On Tue, Mar 18, 2025 at 4:56 PM Jim Reid <jim@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Tue, 18 Mar 2025 at 13:01, Andrew Alston <aa@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Hi All,
>
> The New York Times recently published a list of countries planned for outright travel bans or sharply restricted visas, and another long list of countries that could end up in either the restricted or travel ban list. It's kind of disheartening to note that 22 out of the 43 countries on the list are in Africa.
Agreed. But this is *far* beyond the scope of the IETF.
Is it? IETF is founded on DEI principles. If people are unable to contribute from a large part of the world, that is completely in scope for IETF.
> Irrespective of where they are, my question to the IESG is simple, will the IETF look at moving IETF 127 (Scheduled for San Francisco) should these travel bans go into effect. I cannot see how it is possible to hold an IETF meeting in a country that is effectively barring entry to so many participants.
Fine words. But impractical ones. Changing existing hotel bookings because of this sort of ugliness can be expensive and/or unworkable. Good luck finding a hotel/venue that could accommodate an IETF meeting at short notice. If we’ve signed contracts for IETF127, it’ll probably be too late to do anything about that.
I don't think those concerns are going to be relevant. The President of the United States has threatened to invade three countries, two of them members of NATO. The logical conclusion to draw from these repeated threats is that either the man is serious and will start a war or that he has a cognitive impairment and may or may not be allowed to start a war.
It seems more likely than not that either the problem will have resolved itself before IETF 127 or the US is likely to become unviable as a venue because he has acted on those threats and at minimum, the US is under the same air travel embargo that has been imposed on other countries engaged in wars of aggression. In that case, we likely see most attendees being remote if the security situation allows the meeting to be held at all.
I don't see the need to replace the IETF 127 venue because we could easily survive on 2 meetings a year. The lack of hallway conversations would be a loss but it would only be one meeting.
