THE EXPORT ADMINISTRATION
ACT:
THE CASE FOR ITS RENEWAL
TUESDAY, JUNE 12, 2001
House of Representatives,
Committee on International
Relations,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 2:30 p.m. in Room 2172,
Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Henry J. Hyde
(Chairman of the Committee)
presiding.
Chairman HYDE. The Committee will come to order.
We are very pleased to welcome our two panels of very
distinguished witnesses before our Committee this afternoon in
the second in a series of
hearings on the Export Administration Act and our nation's export control
system.
We will ask each of our witnesses to make brief opening remarks
on the strengths and weaknesses of our current
system and on the need to
bring it in line with the challenges facing us in the new century.
We would welcome any comments they might have on the case for
the reauthorization of the act, taking into account its
importance to our economic
well being and national security interests.
Protecting these interests should, in my view, not take a back
seat to ensuring that our companies remain competitive in
the global marketplace.
In our last hearing on May 23, we discussed the role that the
multilateral export control system played in helping to slow
the pace of military
modernization in the former Soviet Union. Today's more diffuse security
challenges dictate that we put
such a system back in place.
Not only do we face a growing proliferation threat from
countries on our terrorism list, such as Iran, Iraq, Libya and
North Korea, but we also
confront a resurgent China—a country whose marketplace attracts our high-tech
companies
and whose military build-up
concerns our defense planners.
In short, we face the twin challenges of upgrading our new
multilateral export framework—the Wassenaar
Arrangement—to keep dangerous
weapons and technologies out of the hands of so-called rogue and pariah states
and of
ensuring that effective
controls are in place to confront a growing technology transfer risk inherent
in our commercial and
economic relationship with
China.
Some would point out that other key members of the new
Arrangement, including our key trading European and Asian
trading competitors, do not
share our assessment of the transfer risk to this country and consequently
maintain far less
restrictive export controls.
Does this mean that we should be no less active in pursuing new
or modified multilateral export controls efforts to slow
the spread of dual-use
technologies and goods to China and other potential adversaries?
Or for that matter, should we be any less insistent that this
Administration pursue a more rigorous license review process
for this market where, I am
told, the same manufacturing plant often contains assembly lines that produce
both civilian and
military products?
In our first and second panels this afternoon, we are
privileged to have a number of experts who have tried to answer
these difficult questions.
While their responses might not be the same, we can surely benefit from their
insights and
experience in defining our
multi-faceted relationship with China.
I am particularly pleased to welcome Senators Phil Gramm, Fred
Thompson and Congressman Cox before our
Committee. They are three
Members who, of course, need no introduction to the export control debate and
to the
potential foreign policy and
security challenges in our evolving relationship with Beijing.
As the chair of the former Select Committee on U.S. National
Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the
People's Republic of China,
Chris Cox has testified on numerous occasions on the Chinese technology
acquisition program
and on the fact that it has
multiple civilian and military uses, including in the dual-use area. I might
add that he has strongly
argued that the EAA and
current export control system should be reauthorized.
Chris Cox is the Chairman of the House Policy Committee and is
a Member of the Committees on Energy and
Commerce and on Financial
Services. He is the highest ranking Californian in Congress and is the only
Californian in the
elected leadership of the
House. On April 24, he released the Report of the Study Group on Enhancing
Multilateral
Export Controls that proposed
a sweeping reform of export controls.
Fred Thompson, in his capacity as the former Chairman of the
Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, has held
countless hearings and
meetings on these same vitally important issues and he has been an eloquent
voice in the
long-standing Senate debate
on the EAA and on the pending reform legislation, S. 149.
In addition to being the ranking Republican on the Governmental
Affairs Committee, Senator Thompson serves as a
Member of the Senate
Committee on Finance and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the
National Security
Working Group. He has
appeared in 18 motion pictures and is the author of the Watergate memoir, At
That Point in
Time. His insights and views
are most welcome.
Senator Phil Gramm is currently serving his third term and is
the Ranking Member of the Banking Committee.
His legislative accomplishments include landmarks bills
modernizing the banking, insurance and securities laws in the
Gramm-Leach Act; reducing
Federal spending and mandating the Reagan tax cut in the Gramm-Latta
legislation; and
imposing the first binding
spending constraints on Congress in the Gramm-Rudman Act. Of course, he
continues to play a
crucial role in shaping the
debate on the EAA, on S. 149, the ''Export Administration Act of 2001'' and the
future of our
export control system.
Before turning to our witnesses, I would ask if the Ranking
Member, Mr. Lantos, has a statement.
Mr. LANTOS. Just a word or two. [Inaudible.]
Chairman HYDE. Thank you Mr. Lantos.
Mr. Gramm.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Hyde follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE
HONORABLE HENRY J. HYDE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS
FROM THE STATE OF ILLINOIS,
AND CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
We are very pleased to welcome our two panels of very
distinguished witnesses before our Committee this afternoon in
the second in a series of
hearings on the Export Administration Act and our nation's export control
system.
We will ask each of our witnesses to make brief opening remarks
on the strengths and weaknesses of our current
system and on the need to
bring it in line with the challenges facing us in the new century.
We would welcome any comments they might have on the case for
the reauthorization of this Act, taking into account its
importance to our economic
well being and national security interests.
Protecting these interests should, in my view, not take a back
seat to ensuring that our companies remain competitive in
the global marketplace.
In our last hearing on May 23, we discussed the role that the
multilateral export control system played in helping to slow
the pace of military modernization
in the former Soviet Union. Today's more diffuse security challenges dictate
that we put
such a system back in place.
Not only do we face a growing proliferation threat from
countries on our terrorism list, such as Iran, Iraq, Libya and
North Korea, but we also
confront a resurgent China—a country whose marketplace attracts our high-tech
companies
and whose military build-up
concerns our defense planners.
In short, we face the twin challenges of upgrading our new
multilateral export framework—the Wassenaar
Arrangement—to keep dangerous
weapons and technologies out of the hands of so-called rogue and pariah states
and of
ensuring that effective
controls are in place to confront a growing technology transfer risk inherent
in our commercial and
economic relationship with
China.
Some would point out that other key members of the new
Arrangement, including our key trading European and Asian
trading competitors, do not
share our assessment of the transfer risk to this country and consequently
maintain far less
restrictive export controls.
Does this mean that we should be no less active in pursuing new
or modified multilateral export controls efforts to slow
the spread of dual-use
technologies and goods to China and other potential adversaries?
Or for that matter, should we be any less insistent that this
Administration pursue a more rigorous license review process
for this market where, I am
told, the same manufacturing plant often contains assembly lines that produce
both civilian and
military products?
In our first and second panels this afternoon, we are
privileged to have a number of experts who have tried to answer
these difficult questions.
While their responses might not be the same, we can surely benefit from their
insights and
experience in defining our
multi-faceted relationship with China.
I am particularly pleased to welcome Senators Phil Gramm, Fred
Thompson and Congressman Cox before our
Committee. They are three
members who, of course, need no introduction to the export control debate and
to the potential
foreign policy and security
challenges in our evolving relationship with Beijing.
As the chair of the former Select Committee on U.S. National
Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the
People's Republic of China,
Chris Cox has testified on numerous occasions on the Chinese technology
acquisition program
and on the fact that it has
multiple civilian and military uses, including in the dual-use area. I might
add that he has strongly
argued that the EAA and
current export control system should be reauthorized.
Chris Cox is the Chairman of the House Policy Committee and is
a member of the Committees on Energy and
Commerce and on Financial
Services. He is the highest ranking Californian in Congress and is the only
Californian in the
elected leadership of the
House. On April 24, he released the Report of the Study Group on Enhancing
Multilateral Export
Controls that proposed a
sweeping reform of export controls.
Fred Thompson, in his capacity as the former Chairman of the
Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, has held
countless hearings and
meetings on these same vitally important issues and he has been an eloquent
voice in the
long-standing Senate debate
on the EAA and on the pending reform legislation, S. 149.
In addition to being the ranking Republican on the Governmental
Affairs Committee, Senator Thompson serves as a
member of the Senate
Committee on Finance and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the
National Security
Working Group. He has
appeared in 18 motion pictures and is the author of the Watergate memoir At
That Point in Time.
His insights and views are
most welcome.
Senator Phil Gramm is currently serving his third term and is
the ranking member of the Banking Committee.
His legislative accomplishments include landmarks bills
modernizing the banking, insurance and securities laws in the
Gramm-Leach Act; reducing
federal spending and mandating the Reagan tax cut in the Gramm-Latta
legislation; and
imposing the first binding
spending constraints on Congress in the Gramm-Rudman Act. Of course, he
continues to play a
crucial role in shaping the
debate on the EAA, on S. 149, the ''Export Administration Act of 2001'' and the
future of our
export control system.
Before turning to our witnesses, I would ask if the Ranking
Member, Mr. Lantos, has a statement.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE
PHIL GRAMM, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS
Mr. GRAMM. Mr. Chairman and Congressman Lantos, it is a great
privilege for me to be here today.
In considering export controls, America has tried to pursue two
objectives simultaneously that to some degree are
complimentary, but to some
degree they are in conflict. We want to dominate the in terms of high-tech
production and
technology. We want to be the
world's science leader. We want to develop the technologies that will both
carry the future
of economic production and
maintain our position as the world's greatest power. And to do those things, we
want to
produce and sell high-tech
items on the world market.
On the other hand, as the world's only superpower, as a nation
that depends on high-technology as an integral part of its
national security commitment,
we want to protect those items that have a substantial impact potentially on
our national
security, and protect those
items where our actions might actually prevent would-be hostile nations from
acquiring and
potentially using that
technology against us.
The Export Administration Act is our effort to try to bring
together those competing goals. We have written a bill in the
Senate Banking Committee,
which has exclusive jurisdiction in this area, twice—basically the same bill.
At the end of the
last Congress, we reported a
bill unanimously. In this Congress, we reported a bill, 19 in favor, 1 in
opposition.
Our bill is a substantial improvement over current law. I
believe it is superior in every way. And the place where it's
superiority is most evident
is in the underlying logic of the bill. We recognized that where technology is
generally available,
where you can go into the
Radio Shack and buy it, where it is readily available from numerous competing
sources on the
world market, that while we
might wish that that technology were not available, while we might wish that it
could be kept
out of some hands, the
reality is that it can't.
We currently have a system which, when it was in full operation
prior to expiring, approved 99.4 percent of the
applications that were
submitted. I would submit to you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee,
that a process
that approves 99.4 percent of
applications is not a process that is being very selective about the
applications that it
reviews.
We listened to numerous people and commissions. We studied and
had hearings related to the Cox Commission report.
We employed both the people
that were involved and the findings of the Weapons of Mass Destruction
Commission. We
were very active in working
with the Defense Science Board Task Force on Globalization and Security. And we
tried to
write the findings of those
reports, to the best of our ability to ascertain them, into this new bill.
We made a decision that if technology was readily available,
sold on a competitive basis on the world market and mass
marketed, that we would not
try to control it; that we would in essence, build a higher fence around a
smaller number of
items that were more critical
and more controllable.
Secondly, we strengthened the Defense Department and the
national security agencies in the review process. We gave
one agency in the review
process the ability to object and to move the decision process one level
higher—a strength of
dissent that had never
existed in the process before.
We gave the President a unilateral national security waiver, so
that if a technology is readily available, if it is sold on the
world market, if you can buy
it in Radio Shack in Germany, and the President concludes that, for national
security reasons,
that technology should be
protected, we protect it.
We have a process that
we believe is workable. It has checks and balances. And we believe that it will
dramatically
improve both our national
security protections and our ability to compete on the world market.
We also set up a process to encourage multilateral export
controls which ultimately holds the key to our security in the
future, in my opinion.
But I want to conclude by simply reading several statements
from people who appeared before our Committee and who
have made important
statements on this issue. And let me start with our dear friend Chris Cox, and
I quote, ''We ought not
to have export controls to
pretend to make ourselves safe as a country.''
The one thing we decided in our bill was that we were not going
to do any feel-good things. If they did not have a real
impact; if they could not
contribute to American security, that we were not going to play games with
them.
John Hamre, the former Deputy Secretary of Defense, said, ''Too
much of our export control resources are devoted to
licensing relatively benign
transactions, diverting resources away from far more important and dangerous
transactions.''
That is the focus of our
bill. If it is readily available, if we cannot control it, leave it alone. If
it is not readily available, if it
can be controlled and if it
is powerful and potentially dangerous technology, build a wall around it and
impose stiff civil and
monetary fines.
Finally, Frank Carlucci, former secretary of defense, former
national security adviser: ''But we should only do that which
has an effect, not that which
simply makes us feel good.''
And I believe, Mr. Chairman, that in this debate, our biggest
challenge is dealing with a world where high-technology
items are traded on a mass
basis, where research is occurring throughout the developed nations of the
world; and we have
to therefore focus on what
can be controlled.
And in doing so, I believe that we can strengthen national
security and we can promote the commercial interests of
America, and we can assure
that when new technologies are developed in the future, that they will be
developed by
Americans, that we will have
their use first and that we will have an opportunity to control that technology
and prevent
would-be adversaries from
using it.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Gramm follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE
PHIL GRAMM, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF
TEXAS
Chairman Hyde and Congressman Lantos, it is a great privilege
for me to be here today.
In considering export controls, America has tried to pursue two
objectives simultaneously that, to some degree, are
complimentary and, to some
degree, are in conflict. We want to dominate the world in terms of high-tech
production and
technology. We want to be the
world's science leader. We want to develop the technologies that will both
carry the future
of economic production and
maintain our position as the world's greatest power.
To do those things, we want to produce and sell high-tech items
in the world market. On the other hand, as the world's
only super power, as a nation
that depends on high technology as an integral part of its national security,
we want to
protect certain items and
prevent would-be hostile nations from acquiring and potentially using the
technology against us.
The EAA is our effort to try to bring together those competing
goals. We have twice written a bill in the Senate Banking
Committee, which has exclusive
jurisdiction in this area. It is basically the same bill, with some
improvements made to this
year's bill. In the last
Congress, the committee reported the bill unanimously. In this Congress, we
reported the bill with 19
members in favor and one in
opposition.
Our bill is a substantial improvement over current law. I
believe it is superior in every way. The place where its
superiority is most evident
is in the underlying logic of the bill. We recognize that when technology is
generally available,
when you can go into Radio
Shack and buy it, when it is available from numerous competing sources on the
world market,
that while we might wish that
the technology was not available, while we might wish that it could be kept out
of some
hands, the reality is that it
can't be controlled.
We had a system that, while it was in full operation prior to
expiring, approved 99.4 percent of the applications for
export licenses that were
received. I would submit that a process that approves 99.4 percent of applications
is not a
process that is very
selective about the applications being reviewed.
We listened to numerous people in commissions. We studied and
had hearings on the Cox Commission report. We
heard from the people that
were involved in the weapons of mass destruction commission. We were very
active in
soliciting the views of the
Defense Science Board Task Force on Globalization and Security. And we tried to
incorporate
the findings of those
reports, to the best of our ability to ascertain them, into this new bill.
We made a decision that if technology was readily available,
sold on a competitive basis on the world market and mass
marketed, that we would not
try to control it; that we would, in essence, build a higher fence around a
smaller number of
items that were more critical
and more controllable.
Secondly, we strengthened the Defense Department and the
national security agencies in the license review process. We
gave any agency in the review
process the ability to object and to move the decision process one level
higher—a strength
of dissent that has never
been codified before.
We gave the president a unilateral national security waiver, so
that if a technology is readily available, if it is sold on the
world market, if you can buy
it in Radio Shack in Germany, and the president concludes, nonetheless, for
national security
reasons, that technology
should be protected, we protect it.
We have a process that we believe is workable. It has checks
and balances. And we believe that it will dramatically
improve both our national
security protections and our ability to compete on the world market.
We also set up a process to encourage multilateral export
controls which ultimately holds the key to our security in the
future, in my opinion.
I want to conclude by simply reading several statements from
people who appeared before our committee and who
have made important
statements on this issue. And let me start with our dear friend, Congressman
Chris Cox, and I quote,
''We ought not to have export
controls to pretend to make ourselves safe as a country.''
The one thing we decided in our bill was that we weren't going
to do any feel-good things. If they didn't have a real
impact; if they could not
contribute to American security, that we weren't going to play games with them.
John Hamre, the former deputy secretary of defense, said, ''Too
much of our export control resources are devoted to
licensing relatively benign transactions,
diverting resources away from far more important and dangerous transactions.''
That is the focus of our
bill. If it's readily available, if we can't control it, leave it alone. If it
is not readily available, if it can
be controlled and if it is
powerful and potentially dangerous technology, build a wall around it and
impose stiff civil and
monetary fines.
Finally, Frank Carlucci, former secretary of defense, former
national security adviser: ''But we should only do that which
has an effect, not that which
simply makes us feel good.''
I believe, Mr. Chairman, that in this debate, our biggest
challenge is dealing with a world where high-technology items
are traded on a mass basis,
where research is occurring throughout the developed nations of the world, and,
therefore, we
have to focus on what can be
controlled.
In doing so, I believe that we can strengthen national security
and we can promote the commercial interest of America,
and we can assure that when
new technologies are developed in the future, that they will be developed by
Americans, that
we will have their use first
and that we will have an opportunity to control that technology and prevent
would-be
adversaries from using it.''
Chairman HYDE. Thank you, Senator Gramm.
Senator Thompson?
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE
FRED THOMPSON, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF
TENNESSEE
Mr. THOMPSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Lantos. I
appreciate the opportunity to spend a few
minutes with you here today.
Mr. Chairman, I think both you and Senator Gramm have set out
the balance that we are striving for here, between
taking into consideration the
fact that we are living in world of expanding technology on the one hand, and
that we are
living in a world of
increasing dangers from that technology on the other hand.
We know from the Rumsfeld Commission, from the bi-annual CIA
reports, the Cox Committee's work, that the
countries to which we intend
to promote additional trade in these dual-use items are consistently
proliferating weapons of
mass destruction. We saw the
story today with regard to Cuba. The Chinese misrepresent what they are doing
and not
doing, but they are posing a
threat. As we consider missile defense and the threat posed to us from rogue
nations, and as
we even consider the Iran and
Libyan Sanctions Act, we should ask ourselves whether or not it makes sense to
impose
sanctions and erect missile
defenses while at the same time selling sensitive, enabling items to the
countries that are
supplying the rogue nations,
which is what is happening.
I agree with Senator Gramm: We do not want to continue to try
to protect things that are not protectable; the world is
changing. I am not wed to the
concept that MTOPS is the only metric, for example, to try to regulate our
supercomputers.
But I am not of the school
that because we cannot regulate everything, that we cannot control anything. I
strongly disagree
with that.
Mr. Chairman, my concern is this: we are getting ready to
engage in a pretty substantial deregulation of very sensitive
items, that will in turn be
sold to countries who are proliferating around the world. This will happen
based upon anecdotal
evidence and people's
conclusions, but not without any additional research as to what's going to
happen as a result of this.
One of the recommendations of
the Cox Committee was to conduct a comprehensive review of the national
security
implications of exporting
high-performance computers to the PRC, for example. The Committee also directs
the
intelligence community to
conduct an annual comprehensive threat assessment of the national security
implications, et
cetera, of our exports. That
is what I would like to see done despite all of the business interests on
behalf of this bill.
Senator Warner, Senator
Helms, Senator Shelby, Senator Kyl, Senator McCain and myself, we are in the
distinct minority
in the Senate, there is no
question about that. There is a great deal of commercial pressure on the side
of pushing the
Export Administration Act on
through. I regret that the Administration in trying to organize itself, and,
having only a few
people in some of these key
departments, has taken the position that they have. I wish they would take a
little time to
operate under and study the
current system before endorsing a brand new system. But in the opinion, I
think, of several of
us, there has not been an
honest broker or an objective consideration of the implications of what we are
getting ready to
do in passing this Export
Administration Act.
For example, we are engaging in the establishment of a brand
new category of exemption called mass marketing. In
short, anything that is
delineated as mass marketed would be deregulated, meaning you would not even
have to have a
license to export it. In
concept, I do not have any problem with that. The question is how do you make
that determination,
and who makes it?
The fact of the matter is that the Commerce Department—in this
national security area of such sensitive technologies—is
the department with the whip
hand with regard to this. Commerce is required to consult with other
departments, but it is
the Commerce Department,
essentially, making the mass marketing, foreign availability, and other
decontrol decisions.
We talk a lot about our European friends and allies that if we
do not sell these items abroad, our friends will give it to
them. I was looking recently
at a publication, the Daily Report for Executives, dated February 27th of this
year, and it
talks about the E.U. filing a
formal complaint with the U.S. over relaxation of controls on computer exports.
It says that the
European Union has lodged a
formal protest with the United States over its decision announced in January to
relax control
on exports of high-performance
computers to countries such as Russia and China, arguing that the United States
failed to
properly notify the E.U. in
advance as required under the multilateral agreement known as the Wassenaar
Arrangement.
So while we are saying that our allies are selling if we do
not, we are actually decontrolling more rapidly than our allies in
the Wassenaar Arrangement are
agreeing with, and then we are saying, ''Well, it is already out there, we
might as well
decontrol some more or our
allies will then do it.'' I do not think that we have been totally objective in
our analysis of our
relationship with our allies,
or fair to them in that respect.
If we do not make these items subject to license, we are going
to lose the ability to monitor them, that is, the ability to
keep track of what is going
to various countries so that we can do a national security and cumulative
effects assessment.
What the pending bill would also do is repeal other legislation
that we have had on the books for a couple of years now.
The 1998 National Defense
Authorization required a national security assessment. We had the GAO testify
recently that
that has never been done,
even while the previous Administration was raising MTOPS control levels on
supercomputers.
We went from 2000 MTOPS to
about 80,000 MTOPS, the level at which you need a license, within 1 year with
no
national security risk
assessment. So that is before this bill as well. That was in the last
Administration. And so now we are
just picking up where that
left off.
The President does have some prerogatives in this bill. I think
some changes have been made that are improvements
from the original drafts that
I have seen. But, for example, if the President wants to intervene and set
aside a decontrol
determination made for
foreign availability reasons—even though the Commerce Department has made that
determination—the President
has substantial hurdles to go through to make this happen.
First of all, none of these decisions—I think I am correct in
saying that none of them—can be delegated by the
President. The President
himself must get involved, which, of course, creates a dampening effect. But
before the President
can set aside a decision, he
must report to Congress, he must pursue negotiations with the foreign entities,
he must notify
Congress about the
negotiations, he must review it every 6 months, he must notify Congress again,
and then if all of that
fails and there is not a high
probability that it is going to work out, then the foreign availability
determination of the
Commerce Department kicks
back into effect and the item is decontrolled. In other words, in 18 months, if
there is no
agreement with a foreign
entity, the item is decontrolled regardless of its impact on national security
or foreign policy. In
short, the process is heavily
weighted, Mr. Chairman, in favor of the Commerce Department over the discretion
of the
President of the United States.
I am not opposed to the reauthorization of this act, I think it
ought to be. I think that something of this importance
deserves our attention and it
ought to be done. But in some areas, to have these additional blanket
determinations made by
the Commerce Department, with
difficulty on behalf of the President; having a review procedure that does not
prevail on
the defense side of things;
asking departments to get their act together within 30 days and all that; I
think this is all
problematic.
There are clearly some things that we can do to make the system
work better, and I am all for that because that's the
real issue here. I am second
to no one, I do not think, in terms of my business record, at least what I
think in terms of good
business; and I would want to
improve the process. But the fact of the matter is, there is no crying need out
there for the
immediate reauthorization of
this bill under these circumstances, when everything that is going on out in
the world today
which is so disturbing to us,
and we are saying we need a national missile defense system because of it.
The exports to controlled destinations constitute about 2 to 3
percent of our exports. The China market for
high-performance computers is
less than 5 percent of our sales abroad. Obviously, there is a potential big
market out
there.
We do not want to unduly hamstring that market, but when we
have been told by the Cox Committee, for example, that
the People's Republic of
China is diverting U.S.-built high-performance computers for unlawful military
applications and
that high-performance
computer diversion for PRC military use is also facilitated by the steady
relaxation of U.S. export
controls on the sales of
high-performance computers, we need to be very sure that we have the right
referrees and that we
make a determination up front
of what the significance of this decontrol in these major areas is going to
mean to our
country.
Thank you very much.
Chairman HYDE. Thank you, Senator.
Representative Cox.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE
CHRISTOPHER COX, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM
THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
Mr. COX. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I thank the Members
of the Committee also for being here and, most
importantly, for undertaking
this topic.
With President Bush in Europe meeting with our NATO allies, the
European Union and the president of Russia, it is
entirely fitting that we are
here to discuss the Export Administration Act. It is a crucial element in what
the President has
described as our new security
framework.
We need, of course, a missile defense that will protect all 50 States,
our allies, our friends and our forward deployed
forces and that is much of
what the President is going to be talking about in Europe. But just as
importantly we also need
to ensure that we are doing
everything that we can to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction, including
nuclear weapons, chemical
weapons, biological weapons, and the means to deliver them.
Tomorrow, the Policy Committee of which I serve as Chairman,
and of which, Mr. Chairman, you used to serve as
Chairman, will issue a policy
statement on missile defense. Two years ago, an overwhelming bipartisan
majority of
Congress formally declared in
legislation that it is the national policy of the United States to deploy an
effective national
missile defense as soon as it
is technologically feasible.
This national policy is now enshrined in the ''National Missile
Defense Act of 1999'' and it is, of course, of enormous
importance, but we all
recognize that it cannot even when deployed be entirely effective. It is only
part of what we need to
cope with the multiple
threats that America is facing and that our friends and our allies face. That
is why President Bush has
called for a broad strategy
that goes well beyond missile defense and includes both non-proliferation and
counter-proliferation.
That is why I applaud you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Lantos, for
taking on the challenge of strengthening a vital element of
this new strategic framework
by working to reauthorize the Export Administration Act.
Two years ago, the Select Committee on National Security that I
chaired recommended reauthorization of the Export
Administration Act for a
number of reasons, including specifically that its penalties had lapsed.
Reestablishing the higher
penalties for violation of
the act that have been allowed to lapse since 1994 will be one of the great
accomplishments of
this Committee and our entire
Congress.
I testified to this effect before Senator Gramm's Committee on
Banking in 1999 and I am very pleased to say that the
Senate legislation fulfills
the recommendation of the Select Committee on National Security.
Just as important is recognizing the inadequacy of our current
essentially unilateral approach to export controls and some
of what Senators Thompson and
Gramm have just said to you touches directly upon this. We are achieving the
worst of all
possible worlds to the extent
that we in the U.S. control our producers, our workers, our sales to foreign
markets and then
permit ourselves to be
undercut by our friends and our allies or sometimes by others. We are achieving
nothing in the way
of security if things are
available in foreign markets or if they are available in mass markets. At the
same time, we are
penalizing ourselves
commercially.
What we have to do, therefore, is not only focus on foreign
availability and on the mass market availability of these
products and technologies
which is of vital importance and a great step forward. But we must also focus
with much, much
vigor and in much more robust
ways—heretofore the Executive Branch or the Legislative Branch have had a
multilateral
approach—on a renewed
multilateral approach to export controls.
And this was the question that Representative Lantos brought up
in his opening statement and I would like to just take
the balance of my remarks to
address that.
The Select Committee that I chaired a few years ago expressly
recommended on this topic, we noted both the demise
of CoCom and the inadequacy
of the Wassenaar Arrangement to purportedly replace it. We recommended that the
United States take the
appropriate action not only of reestablishing a multilateral regime but of also
improving the sharing of
information by nations that
are major exporters of technology. This is so that the United States can track
the movement of
technology and enforce
technology control and the export requirements.
The Defense Appropriations Act of 2000 appropriated a million
dollars for a study. The study was to take a look at the
adequacy or inadequacy of our
current arrangements, such as Wassenaar, and ''to convene senior level
Executive Branch
and congressional officials
as well as outside experts to develop the framework for a new effective
CoCom-like agreement
that would regulate certain
military use for goods and technologies on a multilateral basis.''
Mr. Berman, who is temporarily not with us in this hearing but
a distinguished Member of this Committee, and I were
the Democratic and Republican
co-chairs respectively of the House of Representatives; Mike Enzi of Wyoming
and Jeff
Bingham of New Mexico were
respectively the Republican and Democratic co-chairs of the United States
Senate to this
study group. Our report has
been completed after 6 months' work and participation by Executive Branch
officials, both the
Clinton Administration and
the incoming Bush Administration, as well as outside experts, precisely as the
law required. I
commend it to your attention.
I am sure that the professional staff of this Committee has had the opportunity
to go through
it.
Our report was unanimous. It was bipartisan and it reached a
number of important conclusions on the subject of the
importance of multilateral
export controls that I hope will be reflected in the Export Administration Act
reauthorization that
you are writing.
First, multilateral export controls are more important to the
United States now than they were even during the Cold
War. During the Cold War,
America had some unique technological advantages vis-a-vis most of the rest of
the world.
That combined with the
relatively incipient nature at the time of global technology trade, meant that
even unilateral export
controls were often
sufficient to prevent, for example, the Soviet Union from modernizing their
weapons technology with
the benefit of United States
technology.
But, of course, until 1994, America had much more than simply
unilateral controls. Up until 1994, together with our
friends and allies, we
participated in the Coordinating Committee on Multilateral Export Controls,
known by its
abbreviation of CoCom.
CoCom provided a way to prevent damaging transfers of equipment
and technology to the Soviet Union, to the
People's Republic of China,
and other potential adversaries. CoCom worked well to ensure that American
troops would
never be confronted on the
battlefield by an enemy armed with American technology.
But today all that has changed. Since 1994, we have no longer
been participating in CoCom. CoCom is no more. No
longer do we or our allies
agree not to undercut one another's counter-proliferation policies. America's
technological
leadership is also no longer
unchallenged. The U.S. is not the sole source or anything like it of militarily
useful technologies.
We cannot afford, therefore, to rely on unilateral export
controls alone. We must work with our friends and allies to
prevent the proliferation of
dangerous technologies.
Building on the lessons from America's experience in CoCom as
well as the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Australia
Group, the Missile Technology
Controllers Regime and the Wassenaar Arrangement, we laid out in this report
that I
described to you a realistic
process for reestablishing a new multilateral export control regime. Only a
much beefed up
multilateral control
arrangement will deny dangerous technologies to rogue states and others who
would threaten
international peace.
The report notes that doing this will not be easy. It is going
to require, as never before, American leadership. But the
task is of such importance
that we must begin today with whichever of our friends and allies who will join
us, this must be a
coalition of the willing, and
thus we must set an example for others to follow.
I note that this topic is in fact covered in the Senate
legislation at some length in title V. I would urge this Committee to
look carefully at title V and
to ensure that in a very beefy way the recommendations of this unanimous and
bipartisan study
group on multilateral export
controls are explicitly stated.
For example, there is some language in title V, and I am not
sure that it means in any way to conflict with the
recommendations of the study
group, but there is some language that suggests that the norm for a new
multilateral
arrangement is that all
supplier groups must be members. Of course that is correct. In order for a
multilateral regime to
work, all supply groups must
be members. But in order to begin, we have to begin somewhere and therefore
what the
study group recommends is
that we begin with our like minded allies, whoever they may be, and lead by
example.
There are two final areas where I urge the Committee to take
special care. The provisions of the Export Administration
Act reauthorization dealing
with post-shipment verification and end use verification of high risk dual-use
items are very
important.
Post-shipment verification should be required as a condition of
license for the export of militarily useful technologies,
particularly the most
sensitive of these, to high-risk countries or to high-risk destinations.
A country's willingness to participate in such a regime
signifies that that country is a friend and an ally and not interested
in diverting commercial
technologies for illicit purposes.
At the same time, a country's willingness to facilitate the
diversion of U.S. technologies to the development or
manufacture of weapons of
mass destruction is the unmistakable earmark of a country that should be
subject to export
controls. Unwillingness to
provide contractual assurances against military use is facial evidence of
non-commercial intent.
I admire and trust my neighbor to whom I sell my house, but he
and I or she and I have an escrow. That is good
business and common sense.
That same kind of common sense is required when it comes to arms control.
Second and finally, the process for making determinations
regarding the foreign availability and mass market status of a
controlled item is very
important. In the Senate bill, for example, if an item is to be decontrolled
because of foreign
availability, only the
President of the U.S. can set that aside. Over the more than 50 years of U.S.
export controls, the
President has never been
called upon to break an impasse over whether to grant an export license. This
kind of a apparent
process therefore there is
actually completely illusory. What we must have are appropriate checks and
balances.
That is the entirety of my testimony. You have been most
gracious and I appreciate it.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Cox follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE
HONORABLE CHRISTOPHER COX, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF
CALIFORNIA
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I thank the members of the committee also for being here, and
most importantly for undertaking this topic.
With President Bush in Europe meeting with our NATO allies, the
European Union and the president of Russia, it is
entirely fitting that we are
here to discuss the Export Administration Act. It is a crucial element in what
the president has
described as our new security
framework.
We need, of course, a missile defense that will protect all 50
states and our allies and our friends, and our
forward-deployed forces. And
that's much of what the president is doing to be talking about in Europe. But
just as
importantly, we also need to
ensure that we're doing everything we can to prevent the proliferation of
weapons of mass
destruction, including
nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, biological weapons and the means to deliver
them.
Tomorrow, the Policy Committee, of which I serve as chairman
and which, Mr. Chairman, you used to serve as
chairman, will issue a policy
statement on missile defense. Two years ago, an overwhelming bipartisan
majority of
Congress formally declared in
legislation that it is the national policy of the United States to deploy an
effective national
missile defense as soon as it
is technologically feasible. This national policy is now enshrined in the
National Missile
Defense Act of 1999.
And it's, of course, of enormous importance that we all
recognize that it cannot, even when deployed, be entirely
effective; it's only part of
what we need to cope with the multiple threats that America is facing, and that
our friends and
our allies face. That is why
President Bush has called for a broad strategy that goes well beyond missile
defense, and
includes both
nonproliferation and counterproliferation.
That's why I applaud you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Lantos, for taking
on the challenge of strengthening a vital element of this
new strategic framework by
working to reauthorize the Export Administration Act.
Two years ago, the Select Committee on National Security that I
chaired recommended reauthorization of the Export
Administration Act for a
number of reasons, including specifically that its penalties had lapsed.
Reestablishing the higher
penalties for violation of
the act that have been allowed to lapse since 1994 will be one of the great
accomplishments of
this committee and our entire
Congress finishing its work. I testified to this effect before Senator Gramm's
Banking
Committee in 1999, and I'm
very pleased to say that the Senate legislation fulfills this recommendation of
the select
committee.
Just as important is recognizing the inadequacy of our current
essentially unilateral approach to export controls. Some of
what Senators Thompson and
Gramm have just said to you touches directly upon this. We are achieving the
worst of all
possible worlds to the extent
that we in the United States control our producers, our workers, our sales to
foreign markets,
and then permit ourselves to
be undercut by our friends and our allies or sometimes by others. We are
achieving nothing in
the way of security if things
are available in foreign markets or if they're available in mass markets. At
the same time, we
are penalizing ourselves
commercially.
What we have to do, therefore, is not only focus on foreign
availability and on the mass market availability of these
products and technologies,
which is of vital importance, of course, and a great step forward, but also to
focus with much,
much vigor in much more
robust ways than heretofore the executive branch or the legislative branch has
been doing, on a
multilateral approach—a
renewed multilateral approach to export controls. And this was the question
that Representative
Lantos put in his opening
statement, and I'd like to just take the balance of my remarks to address it.
The select committee that I chaired a few years ago expressly
recommended on this topic. We noted both the demise of
COCOM and the inadequacy of
the Wassenaar Arrangement to purportedly replace it. We recommended that the
United
States take the appropriate
action not only of reestablishing a multilateral regime, but also of improving
the sharing of
information by nations that
are major exporters of technology so that the United States can track the
movement of
technology and enforce
technology control and re-export requirements.
The Defense Appropriations Act of 2000 appropriated $1 million
for a study. The study was to take a look at the
adequacy or inadequacy of our
current arrangements, such as Wassenaar, and, quote, ''To convene senior-level
executive
branch and congressional
officials, as well as outside experts, to develop the framework for a new
effective COCOM-like
agreement that would regulate
certain militarily useful goods and technologies on a multilateral basis.''
Mr. Berman, who is temporarily not with us in this hearing, but
a distinguished member of this committee, and I were the
Democratic and Republican
co-chairs, respectively, in the House of Representatives; Mike Inslee of
Wyoming and Jeff
Bingaman of New Mexico were
respectively the Republican and Democrat co-chairs of the United States Senate
of this
study group. Our report has
been completed after six months work and participation by executive branch
officials, both the
Clinton administration and
the incoming Bush administration, as well as outside experts, precisely as the
law required. I
commend it to your attention.
I am sure that the professional staff of this committee has had the opportunity
to go through
it.
Our report was unanimous, it was bipartisan and it reached to a
number of important conclusions on the subject of the
importance of multilateral
export controls that I hope will be reflected in the Export Administration Act
reauthorization that
you are writing.
First, multilateral export controls are more important to the
United States now than they were even during the Cold
War. During the Cold War,
America had some unique technological advantages, vis-a-vis most of the rest of
the world.
That, combined with the
relatively incipient nature at the time of global technology trade, meant that
even unilateral export
controls were often
sufficient to prevent, for example, the Soviet Union from modernizing their
weapons technology with
the benefit of United States
technology. But, of course, until 1994, America had much more than simply
unilateral controls.
Up until 1994, together with
our friends and allies, we participated in the Coordinating Committee on
Multilateral Export
Controls, known by its
abbreviation of COCOM. COCOM provided a way to prevent damaging transfers of
equipment
and technology to the Soviet
Union, to the People's Republic of China and other potential adversaries. COCOM
worked
well to ensure that American
troops would never be confronted on the battlefield by an enemy armed with
American
technology.
But today all that has changed. Since 1994 we have no longer
been participating in COCOM. COCOM is no more.
No longer do we or our allies
agree not to undercut one another's counter-proliferation policies. America's
technological
leadership is also no longer
unchallenged. The U.S. is not the soul source of, or anything like it,
militarily useful
technologies, and we can't
afford, therefore, to rely on unilateral export controls alone. We must work
with our friends and
allies to prevent the
proliferation of dangerous technologies.
Building on the lesson of America's experience in COCOM, as
well as the nuclear suppliers group, the Australia group,
the missile technology
control regime and the Wassenaar Arrangement, we've laid out in this report
that I described to you
a realistic process for
reestablishing a new multilateral export control regime. Only a much beefed-up
multilateral control
arrangement will deny
dangerous technologies to rogue states and others who would threaten
international peace.
The reports notes that doing this will not be easy. It's going
to require, as never before, American leadership. But the
task is of such importance
that we must begin today with whichever of our friends and allies will join us.
This must be a
coalition of the willing, and
thus we must set an example for others to follow.
I note that this topic is, in fact, covered in the Senate
legislation at some length in Title V. I would urge this committee to
look carefully at Title V and
to ensure that in a very beefy way the recommendations of this unanimous and
bipartisan study
group on multilateral export
controls are explicitly stated.
For example, there is some language in Title V—and I'm not sure
it means in any way to conflict with the
recommendations of the study
group, but there is some language that suggests that the norm for a new
multilateral
arrangement is that all
supplier groups must be members. Of course, that is correct. In order for a
multilateral regime to
work, all supplier groups
must be members. But in order to begin, you've got to begin somewhere. And
therefore, what
the study group recommends is
that we begin with our like-minded allies, whoever they may be, and lead by
example.
There are two final areas where I urge the committee to take
special care. The provisions of the Export Administration
Act reauthorization dealing
with post-shipment verification and end-use verification of high-risk, dual-use
items are very
important. Post-shipment
verifications should be required as a condition of a license for the export of
militarily useful
technologies, particularly
the most sensitive of these, to high-risk countries or to high-risk
destinations.
A country's willingness to participate in such a regime
signifies that that country is a friend and an ally and not interested
in diverting commercial
technologies for illicit purposes. At the same time, a country's willingness to
facilitate the diversion
of U.S. technologies to the
development or manufacture of weapons of mass destruction is the unmistakable
earmark of a
country that should be
subject to export controls. Unwillingness to provide contractual assurances
against military use is
facial evidence of
noncommercial intent.
I admire and trust my neighbor to whom I sell my house, but he
and I or she and I have an escrow. That is good
business and common sense.
That same kind of common sense is required when it comes to arms control.
Second and finally, the process for making determinations
regarding the foreign availability and mass market status of a
controlled item is very
important. In the Senate bill, for example, if an item is to be decontrolled
because of foreign
availability, only the
president of the United States can set that aside. Over the more than 50 years
of U.S. export controls,
the president has never been
called upon to break an impasse over whether to grant an export license. This
kind of
apparent process, therefore,
is actually completely illusory. What we must have are appropriate checks and
balances.
Chairman HYDE. Thank you very much, Mr. Cox.
Normally, with congressional witnesses, we spare them the
ordeal of asking them questions and I know the Senators
have to leave imminently, but
Mr. Lantos has one question he wants to ask somebody, so Mr. Lantos?
Mr. THOMPSON. Perhaps you are sparing yourself the ordeal.
Mr. LANTOS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I shall try to
wrap several question into one question because I
do have some serious
concerns.
Let me first commend all three of our distinguished witnesses
for exceptionally thoughtful and impressive testimony.
My first question really goes to Senator Thompson, if I may.
You made the observation, Senator Thompson, that you and the
named colleagues are in the distinct minority in the
Senate. Let me remind you,
and you need no reminder, that not too many years ago there were only two
Senators,
Senators Gruening and Morse,
who voted against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and 98 others went the other
way, so I
would not be discouraged by
the fact that as of the moment you do not have 51 votes, perhaps you can get
them.
You wrote a letter along with Senators Warner, Helms, Shelby
and Kyl in early March telling the drafters of S. 1712
that you had 18 reservations
about that piece of legislation. Later on, you sent a second letter saying that
four of those have
now been resolved.
As of today, with the new version, have all 18 of your
reservations been resolved?
Mr. THOMPSON. No, Mr. Lantos. I do not have an up-to-date
number and some of them might fall in the partial
category.
We have had a lot of good discussion back and forth among the
Senators, among the staff, some with the White House.
They have talked in terms of
an Executive order of some kind, perhaps, that might help, although I am not
sure what
should be in an Executive
order and not in the legislation itself. But there are still some things,
clearly, that when this bill is
considered, we will attempt
to improve it; not to make it worse, but to make it better. For example, they
appear to have
changed the definition of
foreign availability, I think, to make it easier to categorize something as
foreign availability. We
will have to fix that.
And the President, incidentally, can only intervene if there is
a threat to national security. In other cases, he can only
intervene to override the
mass marketing determination if there is a serious threat to national security.
We need a little
more discussion as to why the
difference between these standards.
I think that the number of days that agencies have to consider
licensing, and whether or not a majority vote in order to
resolve a dispute in the
interagency review is wise, are other things that need to be looked at. It has
been that way, I agree,
in times past, but
circumstances have changed.
The changes that are of most importance to this nation are the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic
missiles, and the wrong
things getting in the wrong hands. It seems to me that an overriding factor in
looking to move
beyond the status quo now. We
made the adjustment from CoCom to Wassenaar because we did not have the Soviet
Union threat any more, but we
have not made the adjustment from Wassenaar to the current situation, which
consists of
new threats from new sources
based on sensitive dual-use technologies. So I would prefer that the defense
side of things
have more of a say in the
entire export control process.
And, finally, I think that what is needed here more than
anything else is a blue ribbon commission along the lines of the
Rumsfeld Commission. I see no
harm in taking one more year, with the new Administration getting its people in
place, with
this issue being highlighted
the way it has been now because of all the work that has gone on, and to have a
blue ribbon
commission that—Rumsfeld, as
I recall, was established under congressional direction by the intelligence
community in
consultation with the Hill.
I think it is a very good way to go. People whose names were
not on the average person's lips, but who were highly
respected, from all political
persuasions, and not oriented too much toward business, as many of these groups
are, quite
frankly, and not oriented
either against those who just do not want to do any business with the Chinese.
I do not fall into
that last category by the
way. But an objective national security consideration that the law really has
required, and has been
ignored in the past.
For example, there was a pro-business study made by a group
that was widely reported out at Stanford University. But
when the GAO took a look at
it, they tore it all apart. These things are disputed as to what is
controllable and what is not;
there are factual
determinations that politicians should not be the sole judges of. So I think
that an objective consideration
of this process for a year
would be the best avenue of all.
Mr. GRAMM. Mr. Chairman, we have a vote that just started in
the Senate. At some point, I would like to respond to
a couple of things.
Tom, if you have a question for me, if you could ask it, I will
answer it and respond to this and then we can go vote.
Mr. LANTOS. Why don't you come back on this because I do have
one more question.
Mr. GRAMM. Well, first of all, under the current system, it
takes a majority vote to bump the process up. We changed
that system, so one
representative can say no and force it up to the next level to be reviewed.
That is strengthening the
process, not weakening it.
Secondly, Rumsfeld has endorsed this bill. In fact, the
conclusion of the Rumsfeld Commission, if you had to reduce it
down to one sentence, was
build a higher wall around a smaller number of things. That is exactly what
their conclusion
was.
So I am not against blue ribbon panels. I am not in the blue
ribbon panel naming business. I am in the lawmaking
business. This bill has
expired. It needs to be strengthened, it needs to be reauthorized. I would be
very supportive of
having a blue ribbon
commission, but we have no effective penalties, we have no effective process in
place. I think we
have put together a very
strong process. I think it is a dramatic improvement over the current law. I
think it is well thought
out, we spent 2 years doing it.
I believe we got 90 or 95 votes in the Senate. I have spent
hours with Fred. Fred Thompson and I are good friends, I
hope some day we are making
movies together instead of doing this, but the bottom line is we do not agree.
Mr. LANTOS. What role would you plan to play?
Mr. GRAMM. Well, there was one that was going to be a movie
about Texas Rangers that I thought I might get a part
in. Texas Rangers had invaded
Mexico and attacked the Mexican army and the governor was notified and he had
snuff he
was chewing—and I cannot say
what he said, but in saying it he spit snuff out and that was going to be my
line, but they
canceled it on a budget
basis, so I might be famous like Fred.
Mr. LANTOS. Let me reclaim my time——
Mr. THOMPSON. I think that would be a good part for you. I
agree.
Mr. LANTOS. I would like any or all of you to answer this. The
Cox Commission report expressed some very severe
doubts about the feasibility
of post-shipment verification. I share those reservations. Having spent some of
my life in
totalitarian societies, I
have difficulty seeing how a product once it arrives in a dictatorial and
totalitarian regime how
post-shipment verification
can be very effective.
I really would like you to respond to this issue because I
think it is an important issue. I think we act in an honest and
straightforward fashion and
when we say post-shipment verification, we have something very concrete in mind
while the
Chinese communists have
something very different in mind.
A second issue I would
like all three of you if possible to address, I find the notion that the
Commerce Department, the
purpose of which is to
encourage exports, is the control agency dealing with national security and
foreign policy concerns
very close to being an
oxymoron and I would like to have the rationale as to why the Commerce
Department which is a
trade promotion arm of the
U.S. Government would be designated as the national security watchdog.
Mr. GRAMM. Well, let me, if I can, just go first and then I am
going dart out to vote and then let Fred, I know he will
want to.
We thought post-shipment verification was important. We wrote a
very strong provision in the bill on it. We provided
additional funding for it and
we gave greatly enhanced strength to the President and to the secretary to take
action against
countries that do not
participate in it.
We believe it is important to attempt to see that what people
say they are doing they actually do, especially in cases
where we are dealing with
countries that have a checkered record. So we thought it was important.
Mr. LANTOS. But Chris Cox says in his report that it has been
ineffective. Why would it now be effective?
Mr. GRAMM. Well, we want to try to make it effective by
focusing it on countries where there is a real potential
problem, by providing more
resources to commit to it, by stiffening penalties for violators, and by giving
the President and
the secretary the ability to
deny the export license if countries do not agree.
The fact that we are considering it shows that we have a deep
concern, so we thought it was worth trying to make it
work.
In terms of the Commerce Department, the system has always embodied
the Commerce Department as being the host
agency. In trying to
reauthorize the bill, we thought the quickest way to guarantee that we would
fail for 6 years in a row
was to start trying to turn
the whole process on its head, so what we tried to do was to strengthen the
Defense Department
by giving their one member
the ability to force the process to be kicked up to the next level and then
ultimately if necessary
all the way to the President.
So it has historically been done that way. We believe we improved it in our
bill.
Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. Lantos, I would say that first of all
procedure on paper is one thing and it being carried out is
something else. There never
has been in any of the interagency review processes up until now a matter that
has ever been
taken to the President. It
never gets that far. They have lots of these things to deal with, there is
institutional pressure, I
think, against it. But for
whatever reason, the question many times is what gets to the President's
attention. And, again, for
some reason, we are not
allowing him to delegate any of this authority.
I think that the act in 1979, the world was different, I think
there was greater agreement on the threats and risks;
commerce was a second
priority. Phil and I had a little friendly back and forth going as to the
Banking Committee has
jurisdiction of this matter
in the United States Senate. The world has changed and we all have relevant
considerations.
As far as post-shipment
verification is concerned, studies have been done showing that there have been
very few even
attempted, let alone carried
out. Resources, I think, are part of the reason, but I would finally point out
that in these new
exemption categories, such as
mass marketing or foreign availability, for that matter, or incorporated parts,
which is an old,
bad idea that is being
carried forward into this bill, if those determinations are made, there is no
licensing requirement, so
therefore there is no
post-shipment verification at all for those categories.
Thank you very much. With your permission, I will go vote.
Chairman HYDE. Thank you, Senator.
Chris, I do not know, should we keep you and you answer some
questions?
Mr. COX. I do not think so. No, I would actually be happy to——
Chairman HYDE. Mr. Gilman has been left out and he has a
question or two, if you do not mind.
Mr. COX. In fact, if I might be permitted, I would like to just
add a small amount on the questions that Mr. Lantos put.
I think they are excellent
questions and I think the answers that you got were excellent as well.
Obviously, the Select Committee on National Security that I
chaired dealt only with the People's Republic of China and
you are dealing with the
planet. Nonetheless, I can answer within that smaller universe the question
about why
post-shipment verification
has been ineffective.
Three reasons. First, in the PRC context, there was a
requirement of advance notice. That vitiates it entirely by itself.
Secondly, the post-shipment
verification was in each case in the discretion of the host country. That, too,
was vitiating.
And, third, even if the
requirements had been meaningful, which they were not, violation of those
requirements carried no
consequence. So if you were
going to have any kind of meaningful post-shipment verification, you have to
surmount those
difficulties.
With respect the Commerce Department being the appropriate
agency, this is not a Republican or a Democratic issue,
this is an
intra-Administration fight that, as you all know as Members of this Committee,
has been going on forever through
Republican and Democratic
administrations. And all that you can do in crafting ideal legislation is make
sure there are
checks and balances.
Honestly, if you put the Defense Department in charge instead
of the Commerce Department, I think you will have a
different set of problems,
and we ought not suffer those either. But what we should have is some balance
and that is what
you have to be seeking in
this legislation.
Chairman HYDE. Mr. Gilman?
Mr. GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, I want to commend you for giving this very
serious attention, taking it into the jurisdiction of the Full
Committee. I just regret that
more one of our Members are not here. This is a matter on which we have
expended a lot of
energy in the past and we
hope we can continue to focus even more attention on it and I thank Mr. Cox for
his efforts on
the study the commission has
done on this issue.
Although we must do a better job of promoting our exports and
permitting appropriate exports, we need certainly to
keep a strong eye on national
security and to keep that uppermost in our consideration as we review all of
these aspects.
And, Mr. Cox, let me just address a couple of quick questions
to you. If the Senate were to fail in passing this 141 on a
timely basis before the
expiration date, should we extend current stop gap authorization and, if so,
how long would you
extend it?
Mr. COX. Well, of course you must extend stop-gap authorization.
The President would use his emergency powers to
do so if Congress did not,
but it must be extended. We cannot have a complete lapse and we have not ever
suffered such
a lapse since the expiration
of the act 7 years ago.
At a minimum, what Congress ought to do is bump up the
penalties from those that obtain under IEPA and the
President's emergency
authority to what was in the law originally. At a minimum, we must do that.
Mr. GILMAN. There has been a lot of criticism in the past about
the licensing authority under all of this and how long it
takes to get appropriate
licensing. Do the reauthorization proposals take care of that problem?
Mr. COX. They should. Without question, some of the timeframes
are unrealistic. Six months to approve a computer
export, for example, simply
does not work in today's world. It cannot possibly make sense to us to think
that 6 months is
the appropriate period of
time and so the Senate legislation properly tackles those time periods. Whether
or not they are
exactly where you want them
is something else, but I, by the way, endorse Senator Gramm's approach which I
take it has
been endorsed in those very
words by Secretary Rumsfeld as well, of building higher walls around fewer
things. But be
careful that that is what you
are actually doing rather than just rearranging the furniture.
Mr. GILMAN. Senator Thompson questioned what is the urgency
about reauthorizing this in a hurried manner with
new administration before
they truly have an opportunity to examine all of this. Do you agree that there
is some merit about
delaying it and allowing a
further study by the Administration?
Mr. COX. Well, as always, when you hear from two distinguished
leaders from the other body such as Senator Gramm
and Senator Thompson, you
will find a great deal of wisdom and truth. And Senator Gramm was right to say
that we have
an expired law and it is our
job to reauthorize it; Senator Thompson was right to say in rejoinder that it
is better to have no
law at all than a bad one.
And so they are both right to the extent that it is within our power to do our
job in a timely
fashion this year, this
session. Also to make sure that all the concerns that Senator Thompson has and
the minority of
Senators that he described
are addressed.
Chairman HYDE. Mr. Gilman, I am going to ask your permission to
let Mr. Cox go. We have another panel, a
substantial panel.
Mr. GILMAN. One last question, Mr. Chairman. I certainly want
to abide by your request.
Senator Thompson indicated there was a minority of Senator
Warner, Helms, Kyl, Senator Thompson, a minority in the
Senate favoring strict
review. How do you feel about the need for strict review and the concern about
not decontrolling too
much at one time?
Mr. COX. Well, a minority that includes such people as Senator
John Warner, Senator John Kyl and so on is a pretty
distinguished minority.
Second, there are Members of the Congress and Members of the Senate who are
relatively more
or less experts on these
issues and so that minority status is belied to a certain extent when you take
a look at the universe
of people who actually know
what they are talking about, whose expertise this is. That does not mean you
have to agree
with them, but I would want
to make sure that this Committee in doing its job by looking very carefully at
the concerns that
they have expressed and
satisfy yourselves that you have dealt with them.
Mr. GILMAN. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman HYDE. Thank you, Mr. Gilman.
Thank you, Mr. Cox.
Mr. COX. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman HYDE. We are ready to hear from our second panel of
distinguished witnesses, starting with Dr. Richard
Cupitt, who is the Associate
Director and Washington Liaison for the Center for International Trade and
Security. He also
serves as a Visiting Scholar
at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Over the years, Dr.
Cupitt has conducted
field work on export controls
in more than a dozen countries, and has served a consultant to Lawrence
Livermore and
Argonne National
Laboratories.
Dr. Cupitt is the author or co-editor of numerous books and
articles on export controls. He received his Ph.D. from the
University of Georgia, and
has taught at Emory University and the University of North Texas.
Next we have Dr. Paul Freedenberg, who currently is the
Government Relations Director for AMT, the Association for
Manufacturing Technology.
Many of you may remember his tenure as the first Under Secretary for Export
Administration
at the Commerce Department
during the Reagan Administration. Before that, he served as Assistant Secretary
of
Commerce for Trade
Administration.
Prior to his Commerce Department service, Dr. Freedenberg
worked for many years as a staff member on Capitol Hill,
including 7 years as Staff
Director of the Senate Banking Committee's Subcommittee on International
Finance.
Dr. Freedenberg received his Ph.D. at the University of
Chicago, and was an Assistant Professor of Political Science at
Tulane. He is the author and
co-author of several articles on export policy.
Rounding our second panel is Mr. Dan Hoydysh, who is the
Director of Trade Policy and Government Affairs for
UNISYS Corporation. He also
serves as Co-Chair of the Computer Coalition for Responsible Exports.
Before UNISYS, Mr. Hoydysh worked at the Bureau of Export
Administration at the Commerce Department. He
received a Master's degree of
science in atmospheric physics from New York University and a J.D. degree from
the
Columbus School of Law at
Catholic University.
We look forward to hearing from our distinguished panel.
Dr. Cupitt, we will start with you first. If you could hold
your statement down to about 5 minutes or so, we will not be
too strict, but your full
statement will be made a part of the record.
Dr. Cupitt.
STATEMENT OF RICHARD T.
CUPITT, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL TRADE
AND SECURITY, UNIVERSITY OF
GEORGIA
Mr. CUPITT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to also
express my thanks to the Members of the Committee for
the opportunity to speak with
you this afternoon.
Several of the recent reports that have been referred to by the
first panel, Senator Thompson, Senator Gramm and
Representative Cox, on at
least one issue all of those agree and that is the United States needs a new
Export
Administration Act. I think a
sense of urgency accompanies the recommendations in each of these reports, not
because of
some artificial or arbitrary
August deadline related to the expiration of the act, but because of two other
factors.
First, it is my experience in judging export control systems
around the world that if it is not improving, if a nation's export
control system is not
altering to meet new conditions, it is getting worse. The ill intentioned
outside the United States
literally have programs
designed to find new ways to exploit and expose weaknesses in existing systems.
So I think that is
one reason for a sense of
urgency.
Secondly, I think without a clear mandate from Congress in the
shape of Export Administration Act the United States
has begun to cede leadership
on the issue to the European Union.
Now, fortunately many member countries of the union share our
values and concerns about proliferation, but on several
issues they take a different
direction and on several very important issues we indeed have serious
disagreements with them.
So I think there is some
sense of urgency, but it is not the deadline related to the S. 149, it is
pressure of these sort of more
substantive concerns.
From suggestions of the staff, I was asked to sort of lay out
some big picture challenges. I would like to mention at least
three.
The first, I think one thing we should consider is how to
improve a data-poor policy environment for export controls.
Significant gaps exist
between the data that is available and the data that is needed to make astute
export control policies.
I can give you several examples. One, very little information
on or analysis of foreign export control systems exists. I
think this makes it very
difficult to assess important policy issues such as how harmonized the
international system is. And
this difficulty, this lack of
knowledge, has seen some expression in the course of the bilateral negotiations
with Australia and
Great Britain on monition
controls. I think in many cases we have been surprised by what we have found
compared to
what we expected to see when
those negotiations started.
I think there is very little concrete information on compliance
activities by U.S. industry. We did a study last year and
that was the first time a
comprehensive survey of industry compliance activities had been done in almost
15 years.
So there are several additional kinds of information that I
think would really enhance the policy environment and I think
that might be something worth
considering.
Secondly, and something I think you have heard plenty on
already, when we renew the EAA we need to think about
how to augment international
cooperation. The four multilateral arrangements are, quite frankly, very
primitive, rudimentary
types of multilateral
international organizations. I have provided some tabular data on how you might
think about things in
terms of structures, but
these types of structures offer very limited benefit beyond virtually no policy
coordination at all.
The weak mechanisms for coordinating export controls
multilaterally would pose a minor problem if the countries
involved had pretty well
harmonized national systems. Unfortunately, the limited evidence that exists
suggests that
harmonization is an exception
rather than a rule even among the core supplier states.
Finally, one of the keys to all this debate is if Congress can
lay down a general principle regarding transfers of
information technology to the
People's Republic of China. The most common interagency licensing dispute
usually involves
such exports, if you broadly
define information technology.
The fact that the United States coordinates control over the
vast majority of information technology items through the
Wassenaar Arrangement, which
has no real undercut policy, virtually guarantees that exports of such items to
China will
generate controversy. And for
the Committee's information, I have provided a table that identifies
information technology,
and which arrangements
control that.
Indeed, you could even narrow the problem to exports to end
users in China with connections to military or weapons of
mass destruction projects
that are also involved in civilian projects—those are quite, quite numerous.
While these cases
will always require judgment
on the part of licensing officials, Congress, I think, can establish a clearer
principle for the
Administration upon which to
base these decisions.
In conclusion, while this is not an exhaustive list of
concerns, I think addressing these three issues would go a long way
to resolving much of the
problems that we face. All of the recent studies make recommendations on these
three issues that
the Committee might wish to
consider. I certainly think that if you can resolve these, the Congress can
send a message to
industry, to U.S. allies and
to current or potential adversaries about its commitment to non-proliferation
and to legitimate
commerce. Based on that
commitment, I think the United States can reestablish its leadership on export
controls.
Thank you for your time.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Cupitt follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF RICHARD
T. CUPITT, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR
INTERNATIONAL TRADE AND
SECURITY, UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA
INTRODUCTION
At least as early as the classical era of ancient Rome,
governments have grappled with the issue of export controls.
Intersecting the various
military, economic, and diplomatic interests of a nation, export controls
reflect how a government
balances these objectives.
Ideally, export controls will complement these interests as part of an
overarching grand strategy.
More often, export controls
express the compromises required to conduct foreign policy in light of
competing objectives.
For nearly fifty years, the United States has set the world
standard for security export controls, both for military and
dual-use (i.e., goods,
technologies and services with commercial and military applications) items.
Several recent reports,
including that of the Study
Group on Enhancing Multilateral Export Controls for US National Security and
two by the
Center for Strategic and
International Studies, however, argue that the current US and multilateral
exports have begun to
break in the face of new
challenges, from new proliferation threats to economic globalization.(see
footnote 1) While debate
continues as to how to fix
the US and multilateral system, every serious study agrees on at least one
measure: the United
States must craft a new
Export Administration Act (EAA) soon.
Although the United States has a world class export control
system, the lack of a Congressional legislative mandate has
undermined US leadership on
the issue. Beyond the hypocritical aspect of US policy this engenders (where US
officials tell
other countries about the
need for a clear legislative framework), this deficiency helped cede practical
leadership on export
controls to the European
Union (EU). As important, if national or multilateral export controls do not
constantly adapt to
new conditions, they do not
merely stagnate but get worse. While friends and allies in industry and
government wait on the
United States to act, US
adversaries spend that time finding new ways to exploit weaknesses in the
current regime.(see
footnote 2) Consequently,
although the August 2001 deadline may seem artificial to some, the sense of
urgency reflects an
increasingly uncomfortable
reality.
While the EAA requires urgent reform, unfortunately the
Congress faces at least three major ''big picture'' challenges in
the reauthorization process:
Improving a data-poor policy environment;
Augmenting international policy coordination beyond its primitive
state; and
Resolving divergent policy objectives regarding exports of
information technology to China.
Although many other important
issues exist regarding the EAA, how Congress resolves these three challenges
will define
the parameters for many other
policy concerns. If left unsettled, the United States will flounder along with
an increasingly
ineffective and inefficient
system, ever more an isolated eccentric than a source of global leadership.
IMPROVING A DATA-POOR
ENVIRONMENT
Significant gaps exist between the data available and the data
needed to make astute and timely policy choices, both in
the United States and abroad.
In some instances, such as evaluating the bona fides of a recent graduate of a
foreign
technical university for
issuing a deemed export license, pertinent data may prove impossible to
collect. In other cases,
however, officials could
obtain relevant data with an appropriate investment of resources and the proper
analytic tools.
Despite nearly fifty years of cooperation, for example, very
little systematic evidence about national export control
systems exists. Despite
notable exceptions, such as the Worldwide Guide to Export Controls by Vastera
Limited and the
export control projects at
the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and the Center for
International
Trade and Security
(CITS/UGA), US and foreign officials have few ready sources of data on the
design, processes, and
implementation of export
control systems beyond that of their own country. The difficult course of the
bilateral negotiations
on munitions export controls
with Australia and Great Britain over the last twelve months demonstrate the
extent of this
knowledge gap and its
consequences. Knowledge of corporate export control policies fares no better.
Until the
CITS/UGA industry survey of
2000, for example, the last comprehensive survey of US corporate compliance
practices
took place in 1985 as part of
a study for the National Academy of Sciences.(see footnote 3)
The current legislation in the Senate address some concerns
regarding assessing national export control systems and
foreign availability through
its Office of Technology Evaluation, but the shortage of information extends
more deeply into
the US system. Licensing
officials often can not use proprietary or other open source databases to
supplement information
generated by the US
intelligence community. Where companies may take mere seconds to scan multiple
lists of sensitive
end-users for each
transaction and financial institutions have ready access to the books and
business plans of potential
customers, this kind of
information may take days to enter the US dual-use licensing system for a
specific case, if it ever
does. The rapid advances in
many technologies, such as information or bio technologies, also mean that
licensing officers at
the Department of Commerce
and elsewhere may not have sufficient contact with industry to evaluate the
latest
technologies or, more
importantly, know of and understand the export control implications of emerging
dual-use
technologies.
Sometimes US officials simply lack the necessary analytic
tools. Using its current licensing database system, for
example, the Department of
Commerce has difficulty extracting information that would allow it to target
its resources more
effectively. It can not, for
example, easily ascertain much more than the average license processing times,
so officials rely
extensively on anecdotal
evidence to identify and fix specific license processing bottle-necks. Although
the US Exports
project under the Department
of Defense may remedy several of the most immediate problems, if the US wants a
world-class export control
system, US officials need world-class management tools.
AUGMENTING INTERNATIONAL
POLICY COORDINATION
The principal supplier states have made strong commitments to
multilateral export control arrangements in several
arenas, such as the Group of
Eight (G-8) summit meetings. In the final communique from the 1999 Koln summit,
for
example, the governments
stated:
Effective export control
mechanisms are essential for achieving a broad range of our arms control and
non-proliferation
objectives. We will>
Transfer interrupted!
hen these mechanisms.(see
footnote 4)
With the exception of the
Russian Federation, moreover, every G-8 member participates in all four
multilateral
arrangements (i.e., the
Australia Group, the Missile Technology Control Regime, the Nuclear Suppliers
Group, and the
Wassenaar Arrangement).
Nonetheless, these statements clearly indicate that the multilateral
arrangements need
embellishment to become more
effective and efficient.
Generally, international organizations provide the benefits of
centralization, such as a stable negotiating forum, creation of
shared norms and rules, or
access to pooled resources, and the benefits of autonomy, such as managing
joint operations or
acting as a neutral
arbiter.(see footnote 5) The four multilateral arrangements illustrate one very
rudimentary type of
international
organization—the informal consultative mechanism (see Tables 1 and 2 for the
basic structures and processes
of the arrangements).(see
footnote 6) This type of organization offers very limited opportunities for
either centralization or
autonomy.
While the arrangements have had some important successes
(including that most suppliers are members with common
lists of sensitive items),
they face at least three difficult problems:
About the only thing on which general agreement exists is that the
lists need to be shortened. If the United States does not
agree to reduce the list of
controlled items, then it will face increasing isolation (putting US companies
at a disadvantage) as
its allies alter their
practices through national discretion;
Opposition from several formerly communist states (subtly
supported by others) indicates that existing economic and
political incentives for
adopting stricter no undercut provisions remain insufficient; and
Information sharing, such as exchanging meaningful intelligence on
end-users within and across the arrangements, remains
primitive.
The weak mechanisms for
coordinating export controls multilaterally would pose only minor problems if
countries had well
harmonized national systems.
Unfortunately, the limited evidence that exists suggests that harmonization is
an exception
rather than the rule, even
among the core supplier states.(see footnote 7)
Without addressing these three problems and the issue of
harmonization, reauthorizing the EAA will do little to enhance
multilateral coordination.
Simply exhorting the administration to do more without providing useful levers
to change the
incentive structures for
export controls in other countries will produce failure and frustration.
EXPORTS OF INFORMATION
TECHNOLOGY TO CHINA
The most common interagency licensing disputes usually involve
exports to the People's Republic of China. Many of
these cases, in addition,
concern information technology, broadly defined to include items like
communications satellites.
These cases become
problematic not simply because they involve China, but because the United
States and Japan take a
much more cautious approach
on such licenses than Russia, Israel, and several European suppliers do. Even
Germany,
with an export control system
regarded as stricter than other European states, will export many items to
China that the
United States would not. In
part these differences emerge from the general European preference for managing
potential
proliferators through
engagement rather than sanctioning them.
The fact that the United States coordinates control over the
vast majority of information technology items through the
Wassenaar arrangement, which
has no real ''no undercut'' policy, virtually guarantees that exports of such
items to China
will generate controversy
(see Table 3). Rather than trying to not name China directly in its EAA
deliberations, a tactic
tried by the House in the
mid-1990s, the Committee might well confront the issue directly. Given that the
United States,
Japan, and the European Union
have ''catch-all'' controls designed to prevent exports to projects of
proliferation concern,
the problem narrows to
exports to end-users in China with connections to military or weapons of mass
destruction
projects that are also
involved in civilian projects. While these cases will always require judgment
on the part of licensing
officials, Congress can
establish a clearer principle upon which to base these decisions. With better
data to evaluate such
projects, moreover, US officials
could do a much better job addressing industry concerns and in persuading
foreign
governments to coordinate
their approach to these projects, either in terms of denials or approvals of
exports.
CONCLUSION
While not an exhaustive list of issues, making prudent choices
regarding these three issues should help create a more
effective and efficient
export control system. All of the recent studies make recommendations on these
three issues that the
Committee might wish to
consider. In addition, more information, a more level international
playing-field, and clearer
guidelines regarding the most
problematic cases can also become the groundwork for a new partnership between
government and industry on
export controls. Resolving these issues would all generate incentives to
increase corporate
compliance with existing
export controls. Even among the companies most experienced with export
controls, relatively few
have adopted comprehensive
compliance programs for export controls. Furthermore, as more and more small
and medium
size companies enter the
export market, these companies often lack awareness of the basic objectives and
procedures of
US export control policy. By
crafting a new EAA, Congress can send a message to industry, to US allies, and
to current
or potential adversaries
about its commitment to nonproliferation and to legitimate commerce. Based on
that commitment,
the United States can
reestablish its leadership on export controls.
Chairman HYDE. Thank you, Dr. Cupitt.
Dr. Freedenberg?
STATEMENT OF PAUL
FREEDENBERG, DIRECTOR OF GOVERNMENT RELATIONS, REPRESENTING
ASSOCIATION OF MANUFACTURING
TECHNOLOGY
Mr. FREEDENBERG. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Before I begin, I thought I would answer a question that was
asked the previous panel which is why the Commerce
Department is running this
export control operation. Since I was present at the drafting of the
legislation that created the
Under Secretary for Export
Administration and was the first one in that role, I think I can answer that
question.
The idea was to have a compromise. The original idea was to
have an independent agency, but due to interagency
disagreement, there was no
ability to decide in what new agency it would be housed. So the idea then was
to break off
export control from trade
promotion. BXA is not a trade promotion agency, there is no place—until you get
to the
Secretary of Commerce, which
it hardly ever gets to—there is no place at which the trade promotion side of
Commerce
ever touches export control.
So that was the idea, that plus the idea of bringing intelligence in to have a
greater degree of
intelligence information from
the CIA, have a greater bad end user screening ability. That is really what
your problem is,
who are the bad end users,
not really what is the category of product that you are controlling. Because
you have already
decided that in coordination
with the Defense Department. I just thought I would clarify that.
In my testimony which I will very briefly summarize, I tried to
debunk the myth that somehow the U.S. export control
system has collapsed.
Particularly with regard to machine tools, we have found that over the last 6
years we had about 50
percent denials and our cases
tend to run up to as much as a year before a decision is reached. That is
frequently deadly to
sales; because our allies,
all of our allies, are able to finish their license processing certainly within
a month, hardly ever in
more than a month and
sometimes within 10 days. And that is a very big selling point vis-a-vis U.S.
products.
U.S. products certainly are not unique. In the age of
globalization, our survey has shown that there are 718 different
models of the particular
machine tools that are controlled by the United States, that is five-axis
machine tools, and 584
made outside the United
States, including all of Europe, South Korea, Taiwan, and even China exhibited
six models of
these controlled products.
So the U.S. does not have a monopoly and what happens is
that—and what has been happening over the last
decade—is that Boeing has
been moving offshore as the China aeronautics market has grown and China is
likely to be the
largest buyer of aircraft
from Boeing over the next decade. They have used their market leverage to get
Boeing to put
more and more of their
manufacturing into China. That means that the Chinese have to buy machine tools
to make aircraft
parts, and because of U.S.
export control rules, those machine tools are not American. In general, they
have been buying
Italian, German, French and
the evidence is very clear that that is the case. Very infrequently are the
machine tools
American.
In case you do not think that trend is going to continue, just
last week it was announced by Airbus that they are going to
build an entire wing in
China. A wing is considered, obviously, an integral part of the plane. It is
not a peripheral, and that
means there is going to be
even more manufacturing moving into China.
The question is who is going to provide the technology? The
technology is being provided, obviously, the blueprints, by
Airbus and by Boeing. If we
have American machine tools there, we have a knowledge of what is going on with
those
machine tools. If we do not
have American machine tools there, we do not know. We have to depend on our
allies for
cooperation, and they
frequently do not have the same degree of factory scrutiny that we do.
Let me quickly turn to the recommendations I have for export
control legislation. The first is, and it is relevant to what I
was just talking about, that
foreign availability be defined as taking into account foreign availability
from within multilateral
organizations such as
Wassenaar. Most of the foreign availability now comes from—in fact, the
entirety of foreign
availability comes from our
allies; and for U.S. companies not to be able to cite that allied foreign
availability as evidence
that the product is going to
the intended end user is a tremendous disadvantage, and it essentially
nullifies the provision.
Secondly, I was also on the commission that Congressman Cox
discussed, the Stimson study group, and it is very, very
important for us to give a
mandate in any new legislation for a stronger multilateral organization. The
previous
Administration saw
essentially CoCom crumble, and the organization that replaced it has been
really a mere shadow of
what CoCom was.
The major two factors are Wassenaar does not have a veto. That
is obvious. You cannot veto what your allies are
sending into controlled
areas. But even more importantly we do not even have a no undercut rule. That
was mentioned
earlier. No undercut means
that if we turn down a specific end user, we do not have an assurance from our
allies that that
end user will not get a
product from France or Switzerland and, in fact, I have seen this happen
regularly with our own
machine tool builders. So
that is a very critical factor and it is not something that I think is beyond
our capability of
achieving.
One of the points that the Stimson Commission makes is that
this needs higher level attention. That we need essentially
presidential involvement. But
certainly a mandate from this Committee in the new law, and it is already in
the Senate bill,
would be very valuable.
And, finally, because I see the red light is on, I would say
that when the Committee begins the drafting of the new
legislation, I would note
that the Senate bill is attractive not only because of what is written into the
explicit law, but also
what is left to the
Administration and its regulators to craft. There are a number of issues that I
think are extremely
complex.
The history of export control legislation is mircomanagement. I
would hope the Committee would leave it to the
regulators to deal with
certain very difficult issues, particularly deemed exports, the interagency
rules that govern the
process of commodity
classification and the regulations surrounding what is known as EPCI, or
Enhanced Proliferation
Control Initiative, that
President Bush put into effect.
I have talked with the new Administration, with representatives
of the Administration. They have put regulatory reform
as a high priority. But it is
a very complex matter, and I would hate to see them hemmed in and locked into
certain
positions before they heard
from, for example, from experts on the subject and from industry
representatives.
I will stop at that point.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Freedenberg follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF PAUL
FREEDENBERG, DIRECTOR OF GOVERNMENT RELATIONS,
REPRESENTING ASSOCIATION OF
MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY
Mr. Chairman, members
of the Committee, I appreciate the opportunity to testify before you today on
the renewal of
the Export Administration Act
(''EAA''). As a former Assistant Secretary for Trade Administration and Under
Secretary
for Export Administration in
the Administration of President Ronald Reagan, and as a former Staff Director
of the Senate
Banking Subcommittee with
export control oversight responsibility, I believe that I can offer some
perspective and
background on this issue. I
have been dealing with this subject in a legislative context for more than two
decades; and I
have been testifying about
export control legislation for 15 years, including the last time that
comprehensive export control
legislation was signed into
law, the Omnibus Trade Act of 1988. From the time that I left office in 1989
until fall of 1998, I
was an international trade
consultant, specializing in technology transfer issues; so in addition to my
administrative
experience, I believe that I
can also bring the perspective of someone whose clients have been regulated by
export control
policy to my discussion of
the issue.
Today, I will be speaking on behalf of AMT—The Association for
Manufacturing Technology, where I am the Director
of Government Relations. AMT
represents about 370 member companies, with annual sales ranging from less than
$2
million to several hundred
million, who make machine tools, manufacturing software, and measurement
devices. Industry
sales total nearly $7
billion, and exports account for more than one-third of those sales.
Your Committee is currently reviewing the adequacy of current
export controls with an eye to drafting new legislation
that would adapt the current
control structure to the 21st Century. I will, therefore, focus my testimony on
that question
and how I believe that new
legislation would likely affect the United States business community, in
general, and the U.S.
machine tool industry, in
particular.
By way of introduction, however, and to put my comments into
perspective, I would also like to discuss the multilateral
export control regime and how
that regime has affected U.S. policy, particularly in China. The most important
point to be
understood with regard to
United States export control policy is that while it is ostensibly aimed at
keeping dangerous
technology out of the hands
of the so-called pariahs, or rogue states, the really important issues revolve
around the
question of what to do about
China. Unfortunately, our Government is addressing the China issue
unilaterally, because
there is absolutely no
consensus within the Western alliance about how to treat technology transfer to
China. The recent
publication of the Henry L.
Stimson Center Study Group, Enhancing Multilateral Export Controls For US
National
Security, noted the lack of
multilateral agreement on how best to deal with countries such as China and
called on the Bush
Administration to put the
United States Government in a leadership role in forging a consensus and
improving multilateral
cooperation. I was a
participant in drafting that report, and a member of your Committee, Mr.
Berman, was a co-chair.
It is important to remember that there is a lack of both
national and international consensus regarding China. Judging
from official statements over
the past decade, it is unclear what U.S. technology transfer policy toward
China is. China is
obviously seen as a major
trading partner, and great effort is put forth to ensure that U.S. companies
obtain a major share
of the China market, which is
predicted to be the largest in the world in most capital goods categories over
the next
decade. Clearly, however,
China is also viewed by U.S. licensing authorities as a potential technology
transfer risk. This is
reflected in the fact that
the U.S. Government is far more rigorous (and more time-consuming) than any
other industrialized
state in reviewing and
disapproving licenses for exports to China.
There is a myth that has grown in the popular media that U.S.
technology transfer policy toward China is lax. The facts,
particularly with regard to
machine tools, indicate quite the opposite. Nothing could be further from the
truth than the
assertion that the U.S.
Government is soft in its review of exports to China. The U.S. Government has
consistently been by
far the most rigorous with
regard to reviewing license applications for exports to China. Other countries
within the
Wassenaar Arrangement simply
do not share our assessment of the risk factors involved in technology transfer
to China
and have generally maintained
a far less stringent licensing policy. Indeed, one could say, without any
equivocation, that our
European allies maintain what
could only be described as a favorable export licensing policy toward China.
This can be
illustrated by the following
data.
Based on evidence gathered informally at Wassenaar meetings by
the AMT technical advisor to the U.S. delegation, the
following machine tool
license processing times could be expected if an export license for the
shipment of products or
technology destined for China
were to be applied for in major industrialized countries:
United States—Several
months—up to a year—is the norm for difficult cases.
Germany—The longest it could
possibly take is 30 days, although many take less time for processing. For a while
there
was a 24-hour turn-around
promised by the licensing office, but because the big companies tended to camp
out in the
office and monopolize this
service, the licensing agency has discontinued it. Nonetheless, it is only in
cases of pre-license
check that it takes as long
as 30 days.
Italy—They expected a 30-day
turn-around, with extraordinary cases involving pre-license checks to take as
long as 60
days.
Japan—For their part, the
Japanese said that the norm was two to three weeks, with up to a month in the
cases where
there was some sort of
pre-license check.
Switzerland—The Swiss said
two days was the norm, with the possibility that a license could take as long
as 7 to 10 days
to process if it were
difficult.
Subsequent reports by commercial and economic officers posted
at embassies in those countries have confirmed these
informal license processing
time estimates. When these comparative timeframes were raised with U.S.
Government
officials, the response that
AMT received from them was that the various agencies involved almost always
processed
licenses within the 30-day
time limit that the statute prescribes. But this time estimate fails to take
into account times when
the clock is stopped in order
to obtain more information from the exporter, which is a quite frequent
occurrence. And,
even more significantly, the
30 days does not include the time that it takes to complete the Government's
end-user check,
which is almost always a very
time consuming activity. United States companies are judged by their customers,
not merely
by the time that any
particular agency of the U.S. Government completes its license processing but
rather by the total
elapsed time that it takes
for delivery from the moment that the order is placed. Any legislative provisions
that the
Committee might consider that
would be aimed at making improvements in the licensing process must include
improvements in the total
licensing time, not just the time that licensing officials actually have
physical possession of the
license.
As I have argued, the total elapsed time that it takes to
process a license is only part of the problem. Official licensing
statistics demonstrate that
the United States Government is far more likely to disapprove machine tool
licenses for China
than any of our European
competitors. (This is true in many other sectors such as scientific
instruments, semiconductor
manufacturing equipment as
well; but I will concentrate on machine tool exports, where I have the most
complete data.)
While a mere handful of U.S.
machine tool licenses have been approved during the period from 1994 to 2000 (a
total of
31 licenses, or five licenses
per year), trade statistics indicate that our European allies have shipped a
huge volume of far
more sophisticated machine
tools to Chinese end-users.
China is the largest overseas market (in dollars) for U.S.
machine tools, and it has the potential to grow significantly from
its current total of machine
tool imports from all sources of $2 billion. However, unlike other East Asian
markets where
U.S. market share has been
substantial, U.S. machine tool sales represent a relatively small percentage of
the Chinese
market.
For example, South Korea is at a similar point in its economic
plan as China. Both South Korea and China are
developing their auto
industries, high-volume consumer durables, small and medium combustion engines,
and second-tier
aerospace industries. Both
China and South Korea have indigenous machine tool industries, but the
development of their
respective metalworking
industries requires imported machine tools.
There is a major difference, however, in the way U.S. export
control policy views the two countries. Korea is an ally of
the United States and U.S.
export control policy reflects that. By contrast, the U. S. Government's
implementation of the
Wassenaar export control list
toward China is highly restrictive. One result is that in 1999, the last year
in which we have
complete data, China imported
only 8 percent of its machine tools from the United States. By contrast, Korea,
which is
not subject to restrictive
U.S. export controls, imported 20 percent of its machine tools from U.S.
providers. If one
attributes the difference in
import totals to the difference in U.S. export control policy toward the two
countries, it can be
argued that the cost to U.S.
machine tool builders of the restrictive export control policy is approximately
a quarter of a
billion dollars per year in
lost export sales to China.
A major reason for this differential is that Western European
countries are exporting to China modern machine tools that
would be unlikely to be
licensed by the U.S. Government. As evidence of this, the average unit prices
of European
machine tools in categories
likely to be subject to controls are up to 250% higher than the average unit
prices for machine
tools in the same categories
exported from the U.S. to China. In 1996, while the average unit price of
machine tools sold
to China by U.S.
manufacturers was $155,000; the average unit price of those sold by Italy was
$208,000; by
Switzerland $348,000; and by
Germany $407,000. Average unit prices are a key indicator of the
sophistication, accuracy,
and productivity enhancement
of machine tools. Those factors are accounted for by higher precision,
five-axis (and above)
machine tools that perform
more productively and thereby command a higher price. But it is precisely those
characteristics
that cause a machine tool to
be listed on the Wassenaar list of presumably restricted technologies. If this
is true, the
statistics indicate that
Europeans are shipping to China machines that, had they been produced in the
United States, would
be very rigorously reviewed
by the U.S. Government, with a low probability of their being granted an export
license.
The U.S. Government's rigorously enforced limits on machine
tools significantly disadvantage U.S. machine tool builders
in the global marketplace,
since China has proved able to buy from a variety of foreign makers. The most
rigorously
controlled machine tools are
those that possess five axes. A recent survey by AMT indicated that there are
718 different
models of five-axis machine
tools manufactured around the world, with 584 different models made outside the
United
States in countries such as
Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, Spain, South Korea, and Taiwan. There
are even six
models manufactured in China
(as the Chinese themselves displayed at the Beijing Machine Tool Show in 2001).
Chinese importers often
wish to buy several machines at one time to upgrade a factory or to complete or
augment a
production line. The
inability of U.S. manufacturers to guarantee delivery of a particular machine
tool requiring a license has
an amplified effect on sales
of machines that do not require a license. For example, Germany's market share
of machine
tools imported by China is
more than double the U.S. market share. The trade figures indicate that by
freely selling the
same sophisticated machine
tools to the Chinese which would be most likely unavailable from United States
manufacturers,
German and other European
providers are also garnering sales in the non-controlled machine tool
categories as well,
further disadvantaging U.S.
manufacturers.
This is made even more
frustrating to U.S. machine tool builders and their workers by the fact that
many of the
commercial aircraft factories
in China contain joint ventures and co-production arrangements with American
airframe and
aircraft engine companies. In
other words, despite the fact that these Chinese factories are supervised, or
monitored, by
American executives (or at
least have a strong American presence to assure the production of quality
components), U.S.
Government export control
policy creates a situation in which machine tools in those factories are almost
certain to be
supplied by European machine
tool builders. How does that assure our national security?
As I have noted, while machine tool license applications to
China are likely to be approved in a matter of days, or
weeks, by our European
allies, U.S. applications languish for months, or longer. Executives of U.S.
machine tool
companies have told me that
they have decided to forego business in China if it involves an export license
application. That
is how discouraged they have
become by the current licensing process. For their part, repeatedly over the
last year the
Chinese have told various
U.S. companies that, in the future, they will not even ask them to bid for
business, since the
Chinese experience with the
U.S. licensing process has been so negative and so time-consuming. For those
U.S.
companies who are still asked
to bid, the Chinese have begun to demand a guarantee from those manufacturers
that they
will be able to obtain an
export license from the U.S. Government for the product in question, with a
penalty built into the
contract if that guarantee is
not met. Obviously, this is a further deterrent to doing business in China. It
is expensive enough
to bid on business in China,
without having to undertake the added risk of a monetary penalty for failure to
obtain an
export license on a timely
basis. One large U.S. company told me that the new penalty clauses are enough
to deter them
from doing business in China,
since they have been burned by the licensing process so many times.
A recent example will illustrate many of the problems inherent
in attempts by U.S. companies to obtain an export license
for machine tool sales to
China. Last year, an AMT member asked for my assistance in obtaining final
approval for an
export license that had
already been pending for many months. The Chinese, who were making purchases
for an aircraft
engine plant, informed the
AMT member company that they were at the end of their patience in waiting for
U.S. export
license approval. This
particular company had been delaying the Chinese buyer repeatedly, while it
attempted to obtain an
individual validated license
for two five-axis machine tools. After waiting many months, the Chinese
cancelled one of the
two machines on order, but
gave the company one last chance to obtain the export license from U.S.
authorities for the
remaining machine. The
company was particularly eager to gain approval for this license, because its
owners believed that
there would be follow-up
orders for as many as a dozen additional machines is they could prove that they
could obtain a
license for this one. The
U.S. Government was aware that a Swiss company had offered to fill the order
for these machine
tools, and, in contrast to
the American company, the Swiss made it clear to the Chinese that there would
be no security
conditions, or compulsory
visitations by the Swiss company if they were given the business by the
Chinese.
In order to create an incentive to approve the license, the AMT
member company offered to provide special software
that would limit the use of
the machine tool to only a small group of activities approved by the U.S.
Government and to
provide regular visitations
to ensure that the machine tool was only to be used for the jobs described in
the license. While
all this was being
negotiated, the State Department declined to demarche the Swiss Government to
warn them of the U.S.
Government's concerns with
the sales of machine tools to the Chinese plant. Negotiations between the AMT
member and
the Defense Department
dragged for another two and one-half months, with none of the AMT member's
security or
post-shipment visitation
proposals deemed adequate by DoD. Finally, just as the license, which had by
then been pending
for six months, was about to
be escalated to the Cabinet level for resolution, the Chinese buyer informed
the AMT
member company that they had
lost patience with the U.S. licensing process and cancelled the order. As it
turned out, the
Chinese plant manager had
decided instead to go with the Swiss machine tool alternative, which required
no post-shipment
conditions and which had
already obtained a license from its government months earlier.
Reportedly, when informed of the Chinese cancellation and the
need to return the license without action, the comment of
the Defense representative
inter-agency review panel (known as the Operating Committee) was that he was
happy
because DoD had achieved its
objective; no U.S. machine tool would be going to that Chinese factory.
Of course, the U.S. machine tool would have gone to that
factory under strict conditions with numerous follow-up visits
to ensure that it was being
used for the purposes stated in the license, while there will be no guarantee
that Western
authorities will be able to
check on the projects on which the Swiss machine tools will be used.
Nonetheless, DoD was
apparently happy, having
accomplished its objective of blocking the U.S. sale, and, I presume that the
State Department
was happy as well, since it
did not have to create friction with any of our friends or allies by taking a
strong position or
asking uncomfortable
questions of them. The only ones who are unhappy are the owners of the
U.S.-based machine tool
company, who may very well
move production offshore to avoid a repeat of this unpleasant and unproductive
process;
and, of course, the employees
who may lose their jobs are not very happy either. Over the past year, two U.S.
machine
tool companies have begun the
process of moving production offshore because of the onerous export control
process they
have encountered in the
United States.
I would ask the Committee to consider what this case
illustrates about the national security benefits of our current export
control policy, other than
the fact that such a policy is likely to maintain machine tool employment in
Switzerland. It
certainly did not have any
appreciable effect on the Chinese company's ability to obtain machine tools for
whatever
aerospace projects they deem
appropriate.
This inability to sell into the market while foreign machine
tools are freely exported to China is particularly burdensome
for the U.S. machine tool
industry, because recent market projections have indicated that China will
represent the largest
and fastest growing market
for commercial jet aircraft in the first two decades of the 21st Century. As
recently as 1995
China represented less than
two percent of Boeing sales, today China represents more than 10 percent, and
Boeing
estimates that China will be
the largest market outside the U.S. over the next 20 years. Within the next
five years, China
could account for nearly 25
percent of Boeing's total business.
In 1992, ninety percent of Boeing's aircraft components were
built in the United States. Today, more than half the
components are imported.
China's exports to the U.S. of civilian aerospace components have grown 70
percent in the past
five years. Moreover,
Boeing's acquisition of McDonnell Douglas has given them an operation in which
half of the MD-90
(and its successor, the 717)
built each year are wholly constructed in China. Given the tremendous market
power that
China will possess, it is
certain that the Chinese Government will demand and receive what are known as
''offset'' contracts
to build ever greater shares
of Boeing's aircraft in their own aircraft factories on their own machine
tools. If the trend I have
described continues, and
licensing policy does not change, U.S. machine tool builders are highly likely
to be displaced and
replaced by their foreign
competitors who will be able to take advantage of a far more lenient export
licensing policy to
make the sales to stock the
new production lines that the Chinese will demand.
Machine tool licenses to China are but one example of a larger
problem—the lack of international consensus about how
to regulate technology
transfer to China. Whatever technology transfer concerns the U.S. Government
may have about
China are not reflected in
the largest and most active multilateral export control regimes to which we
belong. The absence
of a China reference in the
text of the Wassenaar Arrangement means that there are no internationally
agreed upon rules or
standards that the U.S.
Government can cite to induce our allies to follow our lead with regard to
China technology
transfer policy.
Indeed, our former
adversary, Russia, is a charter member of the Wassenaar Arrangement, and China
would see any
United States Government
attempt to make them a target of this export control regime as a hostile act.
In fact, discussions
were held in 1998, with the
goal of making China a Wassenaar member. I note all of this in order to provide
some
perspective regarding the
degree to which the United States Government lacks leverage in denying
technology to China.
The United States Government
may decide not to sell machine tools, or satellites, or scientific instruments,
or
semiconductor manufacturing
equipment to China, but that does not obligate the Japanese, the Germans, or
the French to
follow our lead.
That is a fundamental problem with the current export regime.
Not only does it indicate a lack of discipline regarding a
country with which the United
States Government has indicated technology transfer concerns; it also puts U.S.
companies
on an uneven playing field
with regard to sales to what is likely to be the fastest growing and largest
market for capital
goods over the coming decade.
Repeatedly over the past few years, whether it is in the category of machine
tools, or
semiconductor production equipment,
or scientific instruments, the United States Government has taken a negative
approach to technology
transfer to China while our allies have not. The result has been that the
Chinese are denied nothing
in terms of high technology,
but U.S. firms have lost out in a crucial market. This serves neither our
commercial nor our
strategic interests.
RECOMMENDATIONS
I am sure that this Committee is aware of the fact that the
authority of the Export Administration Act will lapse on
August 19, 2001. As you also
know, in the 1990s, both the first Bush Administration and the Clinton
Administration
extended that authority under
the pretense of an emergency that did not exist by virtue of invoking the
International
Emergency Economic Powers Act
(''IEEPA''). The EAA, which was extended repeatedly under the authority of
IEEPA,
was last amended in a
significant way while I was serving the Reagan Administration as Under
Secretary for Export
Administration in 1988, a
year before the fall of the Berlin Wall and three years before the collapse of
the Soviet Union.
These facts would seem to be
reason enough to justify the passage of a new, revised EAA to guide export
controls in the
21st Century. A comprehensive
rewrite of the Act is long overdue.
As I see it, one of the most important provisions that you
could write into any renewal of the Export Administration Act
would be a section similar to
that found in the Senate bill, S. 149, which defines ''foreign availability''
in terms of the reality
in which U.S. companies
compete today. Current law defines ''foreign availability'' as any item that
can be supplied from
outside the multilateral
export control system in sufficient quantity and comparable quality so as to
make the existing export
controls on any particular
item ineffective in achieving the objective of the controls. S. 149 seeks to
adapt that element of
current law to the era in
which we live today, which is an age of weak to non-existent multilateral
controls and a multilateral
system with rules of the game
that allow any member country to decide whether to license a product on the
basis of
''national discretion.''
Importantly, the bill acknowledges that ''foreign availability'' can exist
within a multilateral control
system, not just outside that
system.
The key provision in S. 149 is found in Section 211(d)(1),
which states: ''The Secretary shall determine that an item has
foreign availability status
under this subtitle, if the item (or a substantially identical or directly
competitive item) (A) is
available to controlled
countries from sources outside the United States, including countries that
participate with the
United States in multilateral
export controls [emphasis added]; . . .''
I would consider the inclusion of such language in any EAA
reauthorization reported by this Committee to be of critical
importance to the creation of
a fair and equitable ''foreign availability'' definition, one that reflects the
new reality in which
U.S. companies find
themselves. Any new EAA should not be allowed to perpetuate the fiction that
the current multilateral
export control system
functions effectively to deny technology to targets of that regime,
particularly China, which I have
argued has, at best, an
ambiguous status in relation to the Wassenaar Arrangement's list of restricted
technologies. Not to
give U.S. companies the right
to petition for relief from a system which allows trade competitors to use the
multilateral
system to garner new business
by taking advantage of lax, or non-existent, national export control systems,
would be to
perpetuate an anachronism in
the law, one which would be grounded in an era that no longer exists.
Earlier I noted that
the Stimson Study Group report emphasized the need to strengthen the
multilateral structure for
export controls. By way of
brief history, the end of the Cold War led to the end of CoCom—the
international coordinating
committee that regulated
technology transfer since 1949. When CoCom officially went out of business on
March 31,
1994, our leverage for
limiting technology transfer on a multilateral basis disappeared as well. CoCom
was created in the
same year as NATO, and it
stood with NATO as one of the pre-eminent tools of the containment strategy
that guided our
policy for more than forty
years. The guiding premise was that the West could not match the Soviet Union
and its allies
man for man, tank for tank,
or even missile for missile. Moreover, if the West maintained tight
multilateral controls over the
transfer of technology to the
East, we could use our superior technology as a force multiplier that would tip
the scales to
our benefit. The Soviets and
their allies could produce great numbers of weapons and keep large numbers of
men under
arms, but our technological
superiority would more than compensate for that numbers deficiency. One example
of the
validity of this assumption
was demonstrated in the 83 to 1 victory of U.S.-built F-15s and F-16s over
Soviet-built MIG
21s and MIG 23s over Lebanon's
Bekkha Valley in 1982. While pilot skill played an important role in that
victory,
technology was the critical
factor.
The successor regime to CoCom is, as I have noted the Wassenaar
Arrangement, named after the Dutch city in which it
was founded. It came into
existence in 1996. Unfortunately, Wassenaar has none of the elaborate rules or
discipline that
characterized CoCom. Most
importantly, the United States Government no longer has a veto over the goods
and
technologies exported to the
target countries of Wassenaar. The current multilateral export control regime
is based on what
is known as ''national
discretion.'' Each Wassenaar member makes its own judgments about what it will
and will not license
for export and, as a matter
of fact, whether to require an individual validated license (''IVL'') at all.
Other multilateral
export control regimes, whose
focus is non-proliferation (such as the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Missile
Technology
Control Regime, and the
Australia Group), do obligate signatories to require an IVL for the export of
proscribed items to
non-members, but Wassenaar
does not.
China is not identified as a target of Wassenaar. In fact,
during the negotiations which led up to the formation of
Wassenaar, the U.S.
representatives explicitly assured other potential members that Wassenaar was
created to keep
dangerous weapons and
technologies out of the hands of the so-called rogue and pariah states: Iran,
Iraq, Libya, and
North Korea. China was never
mentioned as a target of Wassenaar.
That is why it is necessary to create a mandate in your bill
calling on the Administration to strengthen the existing
multilateral export control
regimes and to annually report to Congress on progress in that endeavor.
Section 601 of S. 149
does that and is very much in
keeping with the recommendations of the Stimson Study Group. Indeed, I believe
that this is
such a critical area that I
would suggest that you go beyond the Section 601 mandate by creating some sort
of an oversight
mechanism to provide pressure
on the Administration to vigorously pursue the multilateral goals established
in that section.
As I have argued, Wassenaar provides weak guidance and almost
no discipline upon its members. In some ways, it is
worse than having no
multilateral regime at all, because it gives the appearance of restricting
technology transfer, while
leaving all the key judgments
up to its constituent members. To get an idea of how weak an export control
regime it really
is, one only has to ask what
useful information the United States Government can obtain about the technology
transfer
decisions of other regime
members. Under the rules of the Wassenaar Arrangement, the United States
Government is not
entitled to information about
the licensing decisions of any other regime member unless that member is
licensing an export
to an end-user to which the
U.S. Government has previously denied a license. And then, the Government in
question is
only obligated to inform the
U.S. Government within sixty days of the decision to license, most likely after
the technology
or product in question has
already been shipped. Such an obligation on Wassenaar members can hardly be
called
discipline.
I agree with the goals created in S. 149, that revisions of the
Wassenaar Arrangement charter ought to include far better
regime member discipline,
including improved rules for information exchange. One idea that Section 601
proposes that
would be particularly
valuable would be to institute the ''no undercut'' rule within Wassenaar. The
''no undercut'' rule
obligates all members of the
regime to deny a license to any end-user who has been denied a license by any
other member
of the regime. The adoption
of that rule alone would ensure that U.S. companies, such as those I have
described in the
machine tool industry, are
not alone in denying their products to end-users in China when their licenses
are denied by the
U.S. Government. This amounts
to unilateral export controls, and it is particularly frustrating, because the
current
Wassenaar Arrangement export
control regime allows the Chinese to simply turn to another Wassenaar member in
order
to obtain the very same
product, frequently with no delay or conditions. In the process, the Chinese
are denied nothing,
while the U.S. companies
develop a reputation as unreliable suppliers.
As the Committee begins
the task of drafting export control legislation, I would note that one of the
reasons that I find S.
149 attractive is not only
what is written into explicit law but also what is left to the Administration
and its regulators to
craft. As a veteran of more
than 20 years of export control legislation, either staffing Senators,
representing the
Administration, or lobbying
and testifying on behalf of clients and constituent companies, I can tell you
that the tendency of
Congress in the past has been
to attempt to micro-manage export licensing through detailed legislative
provisions that spell
out each and every step in
the process. There also has been a tendency to legislate specific technology
classifications or the
metric for the parameters of
controlled items through legislation. Until 1988, there was even a prohibition
of the export of
live horses by sea for
slaughter written into the legislation.
I urge you to resist the temptation to micro-manage in your
legislative drafting. This does not mean that you should not
spell out the authorities of
the various agencies involved in the licensing process. But detailing every
last step in the licensing
and inter-agency appeals
process needlessly complicates the work of the policy-makers and regulators and
frequently
adds extra steps to the
already complicated and time-consuming ordeal that exporters have to go through
in order to
obtain a license. Specifically,
three issues that I would suggest ought to be left to the Administration's
policy-makers are the
following: 1) the so-called
''deemed exports'' regulations; 2) the inter-agency rules that govern the
process of commodity
classification; and, finally
3), the regulations surrounding the ''Enhanced Proliferation Control
Initiative,'' or EPCI
regulations, instituted in
1991 by President George H.W. Bush.
I would agree that the rules governing these three issues are
in need of revision and updating. But, after detailed
discussions with
representatives of the new Administration, it is also my understanding that the
Bush Administration has put
a high priority on the
issuance of new regulations in all three of these areas. The Administration
prefers, however, to do so
after the normal hearing and
comment period, with, of course, industry participation. I am concerned that if
Congress locks
in the regulators through
specific, detailed language, the policy-makers will lose the flexibility they
need in order to adapt
the current regulatory
language to the changing technological environment of the 21st Century. I
would, therefore, urge you
to allow the regulatory
process to work through the intricacies of these issues and to exercise
legislative restraint when
dealing with them.
Whatever you decide, I am convinced that our nation needs more
than just a ''feel good'' China policy, or a ''feel good''
renewal of the EAA. We need
to ask if it is possible to convince our allies to share our strategic vision
of China (assuming
that we ourselves have
concluded what that vision is). As the Stimson Study Group warned, at the
current time, we do not
have a multilateral
technology transfer organizational structure that is conducive to entering into
a debate about China—let
alone one that would be able
to enforce standards and rules about technology transfer if such a consensus
were to be
reached. Without such a
multilateral technology transfer structure and without a clearer idea of what
U.S. technology
transfer policy toward China
ought to be, it will be difficult to draft an EAA that is an effective guide to
policy.
I hope that these comments will be helpful to your
consideration of any new export administration legislation. I would be
happy to answer any questions
that the Committee might have.
Chairman HYDE. Thank you, Dr. Freedenberg.
And Mr. Hoydysh?
STATEMENT OF DAN HOYDYSH,
WASHINGTON DIRECTOR, UNISYS, REPRESENTING COMPUTER
COALITION FOR RESPONSIBLE
EXPORTS
Mr. HOYDYSH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for inviting me to
present the views of the Computer Coalition for
Responsible Exports on an
issue that is of critical importance to the security of the United States and
the technological
preeminence of the American
computer industry. I will briefly summarize my testimony and request that the
full text be
submitted for the record.
Before I begin my summary, I would like to make a statement
concerning my former alma mater, the Commerce
Department. I would like to
note that despite Commerce being in charge of the export control process, we
won the Cold
War and in fact we whipped
the Soviets pretty well, so I do not think we need to be overly concerned about
the role that
the Commerce Department plays
in export controls.
There is a growing consensus among industry, government and
national security experts that our export control system is
broken, especially as it
relates to computers. We need your help to fix it. Let me briefly explain why
the system is broken
and what needs to be done.
The current export control system has its roots in the Cold
War. It was created over 50 years ago to destroy the
military and economic
capabilities of the Soviet Union. During the Cold War, building a wall around
commercial computers
made sense for the following
reasons.
First, computer systems were large and expensive proprietary
systems. For example, the first commercial computer, the
ENIAC, weighed over 3,000
pounds, took 3 years to build by hand and cost 1 million in 1951 dollars.
Second, the U.S. had a virtual monopoly on computer technology.
If we did not sell it, no one else could.
Third, the volume of sales was relatively low and most of the
sales were in the United States. Since only several
thousand ENIACs were sold in
the first years of production, monitoring the disposition of each system was
relatively easy.
Finally, we had a clearly defined enemy, the Soviet Union,
which posed a clear and present danger to the survival of the
western democracies.
All that changed dramatically about 10 years ago with the
introduction of the microprocessor and the collapse of the
Berlin Wall. Let me briefly
explain how these two events have affected our ability to control computing
power.
In my hand I am holding two Intel chips, a Pentium and the new
Itanium. The latest version of the Pentium has a rating of
about 4500 MTOPS. The
Itanium, which will be in volume production at the beginning of next year, will
have a rating of
about 6000 MTOPS. Each of
these chips represents more computing power than all of the ENIACs sold in the
early
1950's.
Microprocessors such as these have enabled the production of
ever smaller, cheaper and more powerful computers that
are easily assembled from
commodity parts readily available on the global market.
For example, here is an ad from the Sunday paper for a Pentium
IV personal computer, which performs at 4500
MTOPS for about $2000. That
is less than 50 cents per MTOP. Just 10 years ago, a machine of comparable
power
would have cost roughly
between 5 and 10 million dollars. That is about $1000 per MTOP.
Because of lower prices and increasing demand, sales of
microprocessor-based computer systems have skyrocketed,
from thousands to hundreds of
millions per year, making it virtually impossible to track the disposition of
individual systems,
especially since over 50
percent of future sales will be outside the U.S.
The doubling of chip performance every 12 to 18 months have
made controls based on a performance metric such as
MTOPS ineffective and
burdensome. This performance trend, known as Moore's law, is expected to
continue for at least
the next 10 to 15 years. It
is projected that new manufacturing techniques will permit within 5 years the
production of
widely available chips that
operate between 50,000 and 100,000 MTOPS. That is for one chip.
Foreign competition, unknown during the early years of the Cold
War, has emerged as a serious threat to our
technological and market
dominance. Now if we do not sell it, someone else will.
Finally, the Cold War multilateral consensus on a common enemy
has evaporated in the heat of global competition for
markets.
Under these conditions, controls on exports of commercial
computers have become increasingly ineffective and
counterproductive. They are
ineffective because they simply do not prevent target countries from acquiring
or accessing
computer power and they are
counterproductive because they undermine the technological preeminence of the
U.S.
computer industry, which is
one of the pillars of our military superiority.
So what should be done?
First, we need your support to eliminate the requirement of the
National Defense Authorization Act that MTOPS must
be used when setting control
thresholds. It is now recognized by industry, the Defense Department, national
security
experts and even the GAO that
MTOPS is an obsolete and flawed metric. Rapidly advancing microprocessor power
and
new architecture make any
control threshold based on performance obsolete before the ink is dry on the
regulations. Until
these MTOPS handcuffs are
eliminated, the President cannot implement an effective control regime that
will be compatible
with technological and
competitive reality.
Second, until a new control regime is developed, we need to
continue to raise MTOPS levels to reflect advances in
technology. We will need a
substantial increase in the control thresholds toward the end of this year when
the new Itanium
based systems come on line.
For example, the MTOPS level of a common business server with
32 processors used for e-commerce applications will
increase from about 50,000
MTOPS to about 190,000 MTOPS.
Third, we need to enact a comprehensive Export Administration
Act that will permit the President to craft an effective
export control system that
protects our security in the networked world without damaging our
competitiveness in the global
market.
Finally, industry and government must work cooperatively to do
a better job of integrating state-of-the-art information
technology into our military
systems. The real key to security in the 21st century will be to run faster
than potential
adversaries, not to control
the uncontrollable. We are ready to work with the Congress and the
Administration to achieve
these goals.
I will be glad to answer any questions you might have.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hoydysh follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF DAN
HOYDYSH, WASHINGTON DIRECTOR, UNISYS, REPRESENTING
COMPUTER COALITION FOR
RESPONSIBLE EXPORTS
Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee.
Good Afternoon. My name is Dan Hoydysh. I am Director of Trade,
Public Policy & Government Affairs at the Unisys
Corporation. I also have the
privilege of serving as Co-Chair of the Computer Coalition for Responsible
Exports (CCRE)
and am testifying today on
CCRE's behalf (a curriculum vitae is attached). I want to thank you for
providing me and
CCRE with the opportunity to
share our views on U.S. computer export controls.
OVERVIEW OF TESTIMONY
In our testimony today, we want to highlight the overwhelming,
bipartisan consensus that the current export control
system fails to effectively
advance U.S. economic and national security interests. In particular, we want
to emphasize the
widespread agreement among
U.S. defense and security experts that the current system for controlling
computer exports is
ineffective because it does
not account for modern changes in technology and international market
conditions. CCRE
supports reform legislation
like the bill currently pending before the Senate—S. 149, the Export Administration
Act of
2001—as well as H.R. 1553,
which is currently pending before the House. Both of these bills represent a
critical step
forward because they empower
the President to determine both what computers should be controlled and how
they
should be controlled. CCRE
also believes that the new EAA could be strengthened by clarifying that a
relevant Risk
Assessment Factor is whether
the capability or performance provided by an item can be effectively
controlled. Finally,
CCRE wants to emphasize that
time is of the essence and that export control reform legislation needs to be
enacted this
year.
THE COMPUTER COALITION FOR
RESPONSIBLE EXPORTS (CCRE)
CCRE is an alliance of American computer companies and allied
associations established to inform policymakers and
the public about the nature
of the computer industry—its products, market trends, and technological
advances.
CCRE members include Apple Computer, Inc., Compaq Computer
Corporation, Dell Computer Corporation,
Hewlett-Packard Company, IBM
Corporation, Intel Corporation, NCR Corporation, SGI, Sun Microsystems, Inc.,
Unisys Corporation, the
American Electronics Association (AEA), the Computer and Communications
Industry
Association (CCIA), the
Computer Systems Policy Project (CSPP), the Electronic Industries Alliance
(EIA), the
Information Technology
Industry Council (ITI), and the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA).
CCRE is committed to promoting and protecting U.S. national
security interests, and seeks to work in close partnership
with the Congress and the
Executive Branch to ensure that America's economic, national security, and
foreign policy goals
are realized. CCRE also
believes that a strong, internationally competitive computer industry is
critical to ensuring that U.S.
national and economic
security objectives are achieved and that U.S. economic and technological
leadership is maintained.
The U.S. computer industry has a long history of cooperation
with the U.S. government on security-related high
technology issues. We take
our responsibilities in the area very seriously. CCRE members strongly believe
that U.S.
national security is tied to
U.S. technological leadership. U.S. computer companies also devote hundreds of
employees
and millions of dollars
annually to complying with export control regulations. It is not our role,
however, to define U.S.
national security needs—that
is for the Congress and the Executive Branch. Rather, we do and will continue
to provide the
Congress and Executive Branch
with information concerning the rapidly changing technology and international
market
conditions that we believe
they need to take into consideration in shaping up-to-date and effective U.S.
export control
policies.
INTRODUCTION
CCRE would like to begin our remarks today by thanking this Committee
for devoting its time and attention to the
export control issue. It has
been a long road to reform, and we are hopeful that the Congress will pass
bipartisan legislation
that brings the export
control system into the modern era. As you are aware, the Senate bill has the
endorsement of the
Administration because it
''strengthen[s] the President's national security and foreign policy
authorities to control dual-use
exports in a balanced manner,
which will permit U.S. companies to compete more effectively in a global
marketplace.''
CCRE supports S. 149 because,
most fundamentally, it provides the President with the authority and
flexibility needed to
implement up-to-date and
effective computer export control measures. We hope that this Committee will draft
a bill that
similarly reflects the need
for Presidential empowerment to modernize the export control regime.
THE CURRENT EXPORT CONTROL
SYSTEM IS INEFFECTIVE: A CONSENSUS VIEW
The Henry Stimson Center's recent study on Multilateral Export
Controls for U.S. National Security reflects the
widespread consensus that the
current export control system is a relic of the Cold War that ''fail[s] to keep
pace with
changing international
conditions and often falls short of adequately protecting U.S. national
security interests.'' CCRE
shares the Stimson Study's
assessment that the current export control system needs to be ''adapted to the
global economic,
strategic, and political
realities of the 21st century.'' Of particular concern to CCRE, we need to modernize
the outdated
system governing U.S.
computer exports.
As you are aware, the Center for Strategic and International
Studies (CSIS) recently released its report on Computer
Exports and National Security
in the Global Era, finding that the current computer control system mandated by
the
National Defense
Authorization Act (NDAA)—which requires the President to use the MTOPS
(millions of theoretical
operations per second) metric
to measure computer performance and set export control thresholds based on
Country
Tiers—is ''ineffective, given
the global diffusion of information technology and rapid increases in
performance.'' The CSIS
report concludes that ''MTOPS
are increasingly useless as a measure of performance . . . MTOPS cannot
accurately
measure performance of
current microprocessors or alternative sources of supercomputing like
clustering. This makes
MTOPS-based hardware controls
irrelevant. . . . The best choice may be to simply eliminate MTOPS.''
The CSIS study is the most recent of a host of expert reports
that reject the computer control system mandated by the
NDAA. A recent Department of
Defense report concludes, for example, that ''MTOPS has lost its effectiveness as
a
control measure . . . due to
rapid technology advances.'' On this point, DoD has emphasized that:
Controls that are ineffective
due to market and technology realities do not benefit national security. In
fact, they can harm
national security by giving a
false sense of protection; by diverting people and other finite export control
resources from
areas in which they can be
effective; and by unnecessarily impeding the U.S. computer industry's ability
to compete in
global markets.
The General Accounting
Office's report to the Senate Armed Services Committee similarly concludes that
the MTOPS
standard is ''outdated and
invalid'' and that ''[t]he current export control system for high performance
computers, which
focuses on controlling
individual machines, is ineffective because it cannot prevent countries of
concern from linking or
clustering many lower
performance uncontrolled computers to collectively perform at higher levels
than current export
controls allow.'' Finally,
the Defense Science Board echoes this same analysis, warning that ''[c]linging
to a failing policy of
export controls has
undesirable consequences beyond self-delusion.''
In essence, U.S. defense and security experts now agree that
the NDAA's MTOPS regime is outmoded and needs to
be dismantled. The
recommendations of the CSIS, DoD, GAO, and DSB highlight the President's need
for administrative
authority to design and implement
more appropriate types of controls to advance U.S. national security. CCRE
believes
that, with respect to
computers, this can only be accomplished if the NDAA computer provisions are
repealed.
THE NEED FOR REFORM
LEGISLATION
The key to implementing effective national security controls is
the ability of the President, Secretary of Commerce, and
Secretary of Defense to
review the National Security Control List and determine whether an item can and
should be
controlled. The decision of
whether or how to control an item is the most fundamental, threshold step in
export control
administration. In making
this risk assessment, the President needs to consider not only U.S. national
security goals, but
rapidly changing developments
in technology and international market conditions. The President therefore
needs the
flexibility to implement
up-to-date and effective export control measures.
Notwithstanding the simplicity of this basic framework, its
application to computers is seriously undermined by NDAA,
which imposes mandatory,
rigid controls on high performance computer (HPC) exports. As a general rule,
it is a bad idea
to legislate static
technological standards to address dynamic technological challenges. The NDAA
violates this principle
by requiring the President to
use the MTOPS metric to measure computer performance and set export control
thresholds
based on Country Tiers.
Although there is now an overwhelming consensus that the NDAA approach is
ineffective, the
NDAA continues to severely
limit the authority of the President to determine both what computers should be
controlled
and how they may be
controlled.
CCRE wants to emphasize that the flexibility needed to
effectively administer export controls—such as that
contemplated in Section 202
of S. 149, for example—would be essentially nullified in relation to computers
if Congress
fails to repeal the NDAA
computer provisions. Put another way, if the NDAA computer provisions are not
repealed, the
computer industry will be the
only industry that is left behind in the export control reform process. CCRE
therefore
supports the legislation
currently pending before the House, H.R. 1553, which would repeal the NDAA's
outmoded
computer provisions, as well
as Section 702(k) of S. 149, which accomplishes the same.
We wish to emphasize that a decision to repeal the NDAA's
computer provisions will not alter the way in which
computer exports are
currently controlled under the Export Administration Regulations (EAR). If the
NDAA computer
provisions are repealed, the
current MTOPS-based regime will continue to remain in place and controlled
computers will
remain on the National
Security Control List. What would change, however, is that the President,
Secretary of Commerce,
and Secretary of Defense
would be empowered to reassess the effectiveness of these controls in the
future pursuant to the
EAA framework.
As discussed above, the need for Presidential flexibility in
administering computer export controls is especially clear in
light of recent reports by
CSIS, the Department of Defense, the General Accounting Office, and the Defense
Science
Board, all of which conclude
that the rigid MTOPS-based approach required by the NDAA is obsolete and fails
to
advance U.S. national
security.
CCRE also believes that the new EAA can be strengthened if the
Risk Assessment Factors listed in the statute are
clarified. Section
202(b)(2)(C) of S. 149, for example, states that among the risk factors that
the Secretary shall consider
are ''[t]he effectiveness of
controlling the item for national security purposes of the United States,
taking into account
mass-market status, foreign
availability, and other relevant factors.'' While the catch-all ''other
relevant factors'' is
conspicuously broad, we
believe that this provision should prominently list an additional factor
central to the concept of
controllability—whether the
capability or performance provided by the item can be effectively restricted.
To be sure, the foreign
availability or mass market status of an item is not the only consideration
relevant to an item's
controllability. Consider,
for example, that while various U.S. computer systems have not yet attained
mass market status,
the equivalent computing
power can be easily achieved by ''clustering'' several widely-available,
low-level systems. In this
regard, CSIS, DoD, the GAO,
and the DSB all agree that while the most advanced stand-alone high performance
computers may be
controllable, high performance computing is not. For precisely this reason,
CCRE believes that explicit
among the new EAA's Risk
Assessment Factors should be the consideration of whether the capability or
performance
provided by the item can be
effectively controlled.
Finally, CCRE believes that reform legislation needs to be
enacted this year. Every major study identifies the failure of
the current export control
system to keep pace with rapidly changing technologies and international market
conditions and
concludes that the current
system is adversely affecting our national and economic security. This is true
generally, and is
especially applicable to the
computer export control system, which is constrained by the ineffective and
outmoded
MTOPS straitjacket. In light
of the widespread consensus in the U.S. defense and security community, and the
urgent
need to effectively advance
U.S. national and economic security interests, CCRE believes that timely action
is critical.
CONCLUSION
In summation, CCRE thanks this Committee for its attention to
the export control issue. Given the overwhelming
consensus that the current
export control system generally—and the computer export control system
particularly—are
outmoded and ineffective, we
hope that this Committee will craft a bill that delivers meaningful export
control reform.
CCRE supports H.R. 1553, as well
as the Senate bill, S. 149, as important steps forward because they repeal the
NDAA
computer provisions and, in
doing so, empower the President to determine both what computers should be
controlled and
how they should be
controlled. CCRE also believes that the new EAA could be strengthened by
clarifying that a relevant
Risk Assessment Factor is
whether the capability or performance provided by an item can be effectively
controlled.
Finally, CCRE believes that
action this year is critical.
CCRE remains committed to working with the Congress and the
Executive Branch in helping to formulate solutions that
effectively advance U.S.
economic and national security interests. We thank the Committee for its
attention to these
important issues.
Chairman HYDE. Thank you, Mr. Hoydysh.
Mr. Blumenauer.
You have been very patient, by the way.
Mr. BLUMENAUER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And it is interesting
to have a chance to reflect on this testimony. I
appreciate your organizing
this hearing for us today.
I am curious if any of you three gentlemen have any evidence
that the current regime that we have been employing, given
all its limitations rooted in
the Cold War and the different strategic and technological landscape, has it
worked?
Has it prevented rogue nations from getting access to
technology to help them assemble weapons of mass destruction?
Or is their current state of
military readiness, or lack thereof, subject to some other limitations in terms
of their ability? Is it
this regime that has
prevented them?
Mr. FREEDENBERG. I could deal with that. I think when we saw the
collapse of the Soviet Union we saw how
effective the export controls
were. They had virtually no technology. Their phone system was essentially
Dixie cups and
strings. They had the world's
largest microprocessor, but they really had nothing. And that had a very big
effect on their
military capability and I
think it was one of the major reasons they turned to Gorbachev, because he was
a reformer and he
promised to bring some
technology into the regime.
That does not mean, however, that the export control regime is
by any means perfect, and it can be a very great
restraint. We are talking
about American competitiveness in this case. You know, you can cut off your
potential enemies,
but also strangle yourself in
the process. What we are talking about in this case, and what Senator Gramm was
talking
about, is creating a regime
that effectively limits technology, technology that is important, but also
allows American
companies to be competitive
in world markets, and that is essentially what the new export control
legislation ought to do.
Mr. HOYDYSH. If I could comment on that as well. There are four
multilateral export control regimes. Three of these
are aimed specifically at
weapons of mass destruction: the Nuclear Suppliers Group, MTCR, and the
Australian Group.
MTCR is the Missile
Technology Control Regime. The fourth one is the Wassenaar Arrangement. None of
the weapons of
mass destruction regimes
actually target general purpose computers because of the general understanding
among our allies
and friends that computers
are not a choke point technology for making weapons of mass destruction.
Most of the missiles and the weapons that we have in our own
arsenal were designed with computers that are half as
powerful as those that are
available in consumer department stores.
The regimes aimed at weapons of mass destruction are relatively
effective because there is agreement in the international
community that the objective
is very important. So they do work, especially in terms of controlling items
that are
specifically identified on
these lists.
The regime which is the weakest is the Wassenaar Arrangement,
which is the one that deals with general purpose
computers. Implementation of
the Wassenaar Arrangement is left entirely to the discretion of each country to
decide what
to approve or what not to
approve. There is no requirement for consultation, there is no veto power by
anyone and
basically it is every country
for itself. So I think if you look at export controls in general there is
something to be said about
the weapons of mass
destruction regimes and focusing on those and trying to strengthen those. I
think when you are talking
about the Wassenaar
Agreement, there seems to be little hope of revitalizing it. I do not think
that is a very effective regime
at all.
Chairman HYDE. May I?
Mr. Hoydysh, I hope I did not mishear you. Did you say
computers have no role to play in developing weapons of mass
destruction?
Mr. HOYDYSH. I said that computers are not considered a choke
point technology in the sense that the levels of
computing necessary to
develop entry level weapons of mass destruction are so low that they have been
available on the
mass market or from any
variety of sources for almost a decade.
The computer industry has never maintained that computers
cannot be used for military purposes. However, we are
saying that computing power
is not in the critical path to make weapons of mass destruction. Even if U.S.
companies do
not sell a single computer,
people will still be able to make weapons of mass destruction.
Chairman HYDE. Well, we have had a hue and cry about a
comprehensive test ban treaty and it is my understanding,
however imperfect, that
computers can simulate circumstances that make testing of nuclear weapons
unnecessary because
the computer simulates
whatever they need to test. Is that true?
Mr. HOYDYSH. It is my understanding that the computers that we
are talking about that are used for this purpose are
extremely large and powerful.
This is the kind of system that is specially made for Los Alamos and some of
the other labs.
Chairman HYDE. Right.
Mr. HOYDYSH. These systems have on the order of 10,000 plus
processors, specially wired together for this
particular purpose. I also
understand, and I am not a nuclear weapons expert by any means, that those
computers are
primarily useful for people
who have a large amount of test data that they can then use with——
Chairman HYDE. Like China.
Mr. HOYDYSH. This is something that the Defense Department
would be better able to speak to than I—I am not
sure that China is considered
to have that much test data that these computers would be useful to them.
Chairman HYDE. I understand. I appreciate that.
Mr. BLUMENAUER. Of course they have access to all our test
capacity, I think, if we are talking about the Chinese.
Mr. HOYDYSH. Well, you had better talk to Los Alamos because I
have no idea about that.
Chairman HYDE. Mr. Smith.
Mr. SMITH. Please comment on re-export controls. We can name 8
to 10 to 20 suspicious countries that we need to
be more rigorous in our
review of what kind of equipment is sent to those countries. But for the rest
of the world, please
comment on re-export, in
terms of physically re-exporting and developing the technology from the
equipment they have to
export and then follow that
up maybe with your reaction to whatever we might have in terms of a memorandum
of
understanding with China
regarding our ability to perform post-shipment review of what is happening to
particular
equipment that is sent to
China?
Mr. HOYDYSH. As I understand it, as a general rule, the United
States is the only country that has a rigorous regime of
enforcing export and
re-export controls. It is against the law for the end user to re-export it to a
third destination without
U.S. Government approval.
Mr. SMITH. I think my question is the success of it or the
discipline of it, is it working and do we have the kind of
policing ability to know
whether it is working.
Mr. HOYDYSH. My guess would be—and this is something that the
Commerce Department would have to testify
about—that it probably is not
as effective as it could be. When you are talking about computers, when you
have an
installed base of half a
billion units and you add to that a 150 million units a year, it really is very
hard to police.
With all the various distribution channels and resellers in the
world selling items back and forth, it is a virtual impossibility
to have a really tight hold
on it. That does not mean that we cannot do a better job of it, it does not
mean that we do not
need some more resources
devoted to it, but as a general rule, the U.S. is the only country that really
takes this stuff
seriously, as evidenced by
the fact that we are holding hearings on this issue.
Mr. SMITH. Dr. Cupitt, Dr. Freedenberg?
Mr. FREEDENBERG. The problem is they worked well in the time
when we had CoCom. They do not work well any
more because we have national
discretion. If we have a situation in which the U.S. imposes the export
controls and a
competitor does not, it is a
very high incentive to go with the competitor.
That is not the case with regard to machine tools which, unlike
computers, there are very few that are sold to China, and
they are very easy to track,
so all of them that go to, for example, China have the export controls on them,
and many
conditions on them, and have
post-shipment verification. But when you get into smaller products, computers,
scientific
instruments, it is almost
impossible to track them once you get a volume into a country.
Mr. CUPITT. I would like to speak to the post-shipment
verification issue, especially relating to China. I guess I have
probably spoken to almost
everybody who has done a PSV, both in the Chinese government and in our
government. And
there has been, I guess, now
well over 100 since the summer of 1998 when the new memorandum was put
together. I
think many of the kinks have
been worked out so that there is a recognition, I guess, a development of trust
by the Chinese
side that the U.S. is not
trying to exploit post-shipment verification to discover proprietary
information about customers
and those sorts of things and
activity. And while I would judge it as moving fairly smoothly, it is still
very difficult.
The Chinese, for instance, have a very difficult time getting
the budget for participating in the post-shipment verification
process, not unlike our own
Commerce Department which also has had at times budget problems, especially
when the
mandate was very large under
the National Defense Authorization Act to look at many, many, many computers,
high-performance computers,
in two or three countries.
Mr. SMITH. My time—I am in my last 30 seconds.
Mr. Hoydysh, I understood you to say do not be quite so
concerned with restricting what we export but in the new
technology age we are going
to have to simply run faster. What does that mean?
Mr. HOYDYSH. Run faster means that industry and the Defense
Department have got to figure out a better way and a
faster way of integrating
state-of-the-art technology into their weapons systems, state-of-the-art
information technology in
particular.
If you look at the equipment that is in the airplane that was
forced down over China, it was about two or three
generations old. Part of the
problem is simply the procurement process. It takes too long for the Defense
Department to
procure equipment. This is
something that needs to be focused on in the sense of getting our military more
efficient, more
agile, better able to quickly
absorb the newest technology that is being produced by the private sector.
Fifty years ago all
the new technology was
produced by the Defense Department—today the commercial sector has taken the
lead.
Mr. SMITH. But if it is a case of weapons, then some of the
third and fourth generation weapons are still pretty
effective. Run faster means
partially run better.
Mr. HOYDYSH. We have a tremendous lead over all potential
adversaries in our communications and in our weapons
systems and in our
operations. We have to maintain that lead and even extend that lead by getting
more efficient at utilizing
the technology of the private
sector.
Mr. SMITH. But you are not suggesting that we relax dual-use
technologies that are obviously very capable of being
used in military equipment
building?
Mr. HOYDYSH. Absolutely not. What we are suggesting is that
performance—let me step back for a minute. What we
are suggesting in this
testimony is very simple. We think we need to pass a Export Administration Act
fairly quickly. It is
something that is necessary
to create a framework—the Administration will go through the process of
determining exactly
what the new regime looks
like, but it needs this act—the act must be passed in order for the
Administration to be able to
begin work on creating a new
system.
In particular, we need to have the MTOPS parameter removed from
legislation. Right now, the President is required to
use MTOPS as a measure for
computer performance in terms of determining control thresholds. It has been
agreed by
almost everyone, including
the GAO and including Senator Thompson in his testimony today, that MTOPS is no
longer a
valid parameter.
I think we need to separate the process of creating a framework
for an export administration system from the export
administration system. This
statute will create a framework. It is not a statute that is aimed at China in
particular or
anybody in particular. It
will give the President the authority to do what is right to create a proper
system.
Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman HYDE. The gentleman's time has expired.
We have Mr. Flake and Ms. Davis.
Do either of you have questions?
Mr. FLAKE. Yes, I do.
Chairman HYDE. Mr. Flake, I think Ms. Davis is probably ahead
of you.
Am I right?
Okay. Mr. Flake.
Mr. FLAKE. I will be glad to defer.
Chairman HYDE. Go ahead.
Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Hoydysh, as you know, I am one of the sponsors
of H.R. 1553 to get rid of the MTOPS standard. I
thought you could explain
what might happen under a scenario if it were not listed, you know, that it has
been limited—in
1995, I believe it was 2000,
2001 it was 8500, it keeps doubling and doubling and doubling. You say now it
would be
capable of 190,000 or so with
a few computers hooked together. What would happen under a scenario if we did
not
reauthorize? Could you tell
us what would happen to the computing industry?
Mr. HOYDYSH. Well, if we did not move the MTOPS level to
reflect advances in technology, a company like my
company which under the
current regime has very few export licenses would go to a regime in which all
of our products
would be subject to export
licensing because of the introduction of the Itanium chip. So what we are
looking at is it is kind
of step function—we will go
from a zero to one. As soon as these chips are integrated into new computers,
most of the
systems will be above the
threshold and will require licensing from the Commerce Department. They will
also require, very
rigid and strict security
arrangements to keep certain foreign nationals from even looking at those
machines.
Yet the new systems differ from the old systems only in that
they have a new processor inserted within the same box
that is used for e-commerce
and other commercial applications.
Mr. FLAKE. That would certainly negatively impact your ability
to compete if the others overseas move much faster.
Mr. HOYDYSH. Absolutely because we are the only export control
regime that takes control seriously, as is evidenced
again by the fact that we are
having a hearing on this issue.
Mr. FLAKE. Do any of
the witnesses see any reason to continue with the current MTOPS standard or to
continue to
try to ratchet it up? Should
it simply be scrapped?
Dr. Freedenberg?
Mr. FREEDENBERG. I see no reason to continue. The problem is
that you have a standard that is essentially based in
the past, and we have changed
to a network world. We have changed to a much different situation, so one has
to develop
a different way to control
products.
Mr. CUPITT. If you are seeking to establish a framework. I
think with MTOPS you are heading in the wrong direction,
you are heading toward
micromanagement again—an expression of micromanagement in many ways, and I
think in this
particular case we find
ourselves bound by something that almost everyone agrees is not very
productive.
Mr. FLAKE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman HYDE. Thank
you.
The gentlelady from Virginia, Ms. Davis.
Ms. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Cupitt, I understand your position with respect to the
Export Administration Act and with that in mind what explicit
security concerns do you
believe we should take into consideration when addressing EAA reauthorization?
Mr. CUPITT. Well, I think there is actually many, I get to be
an academic when I think of that kind of question. I think
there is—for me, I have
helped work on several of the working papers or studies from a multilateral
standpoint, so maybe
I could address that first.
And I think one of the most important things from a national security
perspective is a very
thorough review of why items
are on the list and make that review available to many of our allies and
partners.
Surprisingly, after decades of cooperation, I find in many
international meetings or discussions with our foreign
counterparts that they do not
know why certain items are on the list. They know in a broad sense that, oh, it
is a nuclear
related item, but not
specifically why.
And that makes it very difficult when they go back to their own
country from, let us say, some international meeting and
they try to convince their
own leadership, convince their own industry that there is an important reason
to do this and not
just take it on the word of
the United States.
Ms. DAVIS. Would that be contained in Senate Bill 149?
Mr. CUPITT. Well, I think there is—if I recall correctly, in
the bill there is a provision to go through and review and
scrub the list, but actually
I have not seen the latest version, so I am not entirely sure on that. But that
would be one of the
most important things from a
multilateral standpoint.
I think the other is in order to encourage, as many people have
said, greater coordination and cooperation, we really
need to give the
Administration the tools to provide more incentives to cooperate. For instance,
even simple things,
providing a good computer
system that will allow secure exchanges of information between members of some
of the
arrangements. At least some
members have opposed advances in this direction because they want to know who
is going to
pay for it. Well, we want to
lead, that is a way we can lead. We can take some steps like that.
So I think those are some examples, that we can create some
fairly straightforward economic incentives to help some of
the world help the more
recalcitrant members to participate. To some extent, it may be difficult for us
to do much about
Russian views given the
current state of the economy, but even there, when you approach entities that,
for instance, that we
have listed or sanctioned and
ask them how did that happen, what are they doing, they are making the effort
to change.
They often want to have this
information, what do we need to do, what do we do now. And they want to know.
Frequently they cannot get
that because we are not in a position to exchange that information with them.
So I think there
are a variety of things from
a multilateral approach that we can do that will enhance our security.
Ms. DAVIS. Thank you.
Mr. Hoydysh, in a letter to Senator Levin from Secretary of
Defense Cohen, he stated his support for focusing the
Export Administration Act
more toward controlling software applications.
Can you expand on this and indicate why you may or may not
think we will have greater success in controlling software
exports than we have
controlling hardware and chip exports?
Mr. HOYDYSH. Yes. As I understand it, Secretary Cohen was
referring to the need to do a better job of controlling
proprietary Defense
Department software, which is either classified or should be classified. I do
not believe he was talking
about commercial software
which is readily available on the market and would be even more difficult to
control than
hardware. But there is a
need, and it appears that some of the events at Los Alamos have demonstrated,
to do some
research in how software can
be protected. For example, can software be written in such a way or encrypted
in such a
way that it will only run on
specific machines so that even if it is stolen or transferred somehow to the
wrong parties that
software would not be useful
to them. I think that is the kind of thing that the secretary was talking
about, including
heightening the awareness of
people within the Defense Department and defense contractors who utilize the
software, that
this is where the real
knowledge is, this is where the real crown jewels are, not in the hardware that
just cranks numbers,
but it is in the knowledge
and in the databases and in the software algorithms. Those are the things that
have to be
protected.
Ms. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. GILMAN [presiding]. Thank you, Ms. Davis.
Just a few questions, gentlemen, and we will let you be on your
way. Does the Senate bill give sufficient authority to the
President to restrict the
export of items that could contribute to the military potential of countries to
the detriment of our
nation and its allies and
that might lead to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction?
Page 176 PREV
PAGE TOP OF DOC Segment 2 Of 3
Mr. HOYDYSH. As I understand it, Mr. Chairman, the President
has authority to carve out and to exempt any product
from the foreign availability
or the mass market provisions so that it never even gets into the queue so if
there is in fact
something that is of concern
that maybe is a mass market product that poses such a risk or would be contrary
to the
security interests of the
United States, the President could actually remove that.
So based on that and the override provisions in the foreign
availability and the mass markets, I guess it would be my
opinion that the President
has adequate authority to protect the national security.
Mr. GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Hoydysh.
Dr. Freedenberg?
Mr. FREEDENBERG. Yes. I ran this program for 4 years and I have
observed it for 20 years. We have had about
ten foreign availability
findings over 20 years or one every other year. This is not something that is
going to suddenly gut the
list. It is not something
that is likely to have a profound effect, but it does force the Administration
to think about why it has
a certain product on the
list. It is more of a challenge to the Administration to review its own
justifications.
I do not see it as—I think it is important to have the right
principles written into that law—but I do not see it as having a
deliterious effect. The fears
that Senator Thompson and some of the others have, I think, are very unfounded.
At the very end, of course, when the President has found that
there is a national security reason for not taking something
off the list, who is going to
challenge the President that there is not a national security purpose or reason
for doing that?
There is no way that any independent individual could do that,
so the President has absolute control over it and absolute
discretion, so I really see
it as a non-issue.
Mr. GILMAN. Thank you, Dr. Freedenberg.
Dr. Cupitt?
Mr. CUPITT. Well, I agree with the other members of the panel
on this particular issue and I would say that this goes
to another area where we
often find ourselves in a data-poor environment.
As Dr. Freedenberg said, we have had ten foreign availability
determinations, more or less, so that they are not
happening very often in the
past and I think this might be one area where, as I understand the Senate bill
does establish an
Office of Technology
Evaluation that would do more in terms of providing concrete information one
way or the other on
foreign availability. And I
think that might be advantageous, you know, from a national security
standpoint, to have a
clearer understanding of the
evidence.
Mr. GILMAN. Thank you very much, gentlemen.
A further question. Criticism has been made that too many of
our export control resources are devoted to licensing
relatively benign
transactions and diverting resources away from more important and more
dangerous transactions. Is that a
fair criticism?
Mr. HOYDYSH. Mr. Chairman, I think that is a fair criticism.
Again, I think it was pointed out, maybe it was Senator
Gramm that said that over 94,
96, whatever the percentage is of licenses are routinely approved. It probably
indicates that
the bar has been set too low
and that it ought to be raised.
What is really of issue in many of these transactions is not
the technology itself, but the end user. If a better job is done
of identifying which end
users U.S. industries should not sell to or trade with, then we could probably
eliminate the need for
having performance based
licensing and simply concentrate looking for those end users that are of
concern and making
sure that industry knows who
they should not deal with.
Mr. GILMAN. Thank you.
Dr. Cupitt?
Mr. CUPITT. I would agree, particularly on the end user
problem. The difficulty is getting the intelligence agencies to
share that information. The
industry has been calling for this for as long as I can remember and we have
made absolutely
no progress in the area. It
would seem that if there were a mandate to try to develop some kind of a
computer system,
some sort of a counselling
system, some sort of system, where industry can be told who the bad guys are
out there—I
tried to make improvements
when I was at Commerce, we got secure computers there, we had much more
cooperation
with the intelligence
agencies. This can be taken much further.
The problem is that the intelligence agencies tend to be what I
call anal retentive. They gather the information but they do
not want to let it go and so
you just cannot—it does not have any value. It has no value for the exporter.
And that certainly
is something that could be
looked at in your legislation.
Mr. GILMAN. Thank you.
Dr. Cupitt?
Mr. CUPITT. Let me address that end user question because this
addresses the previous question as well. One of the
things, we do not share
intelligence information very well with our allies, which makes it, again,
difficult to convince them
that these are appropriate
cases. When you get one word in the intelligence comments on an end user or one
line in the
intelligence comments on an
end user, that is probably not sufficient to make a convincing argument.
So it is not just that we do not share it with U.S. industries,
we do not really share it with our allies, so I think that is one
area where improving the
intelligence sharing mechanisms would go a long way to enhance our ability to
negotiate and
coordinate our policies with
our allies.
It would also, let me point out, improve, I think, how we
target our enforcement resources. We do not have a lot of
enforcement resources in
Customs and in the Department of Commerce. To be able to target them more
effectively by
making sure that the industry
is more compliant because it knows which end users are the right ones and the
wrong ones
will, I think, eliminate a
lot of these cases. Currently you see many, many times the enforcement agencies
are focusing on
what are largely
recordkeeping issues and not concrete cases involving weapons of mass
destruction proliferation. So in
that area, I think there
could be substantial improvement.
Mr. GILMAN. One of the concerns of our allies is that we are
preventing them from having some end use
opportunities. Is there any
way we can reassure them that we are not trying to take advantage of them?
Mr. FREEDENBERG. You mean the idea that we are using export
controls for commercial advantage?
Mr. GILMAN. Yes.
Mr. FREEDENBERG. The short answer, which I have tried to say in
my testimony and which I think Mr. Hoydysh
did as well, is that if there
is anybody who is being shot in the foot it is us and it is not just remarkable
we do it, but that we
keep reloading and do it
again and again and again. But the allies keep thinking that somehow we must
have some ulterior
motive. I think what we were
talking about, better and better sharing of intelligence, would probably
assuage a lot of those
suspicions.
We are very, very—you would think we would be much more
cooperative with our allies and in my experience is in
terms of giving information about
why we are really trying to shut something off or what we are trying to
achieve——
Mr. GILMAN. Better communications.
Mr. FREEDENBERG. Yes.
Mr. HOYDYSH. Mr. Chairman, export controls have never been a
competitive advantage for American industry in the
past 50 years. I cannot think
of a single instance when that has actually been true.
Mr. FREEDENBERG. In fact, I could tell you that Vice President
Cheney could tell you that a lot of the business in
the oil equipment industry
has been lost to competitors that were created through export controls, not
just that—there
were not any competitors
until we unilaterally controlled our own oil equipment industry. That is why he
takes it as a very
high priority for himself.
Mr. GILMAN. Well, do any of you gentlemen have any closing
statement you would like to leave with our Committee
before we wind up?
Mr. Hoydysh?
Mr. HOYDYSH. No, thank you.
Mr. GILMAN. Dr. Freedenberg?
Mr. FREEDENBERG. No, thank you.
Chairman GILMAN. Dr. Cupitt?
Mr. CUPITT. No, thank you.
Mr. GILMAN. Well, I want to thank you gentlemen for appearing
before our Committee today. We greatly appreciate
the effort you have made to
study and then advise Congress about the Export Administration Act and we will
be there to
support efforts and to
encourage action. We thank you again for your public service.
The Committee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:30 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
(Footnote 1 return)
Study Group on Enhancing
Multilateral Export Controls for US National Security, Final Report,
Washington, DC: Henry
L. Stimson Center, Arpil
2001; Center for Strategic and International Studies, Technology and Security
in the 21st
Century: U.S. Military Export
Control Reform, Washington, DC: CSIS, May 2001; and Center for Strategic and
International Studies,
National Security and Information Technology, Washington, DC: CSIS, June 2001.
(Footnote 2 return)
See, for example, the
discussion of the Iraqi program on deceptive acquisition practices in David
Albright, ''A
Commentary on the Future of
Nuclear Export Controls,'' pp. 95–100 in in Nuclear Suppliers Group, 2nd NSG
International Seminar on the
Role of Export Controls in Nuclear Non-Proliferation, 8–9 April 1999, UN
Headquarters New York,
Vienna: NSG Point of Contact, 2000, p. 96.
(Footnote 3 return)
See Stephen A. Merrill,
''Operation and Effects of U.S. Export Licensing for National Security
Purposes,'' pp. 221–253 in
National Academies of
Science, Panel on the Impact of National Security Controls on International
Technology Transfer,
Balancing the National
Interest: U.S. National Security Export Controls and Global Economic
Competition,
Washington, DC: National
Academy Press, 1987.
(Footnote 4 return)
Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
Japan, ''G-8 Communique Koln 1999,''
http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/economy/summit/1999/communique.html.
(Footnote 5 return)
Kenneth W. Abbott and Duncan
Snidal, ''Why States Act through Formal International Organizations,'' Journal
of
Conflict Resolution, 42, 1
(February 1998), pp. 3–32.
(Footnote 6 return)
Andrew Latham and Brian Bow,
''Multilateral Export Control Regimes: Bridging the North-South Divide,''
Canadian
Institute of International
Affairs International Journal, 53, 3 (Summer 1998), pp. 465–486.
(Footnote 7 return)
See, for example, General
Secretariat of the Council of the EU, ''Current National Arms Export Policies
of the 15 EU
Member States,'' COARM
Document, May 6, 1998 available at http://projects.sipri.se/expcon/euframe/coarm.htm;
General Secretariat of the
Council of the EU, ''Current National Arms Export Policies of the 15 EU Member
States,''
POLARM Document, February 19,
1996 at http://projects.sipri.se/expcon/euframe/coarm.htm; Center for
Information
on Strategic Technologies,
''Questionnaire on Export Control Systems in Asian Countries and Regions,''
mimeo, Tokyo,
Japan, March 1, 2000; Center
for International Trade and Security, University of Georgia, Nonproliferation
Export
Controls: A Global
Evaluation, Executive Report, Center for International Trade and Security:
Athens, Georgia, 2000.
For this and other reports, see www.uga.edu/cits.