The article says they apparently didn't do anything illegal. I'm surprised by that. I would guess this would be highly illegal in the US - I'm reminded of the guy who went to prison for giving a Bitcoin talk in North Korea.
Intent matters. It sounds like maybe the pilots are being led to believe they’re teaching at a flight school in South Africa rather than being outright offered to help the Chinese government spy on British tech. The Bitcoin guy knew full well what he was doing and IIRC he had been explicitly told by the US government that his planned travel/speech was illegal.
I know a guy doing this - ex-Typhoon / Tornado pilot, retired. Went over there earlier this year.
The lure to fly fighter planes again was a big draw - plus the massive sack of cash.
He said it wasn't weapons training or even tactics training - really just training them in how to run effective training exercises.
I told him I thought it sounded like the start to a bad 80s action movie plot. He'd been told it was something innocent and then he'd discover he was planning an attack on Taiwan. He and his aging western fighter buddies would have to fight their way out of China with the full might of the China military forces chasing them...
Apparently laws for treason are problematic. I'm honestly surprised that ex-military "consulting" to foreign governments is not a regulated activity with something like export controls.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 24.1 ms ] threadhttps://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/10/18/defying-pentago...
>"The government fought us for two years to keep these records a secret," said one Washington Post journalist. "We sued, and won."
The lure to fly fighter planes again was a big draw - plus the massive sack of cash.
He said it wasn't weapons training or even tactics training - really just training them in how to run effective training exercises.
I told him I thought it sounded like the start to a bad 80s action movie plot. He'd been told it was something innocent and then he'd discover he was planning an attack on Taiwan. He and his aging western fighter buddies would have to fight their way out of China with the full might of the China military forces chasing them...
Apparently laws for treason are problematic. I'm honestly surprised that ex-military "consulting" to foreign governments is not a regulated activity with something like export controls.