The following is an excerpt from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Last week, the United States rolled out new export controls on critical technologies, including semiconductor and quantum computing items, in an effort to bolster national security and for “foreign policy reasons.” Released by the Department of Commerce, these rules add quantum computing, advanced additive manufacturing equipment, and certain advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment to its control list.
In recent years, the United States, along with several other countries, has taken transformative coordinated national action instead of agreeing to controls through multilateral export control regimes. While the reasons for these actions differ, collectively, they point to a need to rethink how export controls are coordinated at the international level, particularly the need to control emerging technologies. The existing multilateral export control regimes do not, alone, provide a sufficient basis for addressing today’s security challenges, especially with China’s full-society effort to weaponize emerging technology, which is known as Military Civil Fusion. While the existing regimes should be maintained, now is the time to work through the future of multilateral export controls to provide a mechanism for coordinating emerging technology controls internationally.
Shifting threat landscape. Given the distinct challenges posed by China and Russia—where China is seeking to weaponize advanced emerging technology and Russia is seeking to beg, borrow, and steal crude weapons, parts, and components to maintain its war machine—one might expect swift action from multilateral export control regimes to add emerging technologies to their control lists. However, the reality is far more complex. Since the end of the Cold War, export controls have primarily focused on the so-called rogue states, such as North Korea and Iran, and non-state actors.
Continue reading at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.