 Welcome to the webinar. My name is Danica. I'm a national organizer with Code Pink, and this webinar is part of our new campaign called to disarm, where we are challenging the US arms trade. So this webinar is going to be called uncovering the arms trade, the arms sales we don't hear about. And I'm so honored to have the guest that Lillian Malden here with us. Lillian's a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, holding a BA in honors international relations and global studies with a minor in Arabic. She is a founding member of a member of women for weapons trade transparency and thematic specialist with Amnesty International USA military security and police transfers coordination group. She was a summer 2021 participant in the US Department of State critical language scholarship and a summer 2021 policy intern at form on the arms trade. She hopes to continue her career in the arms control and non proliferation field, ideally lobbying for decreased defense budgets and more rigorous arms export control laws. And with that, I will pass it over to Lillian and if you have any questions throughout the event, please put it in the q amp a section. So I don't miss it in the chat if people start talking a lot. So please put it in the q amp a section and we will answer questions after and with that I'll pass it over to you Lillian. Thank you so much for that wonderful introduction. Hello everyone I'm so excited to be with code pink today for a really important conversation about us arms sales that fall under congressional and public notification dollar thresholds, which is quite the mouthful and you know we will get into what that means exactly here in just a second. So the US with threshold sales pose a really great threat to transparency within the US arms trade, and even more importantly to the livelihoods of so many people around the globe. And I also want to mention just briefly that Jeff Abramsen got more into the details of US arms sales policy and a previous webinar with code pink. So I would definitely encourage you all to check that out as well after this webinar concludes. So I have some background on the issue of under notification threshold sales. So the scale of us, the US arm trade is enormous as I'm sure a lot of you know already between 2002 and 2018 the United States sold over $200 billion in major, major conventional weapons to 169 different countries. Some weapons sales by the US to international governments require a lot of different policies and processes for their approval. This is from everything from broad strategies that lay out kind of overarching purposes of arms sales to really specific policies that kind of govern the minutiae of transfers. So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. I have a couple of slides here. So I can just, okay. Great. So, there are two main avenues through which arms can be transferred from the US government to other countries. And so these are foreign military sales and direct commercial sales or fms and DCS. This is a diagram of the different processes of approval for fms and DCS and fms is facilitated by the defense security cooperate cooperation agency, or DSCA, which they also release public records of sales on their major arms sales page. This is a public website and can be can be accessed by all of you. This is an annual process through which defense contractors and weapons manufacturers make their profits. And so through DCS, the directorate of trade defense trade controls or DDTC approved sales between international governments and these weapons manufacturers. So then DDTC releases data about these sales on their website. This is an annual publication called the 655 report. And you can see that here at the bottom of the slide. And this is again public information if you go to the DDTC website. Go to the report section, you can see that 2020 report of course the 2021 yet it's one is not yet out. So what you might be asking is, you know, what are the, what are the problems of transparency with us arm sales. If all this information is on, you know, these two websites so if we revisit the flow charts for fms and DCS approvals. Again, then then we look at the Congress section that are that are circled here, you can see that a section of the ACA, which is the arms export control act is cited. And so this is because under section 36b of the arms export control act. Congress has to be formally notified 30 calendar days before presidential administration can conclude a foreign military sale of major defense equipment valued at $14 million or more. Defense articles or services valued at $50 million or more, or design and construction services valued at $200 million or more. And so those are a lot of different kind of thresholds there, but it really just depends on kind of what category these pieces of equipment are falling under. And then as for direct commercial sales, which is this, you know, green flow chart at the top. And then under 36 C section 36 C of the ACA. They also must be formally notified to Congress 30 calendar days before the export license is issued for the sale of major defense equipment, valued at $14 million or some more. And again, defense articles and services valued at $50 million or more so it's the same requirements as fms, but just under a different different section of the ACA. And similarly, there are also higher dollar thresholds and shorter waiting periods for NATO countries, as well as for Japan, Australia, South Korea, Israel and New Zealand. And so here's kind of a partial table of some of these notification thresholds that I'm describing. So you might be able to infer from these, you know, these sections of the ACA why there's an issue of transparency here within the US arms trade, because if the dollar sales below one of these thresholds, or you know, especially for these NATO countries that there's not as much time, Congress doesn't have to be formally notified and so information on sales doesn't have to be made public either. So there's a really serious problem for transparency and public knowledge of us arms sales abroad as many sales of defense articles and defense equipment aren't reported to Congress to civil society or the general public. And then, if you all could just put the link to the piece. I authored a piece on this issue with center for international policy that kind of goes more into depth. We don't know much at all about these under threshold sales, but we do kind of have a small window of insight into this really big problem. And so in August 2020, the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of State issued a report regarding the Secretary of State's May 2019 certification of emergency under the arms export control act. The report found that the department approved a total of 4,221 below threshold arms transfers involving Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates with an estimated total value of $11.2 billion since January 2017. And so this is, you know, some of the screenshots of that report, you can see underlined here some of those really significant findings from the OIG. And so we can also infer that a lot of under threshold sales, maybe direct commercial sales as opposed to foreign military sales. It's difficult to get equipment through the foreign military sales process so if a government is going to kind of go through the trouble of the FMS process they will generally kind of be hitting that dollar notification threshold with those larger purchases. And then lastly, kind of the last problem I guess I want to flag is. We also rollback of transparency under the Trump administration when categories one through three at the US munitions list were transferred to the commerce control list. So what this means is that a lot of firearms, including semi automatic assault weapons that are being exported internationally no longer require congressional notification. So we're going to share again two links in the chat to do two different resource pages from form on the arms trade, which again I interned with over the summer and so one of them is on this US munitions list categories one through three that have been transferred, and then the other one is a resource page on under threshold sales more broadly. Kind of with this. These multiple problems presented here I just wanted to flag efforts that are currently underway to access data on arms sales falling under congressional congressional notification thresholds. And so you know my own organization, as well as some very experienced individuals in the field of arms trade research. We've recently filed Freedom of Information Act requests or FOIA requests with the Defense Security Cooperation Agency which manages those those FMS purchases. And so we asked for letters of authorization for sales falling under these dollar thresholds and we're no waiting our requests to be fulfilled through that process. And then I think we can open up for questions. I just want to emphasize how important public scrutiny of government actions is to a, you know, healthy and thriving democracy and I want to point out that, you know the size of a weapon sale doesn't always correlate with the risk of the harm that it could potentially cause, because some of the most easily transferred weapons are also the also the most easily diverted and misused. For harm. And it's really important for Congress to be notified of all US arms sales in order to provide a starting point for reform of the legislative arms sales review process because we can't prevent unnecessary death and destruction as a result of the harm sales if we don't have kind of a complete picture of what is being exported and being able to track that so I will stop talking there and yeah happy to take questions. Yeah please put any questions in the Q&A section I'll look out in the chat too. For him as a question is the 14 million per PO or per year purchase order to a foreign agency or per year to any and all agencies of a foreign country. So, if I understand correctly. I think for him is referring to that that threshold of 14 million I believe it's, it's the value of the, the one sale per purchase order. It's it's I believe it's you know per order of sales I don't think it's an aggregate. If I'm understanding that question correctly. I think that it would be the value of the authorization. Right. Yeah. Okay, great. Thank you. You said that, you know, it's not always like the big F 35 sales it's not always like the JDAM sales that get reported that are like the most harmful in practice like when they're actually used. Any examples of like smaller weapon sales that we've heard of or that weapons we know are being used that would be considered under the threshold anywhere. Like any like specific examples just to give people kind of an idea of what the issue with that transparency is even though they're technically smaller sales. Typically, you know, the smaller sales like small arms and light weapons, for example, those that are have been transferred from that US munition list categories one through three to the commerce control list now are some of the ones that are typically the most misused and misused and diverted and getting into hands that they were not intended to be in. And so this is kind of another issue within use monitoring as well. And kind of lack of really stringent reporting mechanisms for those arms. And if you think about it, you know, it's going to be a lot easier to for some someone to steal, you know, a semi automatic rifle then it would be for them to steal an F 35 just logistically speaking. You know we've seen, you know, and, for example, there's a lawsuit from Mexico against several US arms manufacturers right now regarding the proliferation of small arms and light weapons in Mexico. And so, you know, you kind of see these cases again and again with capture of small arms and light weapons, especially by, you know, individuals and groups that the United States has designated as terrorist organizations you know we've seen that. We've seen those weapons used against United States allies as well. So there are just, you know, several, several examples through history that kind of demonstrate that that really great risk. I want to bring something from that but also I want to circle back to end use monitoring so don't let me forget but there's Mexico suing the weapons manufacturers. Correct. Let me see if I can find a link. Okay, this lawsuit is we're talking before this weapon are started like how how our weapons companies like culpable in these sorts of situations like what is their responsibility so I'm just, I'm interested in how the government of Mexico is. Yeah, apparently it's against 10 different gun manufacturers. And the case is being heard in the US federal court. Let me see. Yeah, so Center for American progress has a resource page with looks like a lot of links that might be helpful, but I'll put in the chat. So we, yes, that was in. Yeah, in September so quite recently. I see another question chat. The regulatory environment for weapons companies. In terms of. I also see a question for Ari. Hi Ari. What is okay the regulatory environment for weapons companies. I'm honestly not familiar with, you know, if you're speaking in terms of kind of production and regulation of assembly and production of those weapons. I'm not super familiar with that. I'm not very, and more familiar with the government regulation side, and kind of the governance process for the export of those weapons so kind of after the fact of the weapons manufacturers. I, I would assume it's not super rigorously regulated just just might be a presumption yeah. So let's see Ari says not a question but it might be worth bringing up that a lot of the security training we pay for is used in human rights abuses defense articles and services. Yeah, definitely. Absolutely, we've seen that happen a lot in a lot just various places definitely security training being used for kind of authoritarian insulation. And protection of authoritarian regimes that me, you know, are aiding there. To circle back really quickly to end use monitoring just because I think it's another transparency issue. So the ACA mandates and use reporting right. It's like the State Department has to do and use monitoring which for people who don't know is basically kind of report back on what our weapons are used for and kind of by whom. And one issue I think with end use monitoring and like the way they do it is let's say Saudi Arabia buys weapons from the US, and they say it's for their army. Or the Saudi army or the Saudi military. There's so many different units within the military and we don't often get those specifics during end use monitoring of like where those weapons actually end up. So for like organizations like code pink and other piece that are anti war organizations it's hard to like follow the war crimes that are being committed with like weapons manufactured in the United States. And like who use them how did they get them that kind of thing I don't know if you want to add anything to that Lillian. Yeah, definitely. And use monitoring is kind of notoriously insufficient. And one thing that recently I was joining efforts on with several other NGOs and conflict prevention organizations is there's a form called the DSP 83. And that is a form to ask questions about kind of, you know where defense articles and services are being transferred and. And so we, you know, input public comment on the federal register for that form basically, you know, saying that it still needs to be used, but it needs to be made more robust and there needs to be. So some of the questions asked about what things are being used for and not just where they're ending up, because that is a big problem is a lot of in use monitoring is just kind of where are things location wise and they don't monitor their actual use. It's kind of not so much in use monitoring as it is in location monitoring. And so that's, that's a problem that I've seen some mobilization going on recently and I know Ari from from Civic and Security Assistance Monitor just put out like a really great like three page or on in use monitoring and the problems around that. And I'm going to see if I can find that and put the link in the chat because it's just really helpful. And it helped me a lot so I highly recommend anyone here if you're interested in like following arm sales and like arms legislation. The Security Assistance Monitor has like a weekly newsletter, and it is so good like gives you so much information I like really really suggest subscribing to the to the newsletter, just for the information that they send out every week. We have a question in the chat from Jennifer. Would lawsuits against the weapons manufacturers be more effective than the US government consider the lawsuits against the tobacco companies. That's interesting to think about. I, I don't have expertise to answer that question. That's a great point. I don't have a broader base with maybe a settlement. I don't know that's something to think about I mean I suggest following the case with Mexico I think that I'll give an answer because I don't know if anything like this has been done before with weapons manufacturers to be honest it's kind of big. Thank you for speaking. Are you worried at all about congressional members being influenced by domestic defense industry and the economic benefits it brings to the country especially as domestic defense industry is being pressured by international competition. I'm very worried and it has been happening for decades. You know politicians of course accept so much money from defense contractors so called defense contractors I like to call them weapons manufacturers. And you know we we also see a lot of lobbying from these weapons manufacturers regarding job creation that has kind of especially with Lockheed Martin that's kind of been historically the angle that they take to influence members of Congress is you know, we have created jobs in your district and you know voting against this proposal is is going to you know get rid of these jobs and when you actually kind of break down and look at the statistics. I don't think any other form of governmental spending. I'm citing William Hartung here will create more jobs than than defense spending. And so that is kind of one of their their marketing tactics that I think is very interesting and various. So we've placed a plug coat pinks new campaign is called called the disarm and we're one thing we're doing is we're going to like local constituencies and pressuring members specific members of Congress to stop taking money from weapons companies. So this is a pledge. And I will put the link to the action in the chat, but please go to this link it'll give you a form to fill out, and it automatically send the pledge to your people, your people in Congress asking them to stop taking campaign contributions from weapons companies. Because this is a huge issue I ran into when I started working on arms trade issues at code pink was that. Okay, there's transparency issues. There's issues where we don't have a lot of time to respond when the ones that are reported are reported to Congress it's like either 15 or 30 days. It's not a lot of time to like get the grassroots going on on these issues. So it's like obviously some legislation needs to change. How are we going to pass legislation when all of these pockets and Congress are lined by Lockheed Martin, Ray Theon, Boeing General Dynamics, they take so much money from weapons companies. So that's something our campaign is trying to do is get more members of Congress and we have before gotten members of Congress to start refusing money from these companies. And they no longer have their accountable to us, that's what it's supposed to be. They're not accountable to Ray Theon or Lockheed Martin and they shouldn't be. So that's something we're doing. If that's interesting to you, I will put the link to the campaigns whole thing in the in the chat in a couple minutes but you should call your rep be like hey stop it, stop taking money from weapons companies. But that is, it's a huge concern and it makes arms control legislation hard to pass in Congress, harder than it would be otherwise. I have another to scroll up to find it. Really coming in. It's possible that there's a willful ignorance about what happens to certain as you put under threshold weapons once they're shipped to an approved purchaser is that an aspect you're investigating. What happens once they're shipped to an approved purchaser that sounds kind of like it's regarding and use monitoring. Once they're shipped to an approved purchaser. Yeah, I think. Yeah, it, like I mentioned and use monitoring is is notoriously insufficient. And I definitely think that it might be, you know, somewhat willful on on the parts of the United States government and people that we are exporting to. You know, the United States knows it's complicit and a lot of grave abuses of human rights and I don't think it's an accident that we're, you know, not actively pursuing a stop to that before it starts. So, I'm pies asking, do you know of any members of Congress who are slash might be supportive of weapons sale reform or bills regarding weapons sales. So, another thing that we, the group that you know we filed the FOIA request, we're also trying to kind of work some congressional contacts, and I believe or she believes office was interested in in further transparency of the arms trade and that is an opportunity, I believe have reached out to, we kind of have like two different groups of us kind of one working on the FOIA side and one working on the Congress side. And so I was kind of working on the FOIA side so I'm not super familiar with the intricacies of all those contacts there but I believe that there are a couple of people including Congress woman to leads office. Yeah, there's, there have been bills introduced in Congress that would still looking at like the cosponsors there would give you an answer. Do you have any comment on the recent legislation to lower the congressional notification value thresholds step in the right direction or just wind up dressing. So I'm assuming this is referring to Senator Menendez is safeguard act. If that is the legislation that you're referring to I know that that was, you know attempting to amend the arms export control act to completely get rid of notification thresholds for certain, certain customers who it was like you know if there was if the government was deposed by a coup. If there were you know proven grave abuses of human rights things of that sort, then it was going to completely get rid of notification thresholds for certain, certain purchasers. So kind of on the side of any little bit we can get. I'll try to kind of be in favor of that, but you know I definitely think that they're, there's so much more that can be done and it's just a matter of gridlock. And what is realistically going to be able to be passed. I think that some people are on the side of, you know not supporting things unless it is, you know, a complete complete kind of overhaul and complete reform. And I definitely respect that approach as well. I think it's just kind of, you know, we're, we're fighting a centuries old system that has been broken from the beginning. So I think it's, you know, we're kind of in it for the long haul. Jennifer is asking, are there competing interest based on stock ownership by congressional members. That I am not super familiar with. I, you know I've heard things in regard to congressional stock ownership, and I'm not super familiar with the intricacies of what's going on there but I would assume that there are some conflicts there and some conflicts of interest, regarding money that Congress people would like to hold on to. Marcy is asking how imminent or assured is a Commerce Department takeover of most arms sales. Who that's scary. I guess, so I don't right now. A lot of arms sales go through the State Department, which has like laws about transparency like they have to, you know, if they when they have to report to Congress that kind of thing. Sales go through the Commerce Department. And Jeff Abramson was talking about this on the webinar. I had a couple weeks ago. I highly recommend checking out. It's on our code pinks YouTube. It's called weapons sale 101 but it's kind of been the move to move more arms sales over to the Commerce Department, just to kind of give people a preface for that question. But I don't know Lily and if you want to talk about why that might be concerning or how imminent that is. Yeah, I, I don't have any insight on on the movement of more arms sales to the Commerce Department you know I, as I mentioned I know categories one through three of the US munitions list removed. And I believe it was a Biden campaign promise to revert that Trump era policy back to the US munitions list, and that not has not yet been done. So I am not going to attempt to make any predictions I don't have enough insight into the inner workings right now. I, you know, I certainly hope that that does not happen. It's definitely concerning. I think the arms trade has in the US and globally has a instinct to move to whatever road leads to less transparency. So that's something to be concerned about but you know it's something that we need to make a bit of a ruckus about because the less transparency we have the less we can do about it. You know, the peace movement doesn't can't even react to arms sales that we don't hear about like the ones under congressional reporting thresholds. So the more transparency the better it's it's good to resist that move to the Commerce Department, I'd say, and push for more transparency on the State Department side of it. We don't have any live questions but Lillian do you want to talk a little bit about your organization and like what you guys have done in the past what you have plans to do. Sure. Yeah, I would love to so yeah women for up and straight transparency been in operation for since July 2020 so a year and a few months. We have a divestment campaign regarding the University of Texas Texas and investment management companies investments in weapons manufacturers, another mouthful as many things in this field are. So that's is UT Austin, the entire UT system all of those universities it's their asset manager and they manage a $60 billion portfolio and of that portfolio about $52.5 million from our own analysis is is invested in weapons manufacturers. We've been, you know, communicating with the Tim co board of directors meeting with them, the Board of Regents, getting faculty support student support passing legislation through student governance bodies. It's been quite the process, and we're just you know kind of continuing to be persistent and annoy administration about this. And so that's kind of our initial campaign. We're also doing some work on police militarization through the 1122 program which some of you might have heard of the 1033 program 1122 is a bit smaller and it's different in that police departments have to purchase the equipment and 1033 is just access for free. And so we have recently just obtained federal FOIA records on the 1122 program. We're currently writing our report we're about to do data analysis on that and so that report will be coming out in the next couple of months so definitely watch out for that. You know, definitely looking to generate more public knowledge of this and then work on the advocacy side hopefully trying to, you know, work with some congressional partners maybe to get legislation to get the 1122 program abolished. And then, you know, finally we're we are working on the arm sales under notification thresholds through the FOIA process as well. So we have, you know, about three large scale projects kind of going on at the same time. Yeah. And we're, we're pretty small, but we're plugging along. Where can people follow you guys. Yes. Um, so I will put our website, it's just w2 t2.org. And there we have all our social medias like linked on the top right hand corner. I have a question. Let's see from for him, can you talk about if anything has been done to date by students and faculty, citizens of Austin regarding the headquarters of US Army Futures Grand Rental Campus I heard I haven't heard anything today. Yeah. I personally have not heard of anything either any advocacy and mobilization that's not to say it doesn't exist. I just have not seen it. You know, I think that's extremely concerning. And I think I've seen kind of some individual opposition on social media. Women for weapons trade transparency ourselves whenever it was unveiled that they were doing like a robotics lab we put out like a statement, you know, trying to kind of let people know that that was going on and opposing it. It's especially concerning considering that they are developing robotics technology, which, you know, may include AI facial recognition technology which is notoriously problematic and very dangerous. Thinking of the campaign to stop killer robots. So, you know, thinking that, you know, that kind of technology development is going on at my alma mater is very concerning. And I would personally be really interested in getting involved with with anyone with a campaign to kind of oppose that so if anyone knows anything about that. Feel free to drop it in the chat. My question from Nick. Have you seen any shift by industry from preferring FMS to direct commercial sales or the other way around. Yeah, so there has been a shift to industry kind of preferring DCS from my understanding. And there, especially with. Gosh, I don't remember what specific infrastructure or defense articles and services it was, but I do believe that there has kind of been a shift in recent years to DCS. And it is a bit of an easier process to go through the FMS. And, you know, like I mentioned so we kind of are assuming that a lot of underthreshold stuff is going through DCS. Because there are. Sorry, is DCS less regulated. Generally, there's right yeah let me share that flow chart again. I can find it. Yeah. So, there's like an extra step. So, right so FMS there's a country team assessment here with the US Embassy. We have something to do with it. If anyone has insight into like additional ways that DCS is a bit less regulated please feel free to drop in the chat. But I know that it is kind of notoriously less regulated I don't have a lot of wonky insights into specifically why. But yes. Thank you. Well, it doesn't look like we have any more questions. Pi says she went to UT Austin can try look at more into that so maybe we can circle back to that. I think the biggest FMS DCS difference is FMS is US acquiring foreign set sales for its security partners. So the US government has to perceive on interest for itself. Gotcha. That makes sense. I have a lot of answers in the chat if anyone wants to read it but um. All right well if we don't have any more questions I guess we can wrap up I learned so much and I want to thank Lillian for being with us today, and please go follow women for weapons trade transparency. I always get so screwed up saying that I don't know why my mouth will not let me say you're working. Please please follow them they're great. And we'll have more webinars plans soon. Please go to code pink.org forward slash call to disarm and sign up for campaign updates there. I'll be having more events like these and please go back on code pinks YouTube and watch weapons sales one on one with Jeff Abramson. If you were confused by any of the terms tonight he does break it down absolutely. So it's really really great I really recommend checking that out. Lillian thank you so much for joining us, and thank you everyone who tuned in. And I will see you all next time and have a great rest of your Thursday night. Thank you all so much and thank you for your questions.