Protecting American Business and Workers — an Opinion Piece by Dennis Blair and Jon Huntsman Jr. Demonstrates What American Leaders Should Be Thinking, but Are Not

22 May 2013

The drown-worthy stupidity of American politics shows up best, when someone outside the immediate Establishment comes along and says something smart about what we should actually be doing

Former Admiral Dennis Blair and Utah Governor/Ambassador Jon Huntsman Jr. wrote yesterday:

At a time when the U.S. economy is struggling to provide jobs, the hemorrhage of intellectual property (IP) — our most important international competitive advantage — is a national crisis.

Nearly every U.S. business sector — advanced materials, electronics, pharmaceuticals and biotech, chemicals, aerospace, heavy equipment, autos, home products, software and defense systems — has experienced massive theft and illegal reproduction.

The Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property, which we co-chaired, estimates that the total revenue loss to U.S. companies is comparable to the total value of U.S. exports to all of Asia.

U.S. software manufacturers — a sector in which this country leads the world — lose tens of billions of dollars in revenue annually from counterfeiting just in China, where the problem is most rampant.

The U.S. International Trade Commission estimated in 2011 that if IP protection in China improved substantially, U.S. businesses could add 2.1 million jobs.

We agree with Gen. Keith Alexander, the head of U.S. Cyber Command, that the ongoing theft of U.S. intellectual property is “the greatest transfer of wealth in history.”

An investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee last May found “approximately 1,800 cases of suspect counterfeit electronic parts” in U.S. military equipment and weapons systems, with as many as 1 million individual counterfeit parts now embedded in our military aircraft.

Even the security-conscious Defense Department has lost the capacity to verify the integrity of its supply chains.

In spite of this problem — which was already blatant fifteen years ago — we have heard not a substance-producing peep from either the Presidency or Congress

Neither branch of government has demonstrated the slightest speck of problem solving, regarding America’s most fundamental survival issues for more than a decade.

As I wrote in 2011:

Plutocrats’ exportation of our economy to China, with serial Presidents’ and Congress’ active approval, was one of the main reasons I established this website.

As a lawyer, I was irritated at the brazen way China steals intellectual property and infuriated by our Government’s surreptitious participation in the theft.

As a former blue collar worker, I remain interminably angry with the way Fat Cats have bought our democratic institutions for the purpose of assisting the People’s Republic with the whole-hog transportation of American jobs to China.

A nation without manufacturing and secret technology is in no position to wage large-scale self-defensive war.

That we permit our leaders to continue with the wholesale dismantlement of American economic power is a sign of the depth of our self-deluding and self-destructive insanity.

What should be done?

Admiral Blair and Governor/Ambassador Huntsman recommend that the United States:

close the American market to products that contain stolen intellectual property,

prevent IP-thieving foreign companies from using American financial services,

and

change currently laissez faire domestic stock exchange requirements to insist that participating companies abide by intellectual property law.

The moral? — It is possible to sleep oneself to death

American leadership, with the public’s apparently willing support, is doing a pretty good job of it.

PeteFree.com

Protecting American Business and Workers — an Opinion Piece by Dennis Blair and Jon Huntsman Jr. Demonstrates What American Leaders Should Be Thinking, but Are Not