NAS Panel Calls for Reform of U.S. Export Controls
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r s i n c l u d e all N A T O m e m b e r s (except Iceland) and Japan. Calling as it does for a strong departure from current administration policy, this recommendation is a particularly controversial one. Right now, U.S. controls prohibit t h e e x p o r t of a n y t e c h n o l o g i e s contained on the Militarily Critical Technologies List—an ever-growing list of virtually every high technology known. (See the MRS BULLETIN, Vol. XI No. 5, 1989, p. 39.) Items are supposed to be deleted from the list when it's found that they are
... the adverse effects of national-security export controls on high-tech trade currently cost the United States at least $9 billion annually.
available to the Soviet Union — either because an equivalent technology has been developed there indigenously, or because the Soviets have access to these products through non-U.S. markets. Unfortunately, says Steve Gould, an export-controls analyst with the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a Consultant to the NAS panel, no time limits were put on the process for decontrolling those technologies found to be available to the Soviets. He says, "The Department of Defense has really sat on that process, so not much has happened." In fact, he says, the general consensus of the NAS panel was that much of what DOD has been trying to control, in terms of exports, is impractical and amounts to little more than "wishful thinking." By way of example he points to personal Computers. "Everybody agrees it would be great to keep them out of the hands of the Soviets," Gould says. But, he points out, it's not feasible to control them when they're manufactured on a massive scale around the world — especially in the Pacific Basin countries like Korea — and sold on a cashand-carry basis. Nevertheless, a subpanel of the NAS export-controls committee on a near-East field trip learned that U.S. customs officials currently spend a great deal of their time attempting to police the export of personal Computers. Another recommendation of the NAS panel is that the controls-evaluation process be streamlined. The panel found that in many cases requests for routine exports took months to a year or longer. This prob-
lem is one with which NAS panel member Herbert M. Dwight Jr., chief executive officer of Spectra-Physics, Inc., has personal experience. Dwight recalls, for instance, bidding on a m u l t i m i l l i o n d o l l a r o r d e r from t h e People's Republic of China "for relatively p e d e s t r i a n l a s e r s . " Before h e c o u l d promise shipment, he notes, "we had to go through a cumbersome process to determine whether we could obtain a license." The process lasted more than a year. Says Dwight, because French competitors could obtain their export license in a fraction of the time, they got the order. Then there's the issue of spare parts and Service. Dwight says he also has to go through a lengthy process to obtain export licenses to ship replacement infrared optics to Japanese customers — even those who purchased their original equi
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