Following a recent DOJ settlement with General Motors, U.S. employers should make sure they’re not inadvertently considering export control compliance concerns in a way that discriminates against certain people during their hiring process, Barnes & Thornburg said in a May client alert. The firm said U.S. companies should “carefully review their written policies and procedures” to make sure they “adequately address compliance” with the Immigration and Nationality Act “when assessing whether employees require access to export-controlled information.” Human resource managers “should be particularly sensitive to these issues when hiring and onboarding new employees.”
Although Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company last year secured a one-year authorization to continue certain China-related activities despite the Commerce Department’s October chip controls, the company has “no assurance that we will be able to continue securing such general authorization on a timely basis or at all,” it said in an April Securities and Exchange Commission filing. The Bureau of Industry and Security recently said it’s working with some companies to allow them to continue certain activities authorized by the waivers after they expire (see 2302240008).
U.S. export controls imposed against China’s semiconductor industry in October (see 2211010042) are so far having “only minimal effects” on the country’s artificial intelligence sector, Reuters reported May 3. Although the rules restricted shipments of certain chips “that have become the global technology industry's standard for developing chatbots” and other AI systems, including chips supplied by Nvidia, the U.S. technology company has created “variants of its chips for the Chinese market that are slowed down” to comply with the new license requirements, the report said.
U.S. hardware supplier MaxLinear said it submitted a “comprehensive” voluntary self-disclosure to the Bureau of Industry and Security in March detailing its potential illegal exports to a Chinese foundry on the Entity List. The company, which submitted an initial notification to BIS last year (see 2211070014), has since hired outside counsel who recently completed a “privileged investigation” of the potential violation, according to its April filing with the SEC. The company also “took immediate action to remediate, including by preventing recurrence.”
Placing export controls now on quantum information science technologies likely would “cause more harm than good,” Sam Howell, a research assistant with the Center for a New American Security, said in a May 1 article for the Lawfare blog. Although the U.S. could take several paths in imposing quantum technology restrictions -- including specific end-user controls or broader restrictions targeting “entire integrated quantum systems” -- she said each carries “significant pitfalls and are unlikely to be effective in protecting the U.S.’s strategic edge at this stage of development.”
U.S. semiconductor company KLA “received clarification” from the U.S. government on matters surrounding chip export controls on China and can “now resume some shipments that we had previously excluded,” the company said as part of its latest earnings report released last week.
The U.S. should work with China in select artificial intelligence areas instead of imposing sweeping export controls that create financial incentives for companies to “design-out” U.S. technology, Paul Scharre, vice president and director of studies at the Center for a New American Security, said in an April 18 opinion article for Time Magazine. While current U.S. restrictions on semiconductors exports to China are “narrowly targeted,” he said they will “de facto grow over time as chips advance and the threshold for export controls remains the same.”
Nations allowing the export to Russia of dual-use products that have military as well as commercial applications are on notice, Commerce Deputy Secretary Don Graves said April 19 at the Space Foundation's 2023 Space Symposium. "Any country ... that seeks to backfill the Russian war machine ... does so at their own peril," he warned. Export controls by the U.S. and 38 other nations aimed at dual-use products such as semiconductors and lasers are "hobbling" the Russian war effort in Ukraine, he said.
The State Department completed a round of interagency review for an interim final rule that would seek public comments on revisions to the U.S. Munitions List. The rule, sent for review Feb. 2 (see 2302030013) and completed April 17, would request feedback “regarding the technology frontier,” which could help the agency identify specific technology capabilities that have “sufficiently evolved” to consider amending the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. The rule could add, revise or exclude certain items from the ITAR.
The Bureau of Industry and Security last week completed its interagency review of new proposed export controls on automated peptide synthesizers. The rule, sent for review at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs March 29 (see 2303300003) and completed April 12, could propose new restrictions on certain instruments for the automated synthesis of peptides that could be used to produce biological weapons (see 2209120021).