Export reforms sought to keep U.S. “running faster”

Export reforms sought to keep U.S. “running faster”

Export reforms sought to keep U.S. “running faster”

A co-chairman of the National Research Council’s Committee on Science, Security and Prosperity has sent a blunt message to U.S. lawmakers on the state of export controls.
   “The national security controls on science and technology are broken,” Brent Scowcroft, a retired Air Force general and president of The Scowcroft Group, told the House Science and Technology Committee on Feb. 25.
   The current export controls were largely developed during the Cold War and have fallen out of touch with national security measures as they pertain to keeping certain U.S.-developed high-tech products out of the hands of rogue nations and terrorist groups.
   “Today, the United States has competition in most areas of advanced research and development, including military related S&T (science and technology),” Scowcroft said. “Thus the number of access points to advanced science and technology have grown considerably and perhaps more to the point, outside the control of the United States.
   “Second, most military production in the U.S. is now commercially based, thus blurring the distinction between commercial grade and weapons grade for thousands of so called ‘dual-use’ goods and technologies. And third, the western alliance has lost its Cold War consensus; NATO member countries and Japan no longer agree on what countries need to be controlled, what items should be controlled, and what kinds of controls are needed,” he said.
   “If we sustain these export controls and visa barriers, we will increasingly lose touch with the cutting edge of science and technology, and we risk missing emerging national security threats,” he warned.
   Scowcroft said the committee’s report — Beyond “Fortress America”: National Security Controls on Science and Technology in a Globalized World — expresses the need for the U.S. science and technology sector to “run faster” by making scientific breakthroughs more quickly than those who would use these advances to harm the United States economically.
   “In policy terms, running faster means having an agile system of national security controls that can adapt quickly to the changing geopolitical and technological landscapes,” he said.
   The committee first recommended the U.S. government establish two administrative entities possibly within the National Security Council.
   The first is a coordinating center for export controls that would serve as a “one-stop shop” for all export license applications. The main role of this small center would be to determine whether the Commerce or State departments should handle a particular license application and dispatch it accordingly.
   The second entity would serve as an appeals panel of possibly three retired federal judges that will hear and decide disputes about whether export licenses are required and whether particular decisions to grant or deny license were made properly. “The committee proposes that ‘sunset’ requirements be applied to all items on U.S. export control lists, and it would require findings to be made every 12 months that removing controls on an item would present a substantial risk to national security,” Scowcroft explained.
   The committee’s second recommendation is that the administration of existing export control statutes, such as the Arms Export Control Act and Export Administration Act, should assure the scientific and technological competitiveness of the United States as “prerequisite for both national security and economic prosperity,” Scowcroft said.
   The third recommendation calls for the United States to improve its regulations for accessing and promoting the use of foreign talent in scientific and technological developments.
   “These innovations can help bring transparency, efficiency and consistency to a system that is now lacking all three of these qualities,” Scowcroft said.
   The committee recommends that President Obama sign an executive order in early 2009 that will put these provisions into affect in 90 days.
   “If these reforms are not implemented, the system will continue to bog down, with multiplying negative effects to our national security and competitiveness,” Scowcroft said to the House committee. “There will be nothing to prevent the continued erosion of our defense industrial base; the loss of market-share globally in advanced technologies; the off-shoring of knowledge intensive jobs; the bureaucratic wrangling among the agencies to name a few.”
   The complete committee report isavailable online. ' Chris Gillis