Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON -- A panel of experts told a U.S. House committee yesterday that the export control process created during the Cold War to keep critical U.S. technology from adversaries undermines national security, hurts the economy and stifles scientific advances.

The four witnesses, with backgrounds in the military, aerospace and academics, called for fundamental changes in the laws and regulations governing the export of products, subsystems and technical information with potential military or dual-use capabilities.

"The national security controls on science and technology are broken. They weaken national security and reduce [economic] competitiveness," retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft told the House Science Committee. The national security adviser to former President George H.W. Bush testified on the results of the National Research Council's Science, Security and Prosperity Committee's study of the export control process.

House Science Chairman Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) echoed Scowcroft's concerns and said the committee would conduct a detailed review of the export control process and expected other panels to join in that effort.

Gordon noted that President Barack Obama called for a similar study during his campaign. He said he would contact the administration to request that it conduct that review.

House Science ranking member Ralph Hall (R-Texas) agreed that the current export control regime "is working against our own national security interests."

The National Research Council study pointed out that the two main laws -- the Export Control Act of 1968 and the Export Administration Act of 1979 -- were enacted when the United States had a clear superiority in military-related science and technology over its primary adversary, the Soviet Union, and most of that technology came out of the defense establishment.

But today, Scowcroft told the committee, the nation has competition in those fields from many other nations and technological advances are primarily commercially based.

As a result, the export controls handicap efforts by U.S. firms to sell even remotely defense-related material to allies and friendly nations, limit cooperation in international scientific research, and prevent U.S. universities from using foreign-born scientists and engineers that they educate in potentially sensitive research, Scowcroft and the other witnesses said.

Thomas Young, a retired Lockheed Martin executive who helped produce a major study on export controls by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the restrictions have accelerated the development of science and technology in other nations, which are free to sell products and services tied up by the U.S. laws.

"We are doing far more harm than good with the control of exports," Young said.

The witnesses highlighted the impact the restrictions have on the U.S. aerospace industry's ability to compete internationally in the sale of commercial communications satellites.

But Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), who has long championed tight controls over defense and high-tech exports, insisted that export rules must prevent U.S. technology from getting to potential enemies or proliferators of missiles and similar weapons.

He specifically cited China and called for a "dual-track" process that would ease exports to allies but restrict them to "nondemocratic nations."