US, Allies Should Establish New Multilateral Export Control Regime, Experts Say
The U.S. and other techno-democracies should capitalize on their closely coordinated Russia sanctions work to create a new multilateral export control group, said two experts with Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. A new regime, which would include a range of technology-producing nations that share democratic values, would help those countries address technology proliferation issues that existing regimes can not.
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Not only would the regime more effectively keep sensitive technologies from being misused by authoritarian governments, it also would reduce pressure on the U.S. to impose unilateral controls, CSET research fellow Emily Weinstein said. “The unilateral route is potentially effective in the short term, but not in the long term, and usually ends up hurting industry more,” Weinstein said during a May 23 event hosted by CSET. “We need to tackle these issues with allies not only just to stay friendly with allies, but to ensure that we are actually closing all of the gaps we need to close if we're using export controls.”
While the U.S. and others have recently created a “variety of really excellent” multilateral forums to address technology proliferation issues, such as the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council, there is no existing group that addresses the set of new, non-traditional national security and foreign policy issues facing democracies, Akin Gump trade lawyer Kevin Wolf said. These new issues include China’s pursuit of economic dominance, Weinstein said, along with supply chain resiliency issues, technologies that enable human-rights abuses, and the civil-military fusion policies of China and Russia.
“This will be a difficult exercise,” Wolf said, “but the mold has been broken” by the multilateral Russia sanctions. Wolf, a non-resident senior fellow with CSET and former senior export control official at the Bureau of Industry and Security, said the trade restrictions against Russia already include a variety of non-traditional controls. “What we're saying here is: Take the opportunity that the allies have created by imposing non-regime-based controls outside the scope of the regimes to address these non-traditional issues.”
The new regime can start small, Wolf said, but can grow over time, similar to the other existing multilateral regimes, such as the Wassenaar Arrangement or the Australia Group. He said the new regime should include other “legitimate techno-democracies that have similar values,” including ones that are willing to change their laws to make the controls country-specific as well as based on end-uses and end-users.
Weinstein specifically mentioned Taiwan, which would be an important partner country beyond the fact that it’s home to the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. “Yes, TSMC is a very important piece of this,” Weinstein said. “But I think Taiwan is a great example of a techno-democracy that we can be bringing into these conversations to help push this regime in a productive way forward.”
If the regime is created, members should first seek to harmonize their military end-use and end-user controls, Wolf said. Although many countries already have the controls, they are often implemented differently, he said. “There's a great deal of harmony of policy objectives, but not in terms of implementation,” Wolf said. “That would be an easy first step.”
Wolf and Weinstein said they hope countries can “move as quickly as possible” to set up a new regime, particularly because the attention and resources devoted to Russia sanctions may fade over time. “Given the urgency of the issues and the difficulty of getting alignment, moving quickly is really our suggestion,” Wolf said. “The allies have shown they can move quickly when they want to.”
The Commerce Department said it’s working with allies to create a new multilateral export control enforcement coordination mechanism (see 2205110052) and hopes to make progress on the concept of a broader export control regime by the end of the year (see 2205170034).
More multilateral coordination can also help the U.S. more effectively control emerging and foundational technologies, Weinstein said. Commerce, which has announced nearly 40 emerging technology controls but no foundational technology restrictions, is under pressure to move faster on the controls (see 2204080033).
“I think it is going to be difficult to come up with some type of concrete list of emerging and foundational technologies,” Weinstein said. But more input from industries outside of the U.S., especially in a multilateral context, could help Commerce make progress, she said. “Honestly, bringing this up to the multilateral level and having a multilateral version of a [technical advisory committee] I think would be fantastic.”