[IOL] What every country usually guards like the crown jewels is their intellectual property, or IP, especially when it comes to strategic sectors like military or scientific capabilities. South Africa possesses particularly valuable IP when it comes to weapons technology, as our state-owned arms company Denel has highly advanced strategic capabilities in terms of technology which many other countries would like to get their hands on. Saudi Arabia is one of a few countries which has made a bid for joint ventures with Denel so that it can transfer our technological know-how back home and build up their own domestic defence industries. Rooikat (Red Cat) at graphic.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman’s vision is for the state-owned Saudi Arabia Military Industries (SAMI) to become the 25th largest Defence Company in the world by 2030. While SAMI is currently only able to domestically produce 5% of its own weapons, it plans to increase that to 50% by 2030. To accomplish this goal, SAMI needs IP in order to manufacture its own armaments.
This is problematic not only in terms of our national interest, but because of the fact that selling our IP to a country engaged in a brutal war as well as gross violations of human rights is actually worse than selling them arms. Exporting our mortar bombs, electronic fighting equipment and military software is bad enough, and happens to be in violation of our National Conventional Arms Control Act, but selling our IP so the Saudis can produce highly advanced weaponry is even more problematic. Once a country has our IP in hand, they are then free to develop their own destructive military capabilities without concern for future UN arms embargoes or resolutions calling for an end to conflict causing massive civilian casualties.