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BIS Willing to Speed Up Tech Efforts

The Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security could consider ways to speed up its emerging and foundational technology control effort, a congressional commission on China was told Wednesday. Acting BIS Undersecretary Jeremy Pelter acknowledged criticism the agency is moving…

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too slowly implementing the 2018 Export Control Reform Act and defended the work BIS has done and said the agency doesn’t plan to change course. “I take your criticism to heart,” Pelter told the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCESRC), which published a report in June saying the Commerce Department “failed” to carry out its export control responsibilities over emerging and foundational technologies. If a technology is widely available, “and we're simply doing a unilateral control,” China will get the technology from elsewhere, “our industry will be harmed, and we will have gained nothing,” he said. How many years should Congress need to wait for action on foundational technology, asked Commissioner Derek Scissors of the American Enterprise Institute. Commissioner Michael Wessel, appointed to the USCESRC by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said BIS’ multilateral strategy has been “exceptionally slow.” Pelter pointed to the new EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council, which is holding its first export control working group this month. "For too long, the U.S. position on digital trade has been to promote continued laissez faire," said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., in a statement Thursday as the council was launched. That's "even as we saw the downsides of this approach to technology governance," he added.