Existing Controls Must Evolve to Keep Pace With Tech, Senior US Official Says
As the U.S. pursues new export controls on emerging technologies destined to China, it’s also focusing heavily on updating existing controls to close loopholes and keep pace with technological changes, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said this week.
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Sullivan specifically pointed to the Biden administration's recent semiconductor export controls on China, which included an initial set of rules in 2022 followed by an update last year. “I think the world can expect that will be part of the process going forward,” Sullivan said, speaking broadly about other technology controls.
“As the technology evolves, our controls have to evolve,” he said during an event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations. “It doesn’t mean the standards underlying our controls evolve -- those remain constant. But they have to be applied to technology as it advances, and that will require updates to existing controls, even as we add targeted, tailored controls in other areas as well.”
Sullivan said “we will take further steps” to restrict certain technology exports to China, but he declined to say what those will be. He said the U.S. will “tailor them and target them in a way that they really are aimed at our national security concerns and not at a broader effort to decouple our technological ecosystems or our economies. But I will leave for a later day what exactly the nature and timetable of additional measures will be.”