALTECH TO GET HANDS-ON PROJECT AND RESEARCH EXPERIENCE?"</p>
<p>There are a bunch. Tech does LOTS of research. It's really easy to get an on-campus surf. Or one somewhere off-campus if you're willing to put in the extra work to find someone. And there are plenty of research assistant positions during the year. Aside from JPL, all of these are open to internationals.</p>
<p>For your questions:
Technology not related to defense is also controlled by the export restrictions -- I wouldn't be suprised if JPL has a blanket regulation against foreign nationals working there, but you can always call and ask again. They won't make any allowances for Caltech students that they wouldn't for others.</p>
<p>As for entering JPL, I know that even some of the tours given to Caltech students are restricted to US citizens.</p>
<p>I don't know of any research on the Caltech campus that requires US citizenship (though it's possible there are a couple), so an international student would have all the opportunities as US students for doing an on-campus SURF. I'd guess that every year the SURF's are 65% Caltech and 35% JPL. But I'm pulling those numbers from nowhere.</p>
<p>
[quote]
We'll sell other countries the finished product, but we won't show them how we did it.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It seems then, that there would likely be a high demand for reverse engineering in these places. Can anyone who knows what he or she is talking about (i.e. not me) offer additional thoughts on this? :-)</p>
<p>I don't know the full details, but when the export restrictions were explained to me (by people who did know what they were talking about), they said that the reverse engineering isn't possible in most cases. I worked in software, and for that we'd either give them the source code (rarely), the object code (if they paid extra for it), or the final executable. I think it is possible to partially reverse engineer from the object code, but it's not at all from the executable. Either way, the possibility of reverse engineering is considered by the people who make the decisions.</p>
<p>So just out of pure curiosity -- it's not possible to reverse-engineer a final executable, or at least modify it? That's a bit surprising, I guess.</p>
<p>I think that's the case (that it's not possible), but I'm by no means sure. Anyone else know?</p>