Wanna buy a memristor ?

[LabSpokane]

Can you send them to a person in the US, and that person sends it to dave.

Please!  No one even TRY this!

This is what gets people sent to prison, no exaggeration. The US can and will charge and extradite the foreign receiving party as well.

Once something is classified as military hardware, the US has amazingly long arms. Never mind that the memristor is a fundament element, our laws, nor our congress persons particularly care.

Is it illegal to export something that hasn't yet been given an export classification? Would it fall under a generic classification until determined otherwise ?

In this particular case, where Defense dollars have been invested in development for a military application, the only safe route to export is to submit a request to the US State Department and ask for a letter that grants an exemption.

The wrong thing to do is to try and export without a clear disposition.

Just to give you an idea of how arcane and restrictive US law on military hardware is, as a US citizen, I can purchase the latest night vision equipment (if I could afford it). However, it is illegal for me to hand such a device to a non-US citizen and permit them to view through the night vision, even if we are in the US and I have no intention of selling or exporting the device. At that point, I have effectively exported the knowledge of what that device can do and have broken the law.

So, when in doubt, ask the State Dept (or regulating authority) for disposition before transferring technology. Most of this stuff is explicitly detailed as part of ITAR, but there's some stuff, like this memristor, that have likely not been addressed yet.  I just would not assume that this particular device is "generic" when the DOD might feel they own it at this point.

Sorry for the "Danger Will Robinson!" posts, but this can be tricky business. I think if you're upfront and honest with State, you could get approval easily enough. Sneak around, and there's likely to be little forgiveness.

[JoeN]

Can you send them to a person in the US, and that person sends it to dave.

Please!  No one even TRY this!

This is what gets people sent to prison, no exaggeration. The US can and will charge and extradite the foreign receiving party as well.

Once something is classified as military hardware, the US has amazingly long arms. Never mind that the memristor is a fundament element, our laws, nor our congress persons particularly care.

It sounds like it has not actually been classified yet and that Boise State has taken the precaution of not exporting the IC until they get the classification. I may be wrong, but it sounds like they are playing it safe rather than the law specifically making totally new/novel (and freaking passive!) devices not exportable until classification.  I am unconvinced by the above argument above that since I shouldn't export a night vision system with obvious military uses and a clear and long classification as non-exportable that I should also not export a not-yet export classified passive electronic device.  Maybe I am just adventurous in that way.

Q for export experts:  Are there any passive devices that are non-exportable?

Q for memristor experts:  What is this thing good for again?  If I shove it in the feedback loop of an op-amp do I get some transfer function I couldn't do with the other passive devices?  Or what?

[rs20]

You can look up the purported applications of Memristor in wikipedia for yourself, but you'll find that many of them (non-volatile memory, neural nets) require a massive degree of miniaturisation before the concept becomes useful. These 8-memristors-in-a-DIP packages are purely for studying/scoping out these future applications; AFAICT any system containing one of these DIPs could be more easily and cheaply emulated using an 8-bit micro (and maybe some DACs ).

[PedroDaGr8]

Can you send them to a person in the US, and that person sends it to dave.

Please!  No one even TRY this!

This is what gets people sent to prison, no exaggeration. The US can and will charge and extradite the foreign receiving party as well.

Once something is classified as military hardware, the US has amazingly long arms. Never mind that the memristor is a fundament element, our laws, nor our congress persons particularly care.

It sounds like it has not actually been classified yet and that Boise State has taken the precaution of not exporting the IC until they get the classification. I may be wrong, but it sounds like they are playing it safe rather than the law specifically making totally new/novel (and freaking passive!) devices not exportable until classification.  I am unconvinced by the above argument above that since I shouldn't export a night vision system with obvious military uses and a clear and long classification as non-exportable that I should also not export a not-yet export classified passive electronic device.  Maybe I am just adventurous in that way.

As part of the STTR, the government will sometimes claim stuff, at least until it gets well developed. In those situations, it is controlled until the government says otherwise kind of mentality. When it comes to these kinds of projects, more often then not, it is a ask for permission or assume you aren't allowed to kind of situation. As LabSpokane said, they do NOT mess around.

I do a lot of SBIR, STTRs bigger cousin, stuff at my work (have an NIH SBIR proposal going out today) and for some projects the government will just deem it classified and that's it; no more discussion. At my work, ALL doors MUST have access restrictions, each lab has independent restrictions. If we employ foreign nationals, which we no longer do because of the headaches, they are not allowed in the office areas of the building at all. Which meant they had to have a desk in the lab. If they needed to see the director, one of us had to escort them to and from his office. Honestly, it is interesting HOW strict they can get. For example, before I was here there was a PI working on a highly classified project. Nobody in the company knew anything more than the detail in his SBIR proposal. Even the proposal knowledge was limited to the few people that vetted and reviewed his proposal. After the proposal was accepted, they were notified of its classified status and had all sorts of documents to sign. Once the project got going, there were ZERO updates. Even his own boss was not allowed to be updated on the status of the project, not even as simple as its going well. This meant that his performance reviews were basically impossible. When the project finished, the government basically took him with the project. Literally two months after the project ended, the government hired him on and all of his equipment (which the government paid for anyways) and everything else went with him.

[jitter]

Wow, what a stifling situation. I'm glad I'm not in one of them...

[Macbeth]

AFAICT any system containing one of these DIPs could be more easily and cheaply emulated using an 8-bit micro (and maybe some DACs ).

I wonder if these memristors in a DIP are actually just that, using some "phantom/parasitic power" method to achieve the 2 terminal passive requirement?   

[PedroDaGr8]

Wow, what a stifling situation. I'm glad I'm not in one of them...

It has its benefits from a job security stand point. Most Phase I SBIR projects are around 6mo to a 1yr, Phase II are 2-3 years. For example, as of right now, based on our budget my job is 100% guaranteed through the end of 2018 just from the projects that are on deck and that is assuming we don't take on a single other SBIR project between now and then.

Otherwise....yeah. Lots of headaches and I will leave it at that.