Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell told a congressional panel Sept. 18 that he will look into the possibility of expanding the export control exemptions that the State Department intends to grant to Australia and the U.K. under the AUKUS security partnership.
The U.S. recently unsealed a pair of indictments, one against Russian national Denis Postovoy and the other against Chinese national Song Wu, for national security-related offenses. Postovoy is accused of conspiring to commit export control violations by shipping microelectronic components with military applications from the U.S. to Russia, while Song is charged with fraud and identity theft related to efforts to obtain confidential or proprietary software from government agencies, research universities and private companies.
The Bureau of Industry and Security issued a correction to the most recent annual revision of the Code of Federal Regulations that it said introduced an "editorial or technical error" to the Entity List. The change restores the entries for Kapil Raj Arora under the Netherlands and Orion Eleven Pvt. Ltd. under Pakistan. The notice was scheduled to be published in the Federal Register Sept. 16.
Congress should consider encouraging greater use of export controls and sanctions to counter a recent surge in the repression of political dissent abroad, hearing witnesses told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week.
The Bureau of Industry and Security could use more export enforcement agents abroad and better analytical tools to track illegal shipments, said Matthew Axelrod, the agency’s top export enforcement official. He also said companies should expect BIS to continue to issue large corporate enforcement penalties for export control violations.
The U.S. is imposing export penalties against three Chinese companies, a Pakistani company and a Chinese national for their involvement in “missile technology proliferation activities,” the State Department said in a notice scheduled to be published in the Federal Register Sept. 12.
The House approved several export control-related bills late Sept. 9, including the Remote Access Security Act, which is designed to close a loophole that has allowed China to use cloud service providers to access advanced U.S. computing chips remotely (see 2409040046).
The Georgia Institute of Technology is severing ties with China-based Tianjin University, a school added to the Bureau of Industry and Secuirty’s Entity List in 2020, saying Tianjin’s placement on the list has made their relationship “no longer tenable.”
The House of Representatives plans to vote on several export control-related bills next week, including the Remote Access Security Act, which is designed to close a loophole that has allowed China to use cloud service providers to access advanced U.S. computing chips remotely.
Nazak Nikakhtar, acting head of the Bureau of Industry and Security during the Trump administration, blamed the deep state for a lack of urgency in confronting China, during a podcast interview with China Talk. Nikakhtar did not use that term, but said that it was hard for Commerce Department career officials to shift their thinking from promoting exports of goods to restricting exports or investment. Nikakhtar was previously a civil servant herself, working on antidumping and countervailing duty cases and negotiations with China.