More Industry Input on Export Controls

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo announced plans to create an Export Control Advisory Panel “to help us get our export controls to be more effective by having a continuous engagement with industry.”   The announcement was included in her remarks to the Fall meeting of the President’s Export Council (PEC) November 29^th which included a recap of AI initiatives and the announcement of a mission to the ASEAN region in March.

“Three quick things from me which are, I think, responsive to what I said I would do and what you asked me to do at the first meeting. We had a first meeting, we had a lunch. I talked to each of you, You gave me some feedback.

U.S. Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute (USAISI)

So first you said that we should get more involved with artificial intelligence, and we started that. The Commerce Department is leading the administration's work on artificial intelligence. About 3 weeks ago in the UK, we launched from the Commerce Department the AI Safety Institute. The concept here is that you can only harness the benefit of AI if you first kind of keep a lid on the risk. And the risks are significant and growing, especially national security risks.

We are standing up in the Commerce Department a permanent new institute of scientists, academicians, engineers, people from industry to come up with guardrails and safety protocols so that we develop AI in a way that is safe. 

You're going to be using in every one of your businesses 10 times more than you already are. And so we're going to make sure that the work we are doing at Commerce is fully integrated with what's happening at the PEC.

Reviving the President’s Export Council Subcommittee on Export Administration (PECSEA)

Secondly, how do we get the PEC more involved with our technology efforts and our export controls?  I'm very pleased to announce now that we are reconstituting* what's called PECSEA, which Lisa [Disbrow] will chair.  We're going to put out a notice of solicitation for members.  We're looking for senior executives and your senior product people. We need the people at the cutting edge of the technology, so government works hand in glove with companies we need to control.

We need to find that magic line of what we control. We don't want to over control, because then we deny you as companies revenue that you need to grow. But we can't under control because then our adversaries get access to our cutting edge technology and use it against us.

The PECSEA is in line with the recommendation you gave us last time. We're going to gather insights from the new committee to help us get our export controls to be more effective by having a continuous engagement with industry.

I just want to like say on this: it's not enough to say we get a piece of intelligence that some equipment has to be controlled, and then we call industry feverishly. We want to have a constant, continuous dialogue with industry so it can be more strategic.

*Begun in 1976, the PECSEA was discontinued during the Trump Administration.

March Mission to Philippines and Thailand

Last time at this meeting we we talked about doing a a mission together to the region as APEC and so I'm announcing we're going to do a PEC mission to the Indo Pacific - Philippines and Thailand. Tentatively now is the week of March 11^th, we've already started the planning. So I don't know, I feel like that's pretty good progress in only two meetings.