
Review of Controls for Certain Emerging Technologies (2018) - ETHisso2017
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/11/19/2018-25221/review-of-controls-for-certain-emerging-technologies
======
catwell
I am looking at this from Europe, and when I read things like this I feel like
the US have not realized that their standing on the international scene has
changed in the last 30 years.

Most of the research and advances in the technologies listed has not been made
in the US, and even when it has it often hasn't been mostly by US nationals.

You were the country that defined globalization, and now you refuse to see the
state of the world and actively harm yourselves with protectionist decisions
like this. You have already lost business with regulations like Cloud Act, and
now China is quickly eating your share of the pie.

You still have a major influence in the West because of two things: capital,
and the historical fact that the large market leaders in tech which control
distribution (Google, Apple, Microsoft) are American. Would you bet this will
still be the case 20 years from now? I wouldn't if I were you.

I know a lot of the Americans here on HN probably do not agree with a lot of
what their current government does, but still. Export controls don't work
except to cut yourselves out of entire markets abroad and foster the adoption
of competitors to your domestic companies. I don't understand how this is a
viable long-term strategy.

~~~
AndyMcConachie
I'm also looking at this from a EU perspective and don't really care. If the
USA wants to shoot itself in the head why should I care? If anything it might
mean more tech work for European techies like myself.

~~~
gray_-_wolf
> If the USA wants to shoot itself in the head why should I care?

Like it or not US forces are major part of military strenght of NATO and it's
not so much viable without it. So strong US economy (needed to fuel the army)
is in our interest as well.

~~~
ionised
US forces are also a major contributor to instability in the middle-east (and
the world) that have had negative consequences for much of Europe, Africa and
South America.

The US os a rogue state by its own definition of the word.

~~~
gray_-_wolf
Yes, because without US as strong opposition, Russia would definitely not
sweep over Europe egain.

------
ETHisso2017
The US Department of Commerce is putting together an expanded list of
technologies deemed important to national security, and hence subject to
export controls. Because the US interprets sharing knowledge of a technology
with a non-US person as a "deemed export", technologies on this list cannot be
discussed with any non-US person unless Commerce approves.

While this might make sense with the right set of technologies, flipping
through this list, it seems to be written by someone with either a minimal
technical background an excessively ideological bent.

Some technologies are plainly not "sensitive", such as:

1\. "Distribution-based Logistics Systems" \- aka JIT logistics like UPS and
DHL

2\. "Position, Navigation, and Timing technology" \- clocks and GPS baseband
receivers

While others are defined in an excessively broad way:

1\. "Mobile electric power" \- aka golf carts? or does it only cover phased
plasma rifles in the 40 watt range?

2\. "Audio and Video manipulation technologies" \- so... Instagram filters? Or
only "deepfakes"?

3\. "Planning" \- scheduling, like x.ai?

4\. "Systems on Chip" \- the whole category?

What is troubling is that were this list to go through, immigrants from entire
countries would be effectively barred from the US tech industry, as they could
not collaborate with their peers. What's more, US tech companies would be
effectively banned from interacting with companies in countries the US
government doesn't like but doesn't have the political capital to sanction.
I'm reminded of Ming China at this point, and not in a good way.

~~~
emiliobumachar
Export control has huge downsides and I agree with the general sentiment that
the US overdoes it. However, logistics and navigation have _obvious_ military
applications. A state-of-the-art GPS receiver can slot straight into a
missile.

~~~
jstanley
So? A state-of-the-art CPU can also slot straight into a missile. As can nuts
and bolts, batteries, radios, and all sorts of other equipment.

~~~
VLM
Speaking of state of the art CPUs, I own a couple years old "KiwiSDR" web-ui
receiver which devotes some CPU cycles to implementing a GPS rx and it uses
the GPS lock to discipline the internal oscillators such that the radio is
driftless and perfect frequency accuracy. It works pretty well. My receiver is
somewhat more frequency stable than some local AM broadcasters, which is weird
to see in the waterfall display; many local broadcasters do GPS discipline, of
course.

Pretty sure the code is at

[https://github.com/jks-prv/Beagle_SDR_GPS](https://github.com/jks-
prv/Beagle_SDR_GPS)

Note that the hardware Skyworks SE4150L chip is an RF front-end, all the math
is done in software, the chip merely attaches to the GPS antenna and squirts
out a very raw digital bit-stream of data, its hardly a full GPS squirting out
NMEA RS232 serial data. I am aware of SDR hardware that does the RF work in
software, which is a slight step beyond the KiwiSDR.

Technology is not distributed smoothly and software defined GPS is cheap
enough that everyone except cheap consumer gear can implement it. Someday,
presumably, computing power will be cheap enough that your microwave oven and
clothes washer will not bother with expensive hardware to have a semi-accurate
timer, they'll just use cheap SDR code in a FPGA to listen to GPS to time your
microwave popcorn and clothes spin cycle. That's the fundamental problem with
regulations like this, they don't slow down "state actors" they just stand in
the way of (taxable, profitable) commercial exploitation.

Post 2000, post 2010 at worst, no serious missile program will ever lack an
unlimited GPS, but post regulation, the technology will be crippled from
entering consumer goods.

Now what is interesting to speculate is it would be destabilizing if we know
that they know how to crack the military P(Y) code or the newer M code for
higher resolution positioning. I'm not sure that would help with missiles but
if our secret squirrels are freaking out about the generic topic of software
GPS, that would imply some state level actor (or lower?) has a crack or
exploit for the math behind P(Y) code or M code streams, which has interesting
implications for other crypto systems.

------
mark_l_watson
Ouch. I mostly looked at what AI techniques are being proposed for blockage by
export controls (most deep learning, etc.). Specifically this would, if
enacted, make it difficult for foreign workers to collaborate on projects and
shut the USA out of progress made elsewhere.

Pardon a non-technical comment but this goes exactly against where I want to
see the world going: I believe in the value of countries maintaining their own
culture and traditions while also cooperating with other countries on a global
scale.

I think there is a lot of fear in our government over our losing dominance in
things like 5G and consumer AI driven by vast amounts of data. I think these
fears are valid but I would take a long view by making our educational system
better starting in kindergarten, making it easy for very high skilled workers
to get visas, etc. Also, we should look to what advantages we have in farming,
water supply (yes, we love the Great Lakes), what we can offer the world
culturally (yeah! Avengers End Game!), and relax our egos to not need to be
‘the best’ because in some ways we are not.

When family or friends ask me how I am doing, my usual response is ‘good
enough’ and I wish as a nation we could realize how most of our lives are
‘good enough’ and also work hard to provide opportunities for people who don’t
have it good enough.

Anyway, I look at the proposed export control list, and I see bureaucrats
acting out of fear.

------
VLM
Clicking on the "public comments" link on the federal register page provides
some interesting reading.

Facebook was fairly agitated about the impact of some of the proposals on the
PyTorch project.

The director at CSET pointed out its kinda a wasted effort to try to censor
source code in 2019.

Uber claims that broad classification doesn't work anyway for developing tech
as a general rule by the time it can be classified accurately its no longer
developing tech, and classifying the result of government sponsored research
grants would work a lot better than first amendment violations ever would,
anyway.

Any inaccuracy at summarizing a position above, is my failure, not the failure
of the corporate comments, etc blah blah.

General public comments on a govt proposal are more interesting reading than
either the proposal OR general public social media comments. I actually
learned a few things about PyTorch because of this. Interesting stuff.

------
jacquesm
Wow, that's a neat little list. The impact of this on the start-up scene will
be considerable. Given that almost every AI development is dual use it will be
hard to make a clear ruling on what is and what is not 'national security'
related.

I remember when crypto was export restricted and how that ended, this will
likely go the exact same way.

------
CoolGuySteve
Do these controls actually work? As in, do they prevent banned states from
getting this technology or papers describing how to build it? My intuition
says no.

And even if they are effective, is it worth the bureaucratic overhead?

~~~
tyingq
RSA used to be export restricted by ITAR, and the situation became a running
joke. There's a Perl 3 liner made into a t-shirt that was subject to the
regulation. [http://www.cypherspace.org/rsa/](http://www.cypherspace.org/rsa/)

I think someone also got it tattooed on them.

~~~
VLM
[http://www.geekytattoos.com/illegal-tattoos-rsa-
tattoos/](http://www.geekytattoos.com/illegal-tattoos-rsa-tattoos/)

At least three people have a Perl RSA tattoo.

------
winter_blue
I have a couple questions about this:

\- How would this affect a largely foreign-based company with branches or
subsidiaries in the US? Would the subsidiary be prohibited from sharing
knowledge with its parent without prior approval?

\- Or what about a publicly traded multi-national company with many
shareholders (both American and non-American) which has R&D offices in many
different countries? How would you treat a company like that? There are many
large companies which are _de jure_ registered in tax havens, and have offices
and staff spanning multiple continents.

\- Lastly, what is the constitutional authority on which the federal
government is able to do this? This seems to conflict with the U.S.
Constitution's First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech. Especially,
considering this affects private speech. We're not talking about leaking TOP
SECRET / SECRET / CONFIDENTIAL classified privileged information that's shared
with you after getting a security clearance. This has to do with limiting the
freedom speech _of private individuals_ , and the freedom of Americans to
converse with non-Americans as they wish.

~~~
novaRom
It can be more difficult to get US Visa if your research area is AI.

------
johnnycab
At first reading, this seems like it was a non-committal RFC on a government
based broad-strokes approach for a list generated from the Gartner Hypecycle
and various other buzzwords; the use of 'Smart Dust' rather than generic
reference to MEMS is telling. Some of the established industries operating in
most of these sectors are already self-regulating and more than likely know
how to deal with export controls.

It is probably easier to blanket-ban/restrict everything and then work from
that position to approve it on a case-by-case basis, thus maintaining
ambiguity and retaining a degree of power. There is no doubt that there will
be a scope for abuse by creating favourable environment for some in the name
of politics, and to frustrate progress for others by using red-tape and it
won't be the first time either!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_the_United_States)

------
netcan
Ultimately, atm, the US is about as far from conflict with a technologically
capable adversary as you could hope for.

Despite rivolrous rhetoric, china-US interests mostly aren't opposed. Russia &
the US play spy games, possibly election meddling.., but it's still fairly
small scale. Maintaining a small edge in these technologies is, currently, as
unimportant as it's likely to be.

That could change. Stakes could rise. This is the peacetime list/policy. What
happens if & when the risk of war grows.

This list hints at the kind of cost we will pay for escalating risk of major
conflict. New discoveries in computer science, biology, material science,
manufacturing or anything with obvious breakthrough potential could become
restricted, secretive, balkanized, and ultimately limited.

------
tzs
A lot of people are missing that the list given is not a list of things they
are considering for export controls. It is a list of categories for which they
want to know if they contain specific technologies that should be under export
control.

------
jvanderbot
My group is heavily involved in swarming technologies at a big old lab you've
heard of. We reply to these and other calls for comments, and apart from a few
bad actors, this process is pretty clean and sensible.

The end result is often not a ban on sales or exports, but rather a sliding
scale of licensing regulations, up to a ban on sale to e.g. Iran or China. Do
you really want to sell your AI powered surveillance swarm to Iran? No, you
don't. You can develop and sell to UK though, because they're the "Good guys".

------
ausbah
Does this apply to already existing systems or just new stuff? Tech like
expert systems and non deep learning rl have been around for years if not
decades, are they suddenly going to be subject to export controls

------
bhouston
This is cool, I didn't know we were really there yet:

(11) Brain-computer interfaces, such as

(i) Neural-controlled interfaces;

(ii) Mind-machine interfaces;

(iii) Direct neural interfaces; or

(iv) Brain-machine interfaces.

~~~
_mitch
There is a lot of promising and terrifying work going on in this space.

Promising: Using BCI to allow people with disabilities to communicate
[https://youtu.be/9m7-NzpIiXY](https://youtu.be/9m7-NzpIiXY)

Terrifying: The government using the same principles to detect recognition
during interrogation
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6206237/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6206237/)

------
chriselles
I know this needs to be done.

But it’s quite hard.

Preventing bits from being exported is harder than preventing atoms.

What compounds the export problem, is the classification problem.

In the past, when military R&D was dominant, military technology was often
aggressively classified despite the challenges of acquiring/replicating it.

Nowadays so much is recombined commercial duel use tech that discussing it is
often enough to point adversaries/competitors in the right direction.

~~~
Faaak
Why this needs to be done ?

It's incredibly selfish to restrict things like biotech (CRISPR for example)
because these technologies can save lives, yet they may affect "National
Security". A shame

~~~
ben_w
If I actually thought that would work, I’d be in favour of restricting access.
GM in general (not just CRISPR) is clearly powerful enough to be a useful
military tech if it were developed in that way.

I don’t think it’s possible to prevent such developments, though I am also
aware it’s not as simple as a boolean yes/no.

------
rubyfan
How does this effect open source?

~~~
frumiousirc
Debian used to have "non-us" to hold things like SSH (maybe still does). These
software "munitions" where then simply "imported" to the US each install or
upgrade that occurred on Debian systems located in the US.

Ironically, instead of keeping the tech "in house" these export controls kept
the tech at a distance, making things slightly more inconvenient to use for
people in the US.

------
novaRom
Don't make mistake if you apply for US Visa. When your research area is Deep
Learning/AI, it may take longer to get B1/2 Visa and additional documents
might be required. Simply Software Engineering is sufficient.

------
yingw787
How does this compare with how nuclear weapons technology was being invented
and safeguarded? AFAIK there was a lot of cooperation amongst everybody before
they became practical, but after the initial breakthroughs happened the
government quickly classified most of the research. I believe during postwar
interrogations of Nazi nuclear scientists they mentioned how the drying up of
research and publications in nuclear fission in the public arena meant
somebody had broken through. Isn’t that all you really should be looking for,
or does the government no longer trust Einstein letters?

~~~
Merrill
In the case of nuclear weapons, the knowledge of the science of how they work
is not sufficient. The "industrial arts" of making fissionable material and
then weapons are complex, expensive, and large scale. Just knowing the science
doesn't mean that you are able to design, build, and operate the factories
that are needed for production.

On the other hand, any technology which depends only on fairly standard
scientific instruments, readily available components and manufacturing
techniques, and software is essentially uncontrollable.

------
trevyn
(2018)

------
bayareanative
The US is gradually weakening, may collapse and likely to enter an era
tantamount to a Dark Age.

