The US Department of Commerce is putting together an expanded list of technologies deemed important to national security, and hence subject to export controls. Because the US interprets sharing knowledge of a technology with a non-US person as a "deemed export", technologies on this list cannot be discussed with any non-US person unless Commerce approves.
While this might make sense with the right set of technologies, flipping through this list, it seems to be written by someone with either a minimal technical background an excessively ideological bent.
Some technologies are plainly not "sensitive", such as:
1. "Distribution-based Logistics Systems" - aka JIT logistics like UPS and DHL
2. "Position, Navigation, and Timing technology" - clocks and GPS baseband receivers
While others are defined in an excessively broad way:
1. "Mobile electric power" - aka golf carts? or does it only cover phased plasma rifles in the 40 watt range?
2. "Audio and Video manipulation technologies" - so... Instagram filters? Or only "deepfakes"?
3. "Planning" - scheduling, like x.ai?
4. "Systems on Chip" - the whole category?
What is troubling is that were this list to go through, immigrants from entire countries would be effectively barred from the US tech industry, as they could not collaborate with their peers. What's more, US tech companies would be effectively banned from interacting with companies in countries the US government doesn't like but doesn't have the political capital to sanction. I'm reminded of Ming China at this point, and not in a good way.
On a similar list (aka "not to be discussed/shared with a non-US citizen) is thermal/night vision technology.
And yet, a veritable cornucopia if videos on YouTube, and images in marketing materials online, clearly showing the capabilities and features.
Overly broad? Certainly.
Just another tool in an enforcement agency's toolbox? Likely.
I work with thermal imaging cameras. The rules are very specific on what can be exported, but it's not a blanket ban. I've asked FLIR for CAD documents before and they just sent them. The actual technology inside the systems is very hush hush though, very difficult to find anything publicly.
Basically anything below 9fps is fine to send anywhere except countries on the USA naughty list.
Anything above that can be exported with minimal effort to countries on the USA "nice" list (called STA). If you're in a non "terrorist" country, but not in the friendly group you can apply for an export license which isn't particularly onerous.
There are specific exceptions for high resolution cameras, high speed cameras, cooled options and so on. That's not to say you can't export them, but you need additional clearance.
Export control has huge downsides and I agree with the general sentiment that the US overdoes it. However, logistics and navigation have obvious military applications. A state-of-the-art GPS receiver can slot straight into a missile.
Speaking of state of the art CPUs, I own a couple years old "KiwiSDR" web-ui receiver which devotes some CPU cycles to implementing a GPS rx and it uses the GPS lock to discipline the internal oscillators such that the radio is driftless and perfect frequency accuracy. It works pretty well. My receiver is somewhat more frequency stable than some local AM broadcasters, which is weird to see in the waterfall display; many local broadcasters do GPS discipline, of course.
Note that the hardware Skyworks SE4150L chip is an RF front-end, all the math is done in software, the chip merely attaches to the GPS antenna and squirts out a very raw digital bit-stream of data, its hardly a full GPS squirting out NMEA RS232 serial data. I am aware of SDR hardware that does the RF work in software, which is a slight step beyond the KiwiSDR.
Technology is not distributed smoothly and software defined GPS is cheap enough that everyone except cheap consumer gear can implement it. Someday, presumably, computing power will be cheap enough that your microwave oven and clothes washer will not bother with expensive hardware to have a semi-accurate timer, they'll just use cheap SDR code in a FPGA to listen to GPS to time your microwave popcorn and clothes spin cycle. That's the fundamental problem with regulations like this, they don't slow down "state actors" they just stand in the way of (taxable, profitable) commercial exploitation.
Post 2000, post 2010 at worst, no serious missile program will ever lack an unlimited GPS, but post regulation, the technology will be crippled from entering consumer goods.
Now what is interesting to speculate is it would be destabilizing if we know that they know how to crack the military P(Y) code or the newer M code for higher resolution positioning. I'm not sure that would help with missiles but if our secret squirrels are freaking out about the generic topic of software GPS, that would imply some state level actor (or lower?) has a crack or exploit for the math behind P(Y) code or M code streams, which has interesting implications for other crypto systems.
I think if they have the rocket scientests to design and manufacture missiles in the first place then export control of GPS chips is security theater - they have advanced mathematics and supercomputers by missle tech standards with just a desktop computer.
Food has military applications as well - because soldiers need to eat.
It's worth noting that the EU, Russia and China all either have developed, or are developing, state of the art navigation systems of their own and thus there's no dependence on GPS as there once was and thus the utility of any export controls on it is limited at best.
Yeah and "national security" has always been a form of rhetorical special pleading around the constitution and any check on power.
I personally have this heuristic for if it is potentially valid - if they can't even explain why it is important for National Security it is utter bullshit as a power grab.
This is a request for public comment. Logistics is a key function in the military and a decisive capability in waging war. Position, Navigation and Timing technology improvements can be a decisive factor on the battlefield.
Much of this technology is of course in the public domain. However leading research & developments are not. So I’d expect to see responses that seek to define leading areas of research that are sensitive.
This may not be objective coming from a non-US person but it seems strange to me that the US likes to have that cloak of respecting others, standing for freedom, equality etc. and using that around the world as a cover for a lot of meddling they're doing, while at the same time openly admiring that other people are simply lesser and if we ban tech that could save lives elsewhere, so be it.
This is one of the reasons why am strongly for a multipolar world order, maybe the other player would be China/Russia/India, at least the US would actually have to prove that they do in fact stand for the values that they use to buy themselves so much leeway around the world.
I share your concerns about the longer arc of these export controls, but it's important to note that this is not naming these categories in a broad brush.
It's a request for public comment to help "determine whether there are specific emerging technologies that are essential to the national security of the United States".
It also specifically names (a) impact of controls on reducing our ability to advance and (b) the potential (in)effectiveness of controls as things needing discussion. A lot of folks here work at companies with uniquely informed perspectives on those two things! This is the time to push your company towards publicly responding to this request for comment, so that others can see and be encouraged to share their view.
I agree. You can complain and ascribe intent, or you can help. The people writing these controls are specifically admitting their need for assistance.
My interaction with EAR/itar has been annoying, but has not stopped me from working with foreign researchers, publishing papers, or openly discussing most of my work.
Wow, that's a neat little list. The impact of this on the start-up scene will be considerable. Given that almost every AI development is dual use it will be hard to make a clear ruling on what is and what is not 'national security' related.
I remember when crypto was export restricted and how that ended, this will likely go the exact same way.
When ITAR put similar restrictions on several encryption algorithms, programs that needed encryption would have a Makefile that would work with 2 different implementations (one US made, one not) of a library. The end user had to find and download the right library.
Debian used to have "non-us" to hold things like SSH (maybe still does). These software "munitions" where then simply "imported" to the US each install or upgrade that occurred on Debian systems located in the US.
Ironically, instead of keeping the tech "in house" these export controls kept the tech at a distance, making things slightly more inconvenient to use for people in the US.
Do these controls actually work? As in, do they prevent banned states from getting this technology or papers describing how to build it? My intuition says no.
And even if they are effective, is it worth the bureaucratic overhead?
RSA used to be export restricted by ITAR, and the situation became a running joke. There's a Perl 3 liner made into a t-shirt that was subject to the regulation. http://www.cypherspace.org/rsa/
It's incredibly selfish to restrict things like biotech (CRISPR for example) because these technologies can save lives, yet they may affect "National Security". A shame
If I actually thought that would work, I’d be in favour of restricting access. GM in general (not just CRISPR) is clearly powerful enough to be a useful military tech if it were developed in that way.
I don’t think it’s possible to prevent such developments, though I am also aware it’s not as simple as a boolean yes/no.
In the 1980’s Toshiba shipped high precision 5 axis CNC machines to the USSR.
Used to enhance the manufacture of their nuclear submarine propelled blades.
Resulting in a dramatic reduction in detectable noise. Noise is the primary means by which modern submarines are detected.
Those CNC machines could have been used for non military purposes as well, but were used to enhance Soviet military capability.
With the vast majority of R&D being commercial, and much of it being of duel use nature, this is the reason why it must be done.
I don’t believe export controls should be abused.
And I don’t think export controls for bits are easy to control.
But unrestricted technology exports is madness.
Are you saying export of CRISPR tech to countries with poor human rights records, little or unknown regulation around responsible genetic modification, and a history of adversarial foreign policy towards the exporting country is selfish?
That's literally what the link says which isn't paywalled or anything, I don't know what compelled you to copypaste a list of 60 lines in here, taking up half the vertical space of the comments section.
It's laughable that "Data analytics technology -> Visualization" (which, on the face of it, could include the dashboard I built to show which clients have been billed properly this month) appears on the same list as "Advanced Materials -> Adaptive camouflage".
Personally I’d chalk the buzzwordiness up to upper management choosing the wrong people to talk with.
There are plenty of great technical people working in the national lab system, but it’s not clear that whoever put together this list even tried to get their input. For example, I’m a researcher working at NIST in one of the affected areas, and I haven’t seen any internal communication about this. Looking into whether we can respond to this in an official capacity...
Ouch. I mostly looked at what AI techniques are being proposed for blockage by export controls (most deep learning, etc.). Specifically this would, if enacted, make it difficult for foreign workers to collaborate on projects and shut the USA out of progress made elsewhere.
Pardon a non-technical comment but this goes exactly against where I want to see the world going: I believe in the value of countries maintaining their own culture and traditions while also cooperating with other countries on a global scale.
I think there is a lot of fear in our government over our losing dominance in things like 5G and consumer AI driven by vast amounts of data. I think these fears are valid but I would take a long view by making our educational system better starting in kindergarten, making it easy for very high skilled workers to get visas, etc. Also, we should look to what advantages we have in farming, water supply (yes, we love the Great Lakes), what we can offer the world culturally (yeah! Avengers End Game!), and relax our egos to not need to be ‘the best’ because in some ways we are not.
When family or friends ask me how I am doing, my usual response is ‘good enough’ and I wish as a nation we could realize how most of our lives are ‘good enough’ and also work hard to provide opportunities for people who don’t have it good enough.
Anyway, I look at the proposed export control list, and I see bureaucrats acting out of fear.
- How would this affect a largely foreign-based company with branches or subsidiaries in the US? Would the subsidiary be prohibited from sharing knowledge with its parent without prior approval?
- Or what about a publicly traded multi-national company with many shareholders (both American and non-American) which has R&D offices in many different countries? How would you treat a company like that? There are many large companies which are de jure registered in tax havens, and have offices and staff spanning multiple continents.
- Lastly, what is the constitutional authority on which the federal government is able to do this? This seems to conflict with the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech. Especially, considering this affects private speech. We're not talking about leaking TOP SECRET / SECRET / CONFIDENTIAL classified privileged information that's shared with you after getting a security clearance. This has to do with limiting the freedom speech of private individuals, and the freedom of Americans to converse with non-Americans as they wish.
How does this compare with how nuclear weapons technology was being invented and safeguarded? AFAIK there was a lot of cooperation amongst everybody before they became practical, but after the initial breakthroughs happened the government quickly classified most of the research. I believe during postwar interrogations of Nazi nuclear scientists they mentioned how the drying up of research and publications in nuclear fission in the public arena meant somebody had broken through. Isn’t that all you really should be looking for, or does the government no longer trust Einstein letters?
In the case of nuclear weapons, the knowledge of the science of how they work is not sufficient. The "industrial arts" of making fissionable material and then weapons are complex, expensive, and large scale. Just knowing the science doesn't mean that you are able to design, build, and operate the factories that are needed for production.
On the other hand, any technology which depends only on fairly standard scientific instruments, readily available components and manufacturing techniques, and software is essentially uncontrollable.
Clicking on the "public comments" link on the federal register page provides some interesting reading.
Facebook was fairly agitated about the impact of some of the proposals on the PyTorch project.
The director at CSET pointed out its kinda a wasted effort to try to censor source code in 2019.
Uber claims that broad classification doesn't work anyway for developing tech as a general rule by the time it can be classified accurately its no longer developing tech, and classifying the result of government sponsored research grants would work a lot better than first amendment violations ever would, anyway.
Any inaccuracy at summarizing a position above, is my failure, not the failure of the corporate comments, etc blah blah.
General public comments on a govt proposal are more interesting reading than either the proposal OR general public social media comments. I actually learned a few things about PyTorch because of this. Interesting stuff.
I am looking at this from Europe, and when I read things like this I feel like the US have not realized that their standing on the international scene has changed in the last 30 years.
Most of the research and advances in the technologies listed has not been made in the US, and even when it has it often hasn't been mostly by US nationals.
You were the country that defined globalization, and now you refuse to see the state of the world and actively harm yourselves with protectionist decisions like this. You have already lost business with regulations like Cloud Act, and now China is quickly eating your share of the pie.
You still have a major influence in the West because of two things: capital, and the historical fact that the large market leaders in tech which control distribution (Google, Apple, Microsoft) are American. Would you bet this will still be the case 20 years from now? I wouldn't if I were you.
I know a lot of the Americans here on HN probably do not agree with a lot of what their current government does, but still. Export controls don't work except to cut yourselves out of entire markets abroad and foster the adoption of competitors to your domestic companies. I don't understand how this is a viable long-term strategy.
The article is basically asking the public for comments which is the correct approach. The categories will not be banned completely they are just listing technologies they want to regulate or in the worst case ban for export.
This is no different form the EU’s dual use export restrictions. Here’s on example from Cisco for a couple products that have regulations on crypto. They even list each countries export office and associated license information.[1]
You are right, of course. Asking for comments is fine.
I guess the combination of looking at the (very broad) contents of the list, past issues with crypto export and knowing Trump is in the White House made me overreact...
Lots of people here seem to believe that the current US administration only came to power thanks to Russian help. In that context, it's certainly a viable long-term strategy for increasing Russia's relative standing in the world.
That belief has not been supported by facts, as the RM report stated, (obstruction is still in question, but collusion hasn't been proven). In facts there's more evidence of "collusion" with KSA and Israel, but because both parties have interest in protecting these, no discussion on that. In fact the Democratic leaders endorse moves by this administration that pander to Israeli right-wing.
It exposes this whole thing as a mask to avoid reflecting on what actually went wrong in 2016 and it certainly doesn't hurt that Cold War probing as Russia == evil is still there and honestly, as an outside observer, quite bigoted.
Now I am not saying there wasn't any 'meddling' by Russia, just that if 'meddling' is the concern, Russia was nowhere near the biggest player.
Speaking of meddling, the Democrats also largely endorse meddling in Venezuela, which is another major sign of this being a sham.
I'm also looking at this from a EU perspective and don't really care. If the USA wants to shoot itself in the head why should I care? If anything it might mean more tech work for European techies like myself.
> If the USA wants to shoot itself in the head why should I care?
Like it or not US forces are major part of military strenght of NATO and it's not so much viable without it. So strong US economy (needed to fuel the army) is in our interest as well.
US forces are also a major contributor to instability in the middle-east (and the world) that have had negative consequences for much of Europe, Africa and South America.
The US os a rogue state by its own definition of the word.
I fail to see how this is suicide. It's not export restrictions for the sake of market boosting or market isolation, it's a request for information about emerging tech.
This is just plain silly. Every country with a decent R&D program producing weaponizeable tech will have a gov panel interested in understanding whats being developed and what can be exported to whom without violating international arms treaties.
Isn't the silly thing saying the encryption is weaponizable tech when it's not. It's just frustrating government spying abilities and so is now labelled as weaponized tech.
Don't make mistake if you apply for US Visa. When your research area is Deep Learning/AI, it may take longer to get B1/2 Visa and additional documents might be required. Simply Software Engineering is sufficient.
Does this apply to already existing systems or just new stuff? Tech like expert systems and non deep learning rl have been around for years if not decades, are they suddenly going to be subject to export controls
At first reading, this seems like it was a non-committal RFC on a government based broad-strokes approach for a list generated from the Gartner Hypecycle and various other buzzwords; the use of 'Smart Dust' rather than generic reference to MEMS is telling. Some of the established industries operating in most of these sectors are already self-regulating and more than likely know how to deal with export controls.
It is probably easier to blanket-ban/restrict everything and then work from that position to approve it on a case-by-case basis, thus maintaining ambiguity and retaining a degree of power. There is no doubt that there will be a scope for abuse by creating favourable environment for some in the name of politics, and to frustrate progress for others by using red-tape and it won't be the first time either!
A lot of people are missing that the list given is not a list of things they are considering for export controls. It is a list of categories for which they want to know if they contain specific technologies that should be under export control.
Ultimately, atm, the US is about as far from conflict with a technologically capable adversary as you could hope for.
Despite rivolrous rhetoric, china-US interests mostly aren't opposed. Russia & the US play spy games, possibly election meddling.., but it's still fairly small scale. Maintaining a small edge in these technologies is, currently, as unimportant as it's likely to be.
That could change. Stakes could rise. This is the peacetime list/policy. What happens if & when the risk of war grows.
This list hints at the kind of cost we will pay for escalating risk of major conflict. New discoveries in computer science, biology, material science, manufacturing or anything with obvious breakthrough potential could become restricted, secretive, balkanized, and ultimately limited.
My group is heavily involved in swarming technologies at a big old lab you've heard of. We reply to these and other calls for comments, and apart from a few bad actors, this process is pretty clean and sensible.
The end result is often not a ban on sales or exports, but rather a sliding scale of licensing regulations, up to a ban on sale to e.g. Iran or China. Do you really want to sell your AI powered surveillance swarm to Iran? No, you don't. You can develop and sell to UK though, because they're the "Good guys".
While this might make sense with the right set of technologies, flipping through this list, it seems to be written by someone with either a minimal technical background an excessively ideological bent.
Some technologies are plainly not "sensitive", such as:
1. "Distribution-based Logistics Systems" - aka JIT logistics like UPS and DHL
2. "Position, Navigation, and Timing technology" - clocks and GPS baseband receivers
While others are defined in an excessively broad way:
1. "Mobile electric power" - aka golf carts? or does it only cover phased plasma rifles in the 40 watt range?
2. "Audio and Video manipulation technologies" - so... Instagram filters? Or only "deepfakes"?
3. "Planning" - scheduling, like x.ai?
4. "Systems on Chip" - the whole category?
What is troubling is that were this list to go through, immigrants from entire countries would be effectively barred from the US tech industry, as they could not collaborate with their peers. What's more, US tech companies would be effectively banned from interacting with companies in countries the US government doesn't like but doesn't have the political capital to sanction. I'm reminded of Ming China at this point, and not in a good way.
reply