The Bureau of Industry and Security last week revoked export privileges for two people after they illegally exported firearms and other items from the U.S.
The Biden administration should wait to place new export controls on the semiconductor industry until it adequately assesses the impact of its existing restrictions, the Semiconductor Industry Association said this week. The U.S. chip industry should be able to continue accessing the China market, SIA said, warning that “repeated steps” to “impose overly broad, ambiguous, and at times unilateral restrictions risk diminishing the U.S. semiconductor industry’s competitiveness, disrupting supply chains, causing significant market uncertainty, and prompting continued escalatory retaliation by China.”
The Commerce Department published its spring 2023 regulatory agenda for the Bureau of Industry and Security and the Census Bureau, including new rules that will add more entities to the Entity List and finalize new export filing requirements.
The Bureau of Industry and Security added four spyware companies in Greece, Hungary, Ireland and North Macedonia to the Entity List for their role in cyber activities that threaten the “privacy and security of individuals and organizations worldwide.” The additions, outlined in a final rule effective June 18, impose license requirements for all items subject to the Export Administration Regulations. BIS will review license applications under a presumption of denial.
The Bureau of Industry and Security last week fined two defense companies close to $100,000 combined to resolve their violations of the agency’s antiboycott regulations. The agency fined Arizona-based defense weapons systems manufacturer Profense $48,500 and Washington-based defense contractor B.E. Meyers & Co. $44,750 after they complied with requests from freight forwarders to certify that their goods weren’t Israeli origin.
The U.S. may need to address export control loopholes to better prevent China and others from acquiring sensitive technologies, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said, but he also cautioned the U.S. against imposing controls that are too broad and said they need to be coordinated with allies.
Andrea Gacki is leaving her role as director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control to become the new director of the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, the agency announced July 13. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Gacki helped guide OFAC through “major world events,” including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and “expertly” deployed financial sanctions, industry guidance and enforcement actions “to hold accountable those who threaten our national security and the international financial system.”
American universities and research labs should make sure they’re screening against a new Defense Department list of Chinese, Russian and Iranian institutions that have “elevated risks,” Crowell & Mooring said in a July 11 client alert. The list, published by DOD June 30, includes more than 45 entities that “have been confirmed as engaging in problematic activity,” including behavior that increases the risk that DOD-funded research could be “misappropriated to the detriment of national or economic security.”
As the U.S. continues to expand its chip export controls, South Korean and other multinational firms with semiconductor investments in China “face an uncertain future,” the Peterson Institute for International Economics said in a report this week. The report, authored by PIIE senior fellow Martin Chorzempa, outlines both the “collateral damage and new opportunities” for South Korean companies as a result of the Commerce Department's Oct. 7 controls (see 2210070049), saying Korean firms “have been some of the most impacted non-Chinese firms due to their large memory chip production facilities in China.” The report also recommends the U.S. do more to “reduce uncertainty” for allies operating in the region.
The Bureau of Industry and Security could use its existing “catch-all controls” to tighten restrictions around exports of sensitive artificial intelligence models, eliminating the need to develop new regulations to address emerging AI export risks, researchers with Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology said this week. The researchers said the catch-all controls -- which allow BIS to restrict exports if there is “knowledge” the item will be used in certain dangerous ways -- may be “sufficient” to “address the use of AI in more traditional national security realms.”