Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA), already known as a doubter of the Big Bang theory, sits high on the list of Congressional Republicans on the House Committee on Space, Science, and Technology who have no idea how science works. As Chairman of the Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, Broun emphasized that point on Wednesday when he used his role to hold hearings demonstrating his unfamiliarity with how science spreads.

The hearing, titled “The Impact of International Technology Transfer on American Research and Development,” focused in particular on the transfer of technology to China by energy companies that operate there, many of whom have received tax credits or grant funding to research new sources of power. In his opening statement, Broun made sure his opinion on the Obama administration’s desire to fund alternate energy research was known:

BROUN: Time-and-time-again, we have seen U.S. R&D investments, particularly in sectors that received favorable treatment from the current Administration like wind, solar, and batteries, simply be sent overseas. It’s a dirty secret that nobody wants to talk about – not the government agencies that fund the R&D, not the companies that receive the R&D, not the associations that represent the companies, and certainly not the foreign countries that benefit from our R&D investments. Investments, I should add, that ultimately came from money we borrowed from China in the first place.

Green energy companies have been targeted in particular by the conservatives since they first became benefactors of the stimulus spending bill of 2009. During the presidential campaign, Republican candidate Mitt Romney falsely claimed during a debate that over half of those companies who received federal funding went bankrupt, which was repeated by the right-wing for weeks after.

What Broun fails to address is that the transfer of technology is nothing new, particularly for those industries that aren’t prioritized as being critical to national security. In the case of the latter, laws currently exist to prevent or strictly control the spread of U.S. propitiatory technology to companies overseas. It’s laws like these that led to the break up of a Russian smuggling ring earlier this year that was laundering parts that could be used in the construction and targeting of missiles.

The spread of science in general is even more notorious for ignoring borders, regardless of the funding source. Innovations that began within the United States and based on federal funding, such as the Internet, radar, and GPS, have been utilized for the profit of foreign companies for years without hurting the United States’ overall ability to develop newer and better technologies. Broun seems instead to be suggesting clamping down on federal funding for any science that could then be proliferated to the profit of a foreign company.

In doing so, he is failing to provide a legitimate answer to a legitimate concern. In testimony from Dr. Robert D. Atkinson, President of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, the members of Congress were told that many states do require the transfer of technology to foreign-owned companies in exchange for licenses to construct or operate factories within their borders. These agreements are often to the detriment of the companies in question and can hinder competitiveness abroad. Rather than focusing on the stage of research in which funding is procured, the House would be better served determining ways to ensure a level-playing field in international trade.

A Reuters report published today sheds further light on efforts by foreign corporations to profit from Iran’s surveillance state by selling technology designed to increase the Iranian government’s ability to digitally eavesdrop on its citizens:

Documents seen by Reuters show that a partner of China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd offered to sell a Huawei-developed “Lawful Interception Solution” to MobinNet, Iran’s first nationwide wireless broadband provider, just as MobinNet was preparing to launch in 2010.

The system’s capabilities included “supporting the special requirements from security agencies to monitor in real time the communication traffic between subscribers,” according to a proposal by Huawei’s Chinese partner seen by Reuters.

Huawei denies selling the surveillance system to MobinNet, but Reuters’ source says they “acquired” a Huawei system before launching. The report comes shortly after the International Telecommunications Union’s Telecommunications Standardization Sector (ITU-T) quietly approved new standards for Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) without guidelines for responsible use. DPI is the same the technology promoted by Huawei and another Chinese company, ZTE, for use in Iran’s snooping. More than a dozen U.S. lawmakers urged Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to investigate ZTE sales of surveillance equipment and U.S. technology to Iran in July of this year.

Huawei also provided the technological infrastructure of the closed intranet system currently being developed by Iran. As Chinese companies, neither Huawei or ZTE are banned from doing business with Iran under U.S. sanctions — nor did U.S. sanctions explicitly ban sales of surveillance technology to Iran until earlier this year.

Reuters also reports Iran’s second largest mobile phone operator MTN Irancell was required by their licensing agreement to allow Iran’s security agency to “record and monitor subscribers’ communications, including voice, data, fax, text messaging and voicemail.” MTN Irancell is 49 percent owned by Africa’s largest telecom carrier MTN Group and met the terms of the agreement by using technology purchased by Nokia’s German unit from Utimaco Safeware AG.

The National Defense Authorization Act the Senate passed on Tuesday includes an amendment with a new round of sanctions on Iran. While sanctions the Senate passed last year focused primarily on Iran’s oil trade, this year’s bill, sponsored by Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), goes beyond that. The Wall Street Journal explained the sanctions as targeting:

“Iran’s energy, shipping and shipbuilding sectors, already in the sights of U.S. sanctions. But the legislation goes further, restricting trade with Iran in precious metals, graphite, aluminum and steel, metallugrical coal and software for integrating industrial processes. Under the bill, the President would have to report back to Congress on whether any material was being used as barter to furnish transactions with Tehran.”

After the President signed last year’s NDAA, which also included an Iran sanctions amendment sponsored by Menendez and Kirk, Iran has lost around $133 million per day in oil revenue and protests erupted across Iran as the value of its currency tanked. An oil analyst told Bloomberg that the sanctions were “an unqualified success.” “Many judge that Iran might soon decide it needs a nuclear compromise to produce an easing of sanctions,” a recent CRS report said.

But some find this new round of sanctions excessive. Reza Aslan, an Iran expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said “if the purpose of this new round of sanctions is to pressure Iran to come to the negotiating table in a weakened position, that’s already happened. …These new sanctions are little more than empty politicking by senators eager to display their hard line, and ultimately self-defeating, stance against an American adversary.” The National Iranian American Council’s Policy Director Jamal Abdi concurred, saying, “every round of sanctions passed by Congress further limits the President’s flexibility at the negotiating table and undermines confidence that the U.S. can make a deal. If the President lacks the legal or political flexibility to ease the sanctions as leverage for Iranian concessions, a diplomatic resolution is impossible.” Abdi added that the impact could be vast, “there will be a major chilling effect as more third-country (i.e. not the U.S. or Iran) businesses are unable to ship or pay for transactions of any goods, including food, medicine, and communications goods.”

Former Mossad Chief Efraim Halevy, has said that increased sanctions are the best avenue toward a diplomatic solution. Halevy said in October that there needed to be “sanctions, more sanctions, more sanctions and many other things…The fact of the matter is the sanctions have not brought the end to the program but sanctions are hurting very much.”

Though the Obama administration believes that a diplomatic solution utilizing sanctions is the “best and more permanent” way to solve the crisis, it has voiced apprehension about the current sanctions legislation. National Security Council Spokesperson Tommy Vietor said that the administration has “concerns with some of the formulations as currently drafted in the text and want to work through them with our congressional partners to make the law more effective and consistent with the current sanctions law to ensure we don’t undercut our success to date.” The bill will be conferenced by the House and Senate this week.

Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen is going on the offensive once more, this time in pursuit of cuts to military spending.

Mullen, who has previously called the national debt the “most significant threat to our national security,” is heading the new Coalition for Fiscal and National Security along with several other foreign policy luminaries. The group, operating out of the Peter G Peterson Foundation, is seeking to influence the debate surrounding the fiscal cliff by lending their gravitas in support of military cuts that are currently unpopular on the Hill.

In one of their first acts, the Coalition has put out a full-page ad in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and other newspapers today, calling attention to the lessened need for overwhelming superiority in military spending:

“In previous eras, increased defense spending may have been required to maintain security,” the group wrote in a joint statement. “That is no longer the case. In our judgment, advances in technological capabilities and the changing nature of threats make it possible, if properly done, to spend less on a more intelligent, efficient and contemporary defense strategy that maintains our military superiority and national security.”

Areas that the Coalition believes could be targeted for savings include pension, health-care, and procurement costs. That spending would then be channeled into facets of national security that are under-funded, such as diplomacy and international organizations. As a comparison, in Fiscal Year 2012 the Pentagon requested $553 billion in funding; the State Department requested a paltry $47 billion in comparison.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, in 2011 the U.S. spends about as much on supporting its military as the next ten countries’ expenditures combined. Just last night, the Senate unanimously passed a $630 billion bill to fund the Pentagon, the war in Afghanistan and nuclear weapons for FY 2013.

The Coalition’s recommendations echo several of those put forward by the Center for American Progress Task Force on a Unified Security Budget’s recently published report calling for balancing the U.S. security budget, including providing more funding to non-military areas of national security.

Tennessee’s Republican Governor, Bill Haslam, has had it with attacks on an economic adviser, Samar Ali, a Muslim-American lawyer, who has been attacked by Republicans in the state and anti-Islam groups. Speaking at a Republican event, the governor was asked, according to the AP, whether “he was incorporating elements of Islamic law into state government” in having Ali as part of his staff. Haslam, incredulous, responded with a soaring defense of the accomplished Ali:

“Samar is somebody who quite frankly I think — and I know there are some people in this room who disagree with me — that I think has been incredibly unfairly maligned. We believe in people having the freedom in our country to exercise their religion as long as it doesn’t violate the Constitution, and that’s a big ‘as long as’.”

Indeed, for the past six months, local groups have launched vicious attacks against Ali, including the GOP in Stewart County, TN, which wrote an outrageous resolution in July on Ali saying she was “an expert in Sharia Compliant Finance which is one of the many ways Islamic terrorism is funded.” Two other counties joined in the condemnation. Even local candidates, like Woody Degan, who was then running for a Republican state senate seat, said Ali’s main function in the governor’s office was to bring in “Sharia money” and to make the office “Sharia compliant.” Degan added, “we’re going to let them bring it into Tennessee and let those proceeds go back to kill our boys.” The Center for Security Policy, an organization run by anti-Islam activist Frank Gaffney, pushed the preposterous charges, saying that the hiring meant that “financial jihadists will soon be targeting the Volunteer state for infiltration and influence operations.”

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