The Bureau of Industry and Security released a "preliminary" agenda for its update conference scheduled for next week. The agenda includes two plenary sessions, a panel on export enforcement, and breakout sessions covering various topics, including semiconductor export controls, "emerging technology and foreign technology analysis," end-use/end-user controls, AUKUS, export enforcement best practices, the Office of Information and Communications Technology and Services, a regulatory review, space controls, and the Defense Production Act. The agenda also includes a list of speakers, which includes senior officials from BIS, the Office of Foreign Assets Control, the State Department and the Pentagon as well as government officials from Japan, South Korea and the EU. BIS said the agenda is subject to change.
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The Treasury Department included its Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI) in the Trump administration’s hiring freeze but is now considering giving it relief from the pause due to its national security role, the department told lawmakers.
The U.S. should tighten export controls on advanced artificial intelligence chips and bolster security requirements for frontier AI labs, which will slow American adversaries from developing their own AI technologies and keep the U.S. in the lead, AI research and development firm Anthropic told the White House this month.
Robert Rasmussen, a technology policy coordinator within the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls, resigned from his role after accepting the terms of the Trump administration’s deferred resignation program, he announced March 8 on LinkedIn. Rasmussen also worked as an export compliance specialist in the Bureau of Industry and Security from 2016 to 2020 before joining DDTC in 2023. The White House offered the deferred resignation program to federal employees earlier this year, promising to pay them through September in exchange for their resignation.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jim Risch, R-Idaho, and ranking member Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., introduced a bill last week aimed at curbing China’s export of fentanyl precursor chemicals to Mexican drug traffickers.
A House Republican proposal to pass a temporary government spending measure, or continuing resolution (CR), for the rest of FY 2025 would prevent Congress from weighing in on export control policy, such as by opposing the easing of restrictions on Russia, according to a memo released March 8 by Senate Appropriations Committee ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash.
Canada last week announced new sanctions against people and entities for either helping Iran acquire controlled technology or having ties to human rights violations committed by the Myanmar military regime.
House Select Committee on China Chairman John Moolenaar, R-Mich., asked the Bureau of Industry and Security to brief his panel on how it's restricting China’s access to U.S. university supercomputers.
The Bureau of Industry needs better resources and technology, and the semiconductor industry needs better tracking tools, to prevent China from illegally receiving and accessing advanced chip technology, a researcher told a BIS advisory committee this week.