F.A.S. Public Interest Report

Journal of the Federation of American Scientists (F.A.S.)

Technology Transfer:
Ubiquitous Stumbling Block, Unique Opportunity

By Dorothy Preslar

Contents

Sensible Approach Under Development Evolving Acquisition Strategies Responsible Transfer Program Biological Weapons Concerns? Back to Issue Index

The questions of how, when, where and what technologies will be shared on an equal footing among nations are becoming an increasingly troublesome problem for arms control. For example, completing a protocol for the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) hinges on the resolution of two outstanding issues - both related to technology transfer, though in unrelated ways.

The first is the need to protect proprietary biotechnology in the declarations-confirmation visit mechanism proposed for implementing the treaty - that is, a fear that treaty office inspectors will detect innovations in research and production methodology and clandestinely pass along their observations and information to others.

The second is the need of many countries now thrust into the global marketplace to acquire cutting-edge technologies they have as yet not developed (and indeed, have no time to play catch up on all fronts) - that is, a fear that the final protocol will not deliver on the treaty's "promise" that technology sought for peaceful purposes will be available.

Protocol negotiations, or rather the impasse, on these issues have become so sensitive that the usual suspects are not even talking to the media. Exactly what specific technology is sought but not available from any source is not clear. What is becoming obvious is that countries want to acquire technology in an international atmosphere of permission and confirmation of equal status.

FAS and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) are jointly exploring these issues in research on "Managing Technology Transfers in a Security Environment." This work, funded by a grant from the United States Institute of Peace is intended to help sort out the questions of what, how, when and where, and to strike a balance between military security interests and global needs.

Sensible Approach Under Development

A recent development regarding U.S. computers indicates that managing technology transfers on the basis of common sense and close monitoring of the advance of technology is possible. This time last year, the restrictions on computer sales were highly restrictive and based on out-of-date criteria that put even laptops into the dual-use category.

In June 1999, representatives of the U.S. computer industry visited Congress to argue for new definitions of what constitutes a high performance computer under the export control regime that has focused on potential use in military programs in certain countries. They demonstrated that the pace of refinements and developments in the industry made the definition - 2000 million theoretical operations per second (MTOPS) - obsolete. The industry's other concern was the narrow market defined for high performance computers - at that point, the countries of Western Europe, Canada, Japan, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand.

In early July, President Clinton relaxed the export limitations, adding Brazil, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to the list of countries to which U.S. computers of any size and performance can be shipped without a permit, while increasing the MTOPS limit on computers sold to China. On February 2 of this year, Clinton further relaxed the export limits, even to the so-called Third Tier nations (Russia, India, China, Pakistan, Vietnam, Israel, etc.). Now, only Tier 4 countries (Libya, Cuba, Iraq) are limited to 2000 MTOPS.

This type of approach incorporates both common sense and marketplace actuality in designating technological thresholds. It also may pave the way for linking U.S. export controls in other advancing industries to timely factual situations, rather than to situations that existed last year, or the year before that.

Evolving Acquisition Strategies

Meanwhile, countries seeking cutting-edge technology are finding ways to get what they need in ways other than by direct purchase. The most productive avenues appear to be country-to-country cooperative programs, multi-national corporation investment, international industrial consortiums, and certain international agencies.

Examples of these strategies in the past four months include:

1. Action in Nov. 1999 by the Indian Federal Commerce and Industry Ministry to pursue multi-national company investment in India that includes transfer of "cutting edge" technologies, possibly leading to the Feb. 9 announcement that Citcom of the U.S. will transfer information technology in a joint venture with BHARI
2. Five-year plan announced in Dec. 1999 by Japan and China to promote transfer of Japanese coal mining technology to China and to provide training to Chinese entrepreneurs
3. Multimillion dollar project between Vietnam and Netherlands announced in Dec. 1999 to transfer pig and poultry-raising technology to the Asian country
4. Agreement in Jan. 2000 between China and Australia to jointly research and develop livestock embryo transfer techniques and technology aimed at raising superior livestock for sale in China

Responsible Transfer Program

With respect to international agencies involved in technology transfer, a collaboration between two U.N. agencies, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Atomic Energy Agency (FAO/IAEA), has managed to come up with a responsible program of coordinated research projects (CRPs). For about a decade, this joint UN initiative has been transferring technologies to developing nations to improve crop and food animal production, and to enhance these countries' ability to export agricultural products and to preserve native species by innovative disease diagnostic, prevention and control projects.

As examples, the CRPs have resulted in tsetse fly eradication on the island of Zanzibar through sterile insect technology, and more effective surveillance of rinderpest, Peste des Petitis Ruminants and Contagious Bovine Pleuropneumonia - the first two of which affect both wild and farmed animals - through ELISA and PCR radioisotope technology. This technology is per se dual use, as is practically all microbiological innovations of the past quarter century.

The FAO/IAEA's newest CRP is to develop and standardize assays for Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) antibodies in livestock. These tests will distinguish between antibodies generated by vaccination against the disease (or remain in the animal after it has recovered from the disease) and those that indicate active infection. Under international sanitary regulations, detection of the antibody in even one animal out of an entire herd means that no other animal in that herd can be transported or sold. Successful testing and deployment of the test is of vital importance in South America, Africa and Asia and will hopefully end the discriminatory situation.

Sensitivity testing of three different diagnostic kits, all of which utilize ELISA-based techniques, is now underway at 15 laboratories whose diagnostic work reflects strains of the disease found in China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Hong Kong, Philippines, Malaysia, Peru, Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay and South Africa. In Taiwan, the strains include both pig and cattle forms of the disease.

The relevance of FAO/IAEA CRPs to technology transfers in an environment of potential weapons proliferation is that the basic technology (science, equipment, application, training) is actually transferred (although not proprietary products) into the countries that need it and will continue to benefit from it.

Biological Weapons Concerns?

Could radioisotope biotechnology be useful in a covert biological weapons program? Yes, but its utility is marginal, given what is really involved in developing and producing an effective weapon in quantities sufficient to induce mass casualties and the means to deliver it.

The threat posed by a developing world unable to feed and care for its peoples far outweighs the threat potential in the transfer of such technologies - and others more basic (viral and biological material itself) and even more advanced (genomic data bases and techniques) - when transferred by a mechanism open to public scrutiny and when subjected to a non-invasive monitoring system that could be a function of a BTWC protocol directorate.