US Should Carefully Assess ‘Downsides’ of Tech Export Controls, Microsoft Exec Says
The U.S. needs to be careful when imposing export controls on emerging technologies to avoid hurting U.S. research and innovation, said Robert Blair, Microsoft's senior director-5G and external affairs. Blair, speaking during a May 10 event hosted by the Task Force on American Innovation, said industry wants to help the administration stem the proliferation of technologies to bad actors while also avoiding hurting the competitiveness of U.S. companies, specifically those working on quantum technologies.
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“We are very supportive of the regulation work with our partners in government,” Blair said, but Microsoft also wants to ensure officials are “as fully informed as possible about what we see in emerging technologies, and that they see potential downsides to overburdensome regulations.” He said some export controls “are not necessarily effective or may actually have the counterproductive elements of hurting innovation rather than allowing this to flourish.”
Blair specifically pointed to quantum technologies, which Microsoft is studying closely. He said the company is developing technology "which we think is going to be leading quantum computing going forward."
The White House recently announced several initiatives to protect U.S. quantum technology efforts, including a directive to construct “well-targeted” export controls to prevent U.S. innovation from being stolen by adversaries (see 2205040005). The Commerce Department is studying slices of quantum technologies for potential export controls and quantum tech experts have warned about the dangers of broad restrictions (see 2204140033).
“As we're developing that technology, we’re also thinking about, how can quantum computing be used properly and what sort of rules should we want to make sure that it's not used improperly?” Blair said. “But we can’t do that for everything.” Although he said industry and academia can help the government in its mission to protect national security, that may not always be their main goal.
“The government has the primary role in things like national security, things which industry and academia can support,” Blair said. “But we will not be leading on [that], because it's the government's role to do so.”
Aside from carefully crafted export controls, the government can take other steps to avoid hindering U.S. research and innovation in emerging technologies, other panelists said. Several called on the Senate and House to quickly reconcile their differences in the comprehensive China package, which could include incentives and funding for the chip industry.
Kathleen Kingscott, IBM vice president-strategic partnerships, said she thinks conferees can finish negotiations by Memorial Day and present it to President Joe Biden for his signature by July 4. “It's doable,” she said. “There’s a heck of a lot of work ahead, but let's do it.”
Blair said he knows the negotiations will be difficult and hopes they include important research and innovation incentives. “All I can say is that all of our partners across industry and academia have such high hopes for Congress being able to put this together in a timely fashion and preserving the basic components that are so important to make sure that the United States keeps leadership in innovation,” he said.