Commerce Hoping to Move Forward on Foundational, Emerging Tech, Commerce Official Says
The Commerce Department is aiming to publish its advance notice of proposed rulemaking for foundational technologies before the end of September, said Rich Ashooh, the assistant secretary for export administration. “That’s kind of the goal,” Ashooh said, speaking during a Sept. 5 Materials Technical Advisory Committee meeting. “It’s really important for us to get there.”
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Commerce has fielded questions for several months from industry representatives and trade lawyers about the delay in the ANPRM for foundational technologies since Ashooh and other officials predicted they would be published soon. In June, Ashooh said the notice would be released in “weeks, not months” (see 1906040038). A Bureau of Industry and Security official recently said she and other top Commerce officials expected the notice to be published by now (see 1909030037).
“Nothing happens as quickly as you’d like. There's no question about that,” Ashooh said, speaking also about the delay for proposed controls on emerging technologies. Ashooh said Commerce is using the extra time to be “thoughtful in what we do and making sure all the appropriate stakeholders are involved.”
Ashooh said Commerce wants to end the delay on emerging and foundational technologies partly because of the increasing level of scrutiny and importance placed on export controls, especially as the U.S.’s trade war with China continues. “When you have the president actually saying what we will and won’t do with Huawei … there's no question we’re at a kind of a high-water mark as far as how export controls fit into the administration's priorities,” he said.
He also said Commerce plans to release at least “some versions of controls” on emerging technologies despite comments from Hillary Hess, director of the BIS Regulatory Policy Division, who recently said Commerce may determine no controls are necessary. “We will have a tranche that will emerge from that,” Ashooh said.
Commerce received more than 200 comments on its November 2018 proposal for emerging technologies, some nearly 10 pages long, Ashooh said. He said “a lot of them were driven by people’s worst-case scenarios,” adding that there is a perception among U.S. industry that Commerce plans to place export restrictions on broad categories of technologies, such as all of artificial intelligence.
“I think there’s a sense that there's going to be this massive rulemaking that results from this. That is not what's going to happen,” Ashooh said. He said that perception has led to “a bunch of alarmist comments.”
“This is why it's important to put it out there so we can show everybody,” Ashooh said. “We’re going to have very specific, easy to handle controls in those areas.”
Ashooh said Commerce is still digging through the categories of emerging technologies to determine which should be restricted, but said the agency has made progress on AI and quantum computers. Commerce has also pinpointed some technologies that don’t need controls, he said, such as hypersonics. “As far as the risk being more on the emerging side, we’re not really detecting that,” he said of hypersonics.
Other technologies are more difficult to categorize, Ashooh said, because they may have “lots of foreign availability” -- which would render export controls largely pointless -- but still have “aspects of it that are emerging.”
“The goal there is to be disciplined about looking at emerging technologies,” he said, “and not give in to temptations with a desire to review currently controlled technology."