Communications Satellites, Banned as ‘Weapons,’ Now Legal for Export

Although the United States founded the industry, manufacturers were forced to pull back from international markets after a 1999 law categorized the satellites as weapons and restricted their export. At the time, Congress was fearful that selling satellites abroad could allow technology secrets to fall into the wrong hands.

The defense bill that President Obama signed will undo that step and let American companies sell communications satellites as civilian technology rather than as deadly arms. Among the beneficiaries will be companies like Boeing, Hughes and Space Systems/Loral.

“This is a tremendous assist for an industry that is inherently international,” said Patricia A. Cooper, president of the Satellite Industry Association, a business group in Washington. “It will ensure our place at the forefront of space.”

As a practical matter, communications satellites made their debut in 1964 and quickly became stars of the space age. The first craft, orbiting at 22,300 miles, relayed signals to the United States from Japan that let American television viewers watch live coverage of the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo.

But the industry stumbled 13 years ago after Republicans in Congress pressed for a law that restricted communications satellite exports. The lawmakers praised it as a security precaution that would prevent China and other perceived foes from stealing technology secrets. Detractors saw it as a cynical ploy meant to discredit the Clinton administration and its policy of Chinese engagement.

That law put communications satellites on Washington’s list of export-controlled munitions: tools of war like tanks, bombs, missiles and equipment for making nuclear arms. Foreign companies took the opportunity to increase their satellite sales.

The new law gives Mr. Obama the authority to return communications satellites to their previous status as civilian technology. It retains provisions that restrict the export of satellites to nations like China and North Korea, and to sponsors of state terrorism like Iran.

Senator Michael Bennet, Democrat of Colorado, who introduced a bill to change the policy on satellite exports and whose state is a space industry hub, said the measure offered satellite manufacturers a crucial lift.

“Companies across the country have been operating at a disadvantage due to these policies,” he said in a statement. “These reforms will give our businesses a chance to compete globally while still protecting our national security interests.”

The strict export controls arose from a political fight over satellite launchings by China, which in the 1980s began offering cheap rides into orbit on low-cost rockets. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, both Republicans, approved transfers of American spacecraft to Chinese rockets, as did President Bill Clinton, a Democrat.

Starting in early 1998, a series of upsets brought the expanding trade to a halt. Two American satellite makers involved in the Chinese launchings, Hughes and Loral, were accused of giving China advice about making not only commercial rockets, but also military missiles.

Republicans, who controlled Congress at the time, argued that satellite exports could lead to a hemorrhage of secret materials and information, and said that China might already have stolen encryption secrets.

After the strict export rules took effect in 1999, the legal complications involved in selling communications satellites and components abroad contributed to a sharp decline in the American share of the market, from a dominating position to about 50 percent today.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Mr. Obama said the rules had “unduly hampered the competitiveness of the domestic aerospace industry” and vowed to push for change.

Representative Howard L. Berman, Democrat of California, who for a decade helped lead the movement for change, said its culmination as law would help restore the nation’s competitiveness in the global satellite market.

“Treating commercial satellites and components as if they were lethal weapons, regardless of whether they’re going to friend or foe, has gravely harmed U.S. space manufacturers,” he said.

Mr. Berman added that the benefits extended beyond the manufacturers. The national security establishment relies on the companies and their technological skills to fulfill the government’s satellite needs and to develop spacecraft involved in a wide range of military missions.

“If they can’t compete in the international marketplace,” he said of the companies, “they can’t innovate and cannot survive.”

In Gaza Conflict, Fighting With Weapons and Postings on Twitter

The violent conflict in Gaza between Hamas and Israel, halted after a cease-fire agreed to on Wednesday, has certainly produced powerful images of death and suffering that have been immediately circulated through social networks, no newspaper baron needed. The Israel Defense Forces, which concluded that it had failed to explain its actions adequately during the last Gaza war, in late 2008, had extensive plans to do a better job this time, according to news accounts in Israel.

The power of social networking — as musicians, journalists and businesses have quickly learned — is that when done right, the audience does the work, passing on the message to others, who in turn pass it on. But it is a tricky business, mixing the gravity of war with a medium that can appear obsessed with triviality.

In fact, early on, Israel was criticized for a program on the military’s blog — something that began months before the Gaza conflict — that gives “badges” to visitors for their contributions to the cause on social networks. One critic accused Israel of the “gamification” of war.

Certainly, when you engage social networks, you lose control of your message, for example, once a Twitter posting has flown.

And indeed, the Israeli military has gotten off to an uneven start.

Barely hours after Israel had killed the head of Hamas’s military wing, Ahmed al-Jabari, leading to Hamas’s firing missiles into Israel, the official Israeli military Twitter feed, now with 200,000 followers, circulated posters that showed missiles falling toward the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty and the Sydney Opera House, asking, “What would you do?” Below was the note: “Share this if you agree that Israel has the right to self-defense.”

But that “soft” message was accompanied with more aggressive online behavior that was immediately criticized as off key. The military posted a video to YouTube showing the Jabari assassination, which YouTube briefly took down but then returned, saying the removal was in error.

There also was a poster of Mr. Jabari, shaded blood-red with the word “Eliminated” stamped on it, and a taunting Twitter posting from the military: “We recommend that no Hamas operatives, whether low level or senior leaders, show their faces above ground in the days ahead.”

That posting earned a reply from the military wing of Hamas, Alqassam Brigades, addressed to the Israeli military’s Twitter handle, @IDFspokesperson, “Our blessed hands will reach your leaders and soldiers wherever they are (You Opened Hell Gates on Yourselves).” The dialogue between the English-language Twitter feeds of the two combat enemies that day ended there.

To journalists who have tracked the Israeli military’s immersion into social networking during the Gaza conflict, the boastful language has given way to postings that focus on the suffering within Israel. The shift makes sense, they say, because the material celebrating success by the military will not speak beyond the country’s supporters.

Gilad Lotan, a data scientist who studies how information spreads in social networks, said that Israel had succeeded in getting its message out.

“The I.D.F.’s ‘propaganda’ has given Israel supporters all over the world digital ammunition that they can use to share, decontextualize and tell their version of the Israeli struggle,” he wrote in an e-mail from Israel, where he was visiting. “And it has worked. These pieces of media have been shared immensely on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr.”

To Ali Abunimah of the Chicago-based, pro-Palestinian Web site Electronic Intifada, to look at the online “branding” by either side is to look away from the reality on the ground.

“You can put in years of effort, and spend a lot of money,” he said, “and make tremendous efforts to control the narrative, but the reality — when the missile hits and flattens a house — that’s what changes the narrative.”

Throughout the conflict, the use of social media has made it easier for each side to cocoon itself. There are rival Twitter hashtags: #pillarofdefense for the Israeli side, #gazaunderattack for the Hamas side.

Sometimes the same events get replayed on each Twitter feed with radically different meanings. Bombs fired from Gaza that land near Jerusalem are hailed by Alqassam as showing the ability of its forces to take the fight to the enemy, while the Israeli military feed includes the news as an example of wanton destruction.

In a rare case of cross-pollination, on Tuesday, Alqassam, which has 40,000 followers on Twitter, forwarded a post from the Israeli military that reported that five soldiers had been wounded by a missile fired from Gaza.

This week, the efforts to shape perceptions of the conflict have gone all the way to the top of the Israeli government. On Monday evening, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted to his 120,000 Twitter followers an acknowledgment of the country’s efforts in social networking: “I would like to thank all the citizens of Israel and all over the world who are taking part in the national information effort.”

Twitter being Twitter, just below that comment appeared the reply: “.@netanyahu ‘national information effort’ is really hard to put in 140 characters. can we just use propaganda from now on?”

Shortly after his thank you, Mr. Netanyahu posted for a second time a photograph from the week before of an Israeli baby (face obscured) who had been injured by missiles fired from Gaza, with the caption, “For Hamas, every time there are civilian casualties, that’s an operational success.”

Roughly the same time Mr. Netanyahu first posted the photo of the injured baby, Alqassam Brigades used Twitter to share photos of an infant killed by an Israeli strike. Each had appended a comment — Mr. Netanyahu (“I saw today a picture of a bleeding Israeli baby. Hamas deliberately targets our children.”) and Alqassam (“Where is the media coverage of Israel’s crimes in Gaza?”).

Robert Mackey contributed reporting.