Sir

I simply cannot free my mind of the marvellous dreamscape inspired by the Correspondence letter “US rules on tech transfer to foreign nationals” from Peter Lichtenbaum of the US Department of Commerce (Nature 432, 15; 2004doi:10.1038/432015b).

I, the humble foreign-national visitor, enter the generous host laboratory and start twiddling the knobs on their latest $1-million gizmo, perhaps with disastrous results for its integrity.

But the resident expert technician cannot approach me with advice because that's ‘training’, and requires a licence!