This document contains sectoral guidance prepared by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in relation to export controls in an era of strategic competition. The document is not a traditional report. Instead, it is a compilation of materials that will primarily be disseminated through other means such as online, through presentations, and through video. This executive summary section will not appear in other forms of this guidance. The guidance includes seven main sections.
- The Introduction frames the problem and provides context into the work CNS undertook to produce this guidance.
- The section ‘Strategic Competition’, provides insight into how great power competition is impacting export controls with an emphasis on Russia and China. This section also includes illustrative case studies for each country.
- The section ‘Trends in Technology Acquisition’ outlines different methods being used to acquire foreign technology. This section includes a table of trends by sector and acquisition methods broken down with China and Russia specific considerations.
- The section ‘Sectoral Analysis’ briefly examines several emerging technology areas. This section presents a summary of CNS sectoral mapping (and supply chain mapping) efforts research to identify sector-specific compliance considerations and risks.
- The section ‘Red Flags’ presents red flags identified in the preparation of this guidance broken down by category to help inform due diligence efforts. Sixth, the section, ‘Compliance Guidance’ presents good practices in due diligence broken down into a number of thematic areas, including Company/Partner, Nature of Technology, Transaction, and Dealing with Academic Institutes. Additionally, this section includes Additions to ICPs and guidance on the Use of Distributors. Seventh, the Conclusion section briefly summarizes key takeaways from this work.
In addition to the seven main sections, the sectoral guidance also includes three annexes.
- Annex 1 contains more than 30 case studies were written in the preparation of this report. The case studies are used to highlight key trends and tactics of technology acquisition elsewhere in the guidance. It should be noted that in the course of this research, CNS also used a data centric approach to map out the strategic supply chains of Russia and China. While this sectoral guidance is consistent with the observations gleaned from this data, the research team decided not to directly publish this underlying data as part of this sectoral guidance relying instead on the case studies. The reason for this is that some of the data sources will continue to provide insight into Russian and China’s technology acquisition in the future. The research team nonetheless intends to publish more case studies drawing on this data in the future.
- Annex 2: Further resources and guidance
- Annex 3: Due diligence tools and techniques
Author’s Note on the Perspective of This Guidance
This guidance is written from a ‘western’ supply chain perspective. It is informed by dialogue with industry and governmental officials from many western countries including in the US and Europe. For this reason, the document is not written from either a Chinese or Russian perspective. The authors recognize that the perspective of these countries on the topic of strategic trade control in an era of great power competition would differ. Indeed, both countries implement export controls which are likely in part intended to prevent strategic technologies originating in these countries from being used or misused in western countries. The authors are interested in exploring the perspective of Russia and China in relation to great power competition. However, this is not the purpose of the present guidance.