Feds have 99+% conviction rate and infinite money and time, meanwhile you sit in cage and deal with frozen accounts while trying to pay your attorney. They imprisoned weev for doing arithmetic on wget'ing a public website.

Worst sin is angering the gods. I would imagine most the time theyll probably just ask nicely for you to stop, then bury you if you don't, but for political or convenient targets they seem fine going straight for the throat.

The hyperbole isn’t helping your argument here. Weev spent time brute-forcing collection of personal information which they discussed using for phishing, manipulating AT&T’s stock price, and potentially shorting the stock:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2011/01/goatse-security-trol...

They were too bumbling to actually do anything that serious but being too broke to run a stock scam isn’t exactly a great character testimonial, and all of that is well outside of professional ethical boundaries in the infosec community.

Its not hyperbole, you're just using misguided rhetoric of the prosecution. Weev has escaped to Ukraine in any case, those same bumbling idiots making your argument had their conviction dropped on appeal.

His appeal was decided on a technicality over where the case was brought:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/04/appeals-court-re...

It’s certainly possible that a court might have found his actions did not violate the relevant laws, but that was not the case in the first trial where he had full opportunity to challenge the prosecution’s claims. You might characterize that as “misguided rhetoric” but that should be your cue to ask whether it’s really true that you understand the situation better than his real legal team.

The "real" prosecuting legal team didn't even prosecute in the right venue. That's how far off the mark they were.

The main reason the Feds’ conviction rate is so high is they’re lazy cowards who only try cases that are extremely easy to convict. It’s not that they do nothing but there are shitty incentives in place to only put cases in front of judges that are certain.

Since they are using your money to do this work, is this not what a taxpayer would want? How long are you gonna keep that gig if you are a coin flippin kind of prosecutor, and when your boss runs for whatever office, he gets crucified for wasting taxpayer money on uncertain cases?

More based on the whims of a prosecutor. Many small companies violate sanctions (usually unknowingly) and don't get prosecuted. But stick out too much, and you'll likely get hammered.

State Department will have all the docs one needs to avoid any problems. In your example, the real risk would be that the lithium mining equipment is dual-use, ie: they also use it to mine yellowcake uranium ore, or when your watch business takes off, they struggle to provide enough brine, and bring in specialists from Afghanistan, who streamline the process and who's Dari has a Tehran accent.

They can let you keep making money until it's promotion time, or an example needs to be made for an election campaign or they find out your watches seem to be the chronometer of choice of the latest insurgency.