The Federal Maritime Commission is accepting applications from those interested in joining its newly formed National Shipper Advisory Committee, the FMC announced June 7. The committee -- which will accept 12 members from the export community and 12 from the import community -- will meet at least once a year and advise the FMC on the “competitiveness, reliability, integrity, and fairness” of the ocean freight delivery system. Members will serve appointments of up to three years and will not be paid. Applications are due June 30.

President Joe Biden will nominate Grant Harris to be the Commerce Department's assistant secretary for industry and analysis within the International Trade Administration, the White House announced June 3. Harris is the CEO of the consulting firm Connect Frontier, which advises companies doing business in “emerging and frontier markets,” the White House said. He also teaches strategy and political risk in emerging markets and previously served as a special assistant to President Barack Obama and deputy chief of staff to former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice.

Linda Lourie, who previously worked as an acquisitions and logistics counsel for the Defense Department, will join the White House to focus on investment screening and export control issues, she announced June 2 on LinkedIn. Lourie will be the assistant director for research and technology security at the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy, where she said she will work on “national security issues of research and technology security.” This will include the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., export restrictions and intellectual property, she said. The White House didn’t comment.

The State Department approved a $3.5 billion military sale to Australia, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said June 3. The sale includes “AH-64E Apache Helicopters” and related equipment, and the prime contractors will be Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

The Biden administration announced an interagency review and strategy to better combat corruption, including through the use of sanctions. In a June 3 memo, President Joe Biden directed the Treasury, Commerce and State departments, along with other agencies and offices, to consider recommendations for an improved anti-corruption strategy, which should rely on asset freezing, sanctions, enforcement actions and more robust ownership reporting to Treasury. The U.S. should be “building upon targeted anticorruption sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Act and similar authorities,” the White House said in a fact sheet. The U.S. should also better work with allies to counter corruption by foreign leaders, state-owned companies and others by “closing loopholes exploited by these actors to interfere in democratic processes in the United States and abroad.” The interagency review will take place over the next 200 days.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. approved a $30 million investment by Hanwha Systems, a South Korean defense technology company, into Kymeta, a U.S. satellite communications company, Kymeta announced May 26. Kymeta said CFIUS’ approval “clears the way” for the two companies to close on the transaction, which will help Kymeta’s “global market reach, accelerate production, and improve the overall growth trajectory of the company.” The companies announced the transaction in December.

Steptoe & Johnson launched its "Supply Chain University" -- a series of short of videos discussing the various complexities around supply chains, the firm said in a May 28 blog post. In the series, partner Jeff Weiss interviews industry and legal professionals along with academics to discuss supply chain topics such as cybersecurity and artificial intelligence and explore how supply chain issues overlap with nearly every industry.

Georgetown University researchers released a report this week on the Chinese government’s strategy to acquire foreign technology, including its efforts to monitor foreign countries’ technological “breakthroughs” and identify investment opportunities for Chinese firms. The report details the responsibilities of China’s “science and technology diplomats,” who are stationed at embassies around the world to help Chinese firms “more easily gain access to technologies abroad.” The report, written by Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, examines which technologies China is targeting, where the country focuses most of its efforts and whether the strategy has proved successful.

The State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls will hold a June 8 webinar on defense service agreements, the agency announced May 27. Officials from DDTC’s information technology modernization team and licensing division will answer common questions on submitting agreement requests to DDTC and explain the submission process in the Defense Export Control and Compliance System. There will also be a question-and-answer period.

President Joe Biden on May 26 officially announced nominations to fill two senior Treasury Department positions that oversee sanctions (see 2104300068). Biden nominates attorney Brian Nelson to be undersecretary of the Terrorism and Financial Intelligence office, which oversees the Office of Foreign Assets Control. He also nominates Treasury adviser Elizabeth Rosenberg for assistant secretary of terrorist financing.