Many More Resources Needed to Implement ECRA, Former BIS Official Says
The U.S. government needs more resources, including better expertise, to identify emerging and foundational technologies under the Export Control Reform Act of 2018, said Kevin Wolf, the Commerce Department’s former assistant secretary for export administration. Speaking before a U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission hearing last week, Wolf said export controls are more “complex” now than they have been in decades, mostly due to Chinese technology acquisition efforts and the continued development of advanced technologies.
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“With respect to the emerging and foundation technology process, frankly it needs massively more resources to do it,” said Wolf, a trade lawyer with Akin Gump. “There are lots of experts in the government at electronic warfare and other proliferation objectives, but there simply aren't the people in the government who know this area well enough to be able to understand the questions, to be able to identify the choke points.”
While the government has “a lot of really terrific experts,” Wolf wrote in written testimony that identifying technologies that meet ECRA’s standards is “massively harder and requires more resources and creativity than anything that has ever been done in the export control system.” The acting head of BIS said last week the agency is willing to consider ways to speed up the process, which some view as taking too long (see 2109080062).