Where Industry and Security Intersect
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Public Presentations:
There were no public presentations.
Agenda Item Presentations/Discussions:
BIS: Matt Borman, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Export Administration, provided an update on BIS activities and regulations.
--The Presidential Directive of Jan 22, 2008 contained three main points: Greater focus on end use and end user; US industrial competitiveness; and increased transparency.
--A draft regulation for the proposed Intra-Company Transfer license exception (ICT) has been sent interagency and comments have been received from DoD. BIS hopes to publish ICT in proposed form by the end of May.
--A draft regulation for revisions to the de minimus provisions has gone interagency and comments have been received from DoD.
--A draft regulation for revision of license exception ENC is progressing.
--The CCL Comprehensive Review is also progressing. A regulation of technical corrections that did not require other agency clearances was published on April 18, 2008 (73FR21035). A second regulation of technical corrections that requires other agency clearances will soon go interagency. A third regulation will pertain to US unilateral controls, and a fourth will pertain to multilateral controls. Anticipated scheduling for these latter three regulations was not announced.
--A draft regulation for expansion of the Entity List is also progressing. The rationale is to expand the List from entities involved in WMD to those involved in terrorism, conventional arms, and those with EAR violations.
--In response to a DEAC recommendation, a new Technical Advisory Committee for emerging technologies will be formed. It is expected that there will be a formal process for communication and interaction between the existing TACs and this new TAC.
--A Notice of Inquiry will be published, to request public comments regarding deemed exports: What technologies should be subject to the deemed export rule? Should prior citizenship be considered and, if so, how? Should prior employment at Listed Entities be considered?
--Regarding VEU, the appropriate Congressional oversight committees have been briefed regularly on the program.
Applied Materials: Steve Moffatt provided overviews of 1) Atomic Layer Deposition and 2) Cluster Tools and their use in semiconductor fabs. Atomic Layer Deposition is essentially a digital process (layer-by-layer control), as contrasted to Chemical Vapor Deposition, which is essentially an analog process (variable-thickness layers). The critical technical feature of ALD is that it creates a conformal coating, even on features having high aspect ratios. Key processes for which ALD may play an important role are 1) those involving high-k dielectrics, and 2) gate dielectrics for logic devices, beginning at 45 nm. With regard to export control, if ALD were to be controlled, much extant equipment that has been treated as uncontrolled would become controlled.
Regarding cluster tools, it was noted that viable production capability is emerging in China.
IDA: Bob Anstead presented a history of US export controls, from 1774 to present. This presentation was educational and thus no further action was required.
Discussion on “Specially Designed”. Bill Root commented on the implications of the Lachman case and the practical implications for interpretation of the phrase “specially designed”.
BIS/OTE: Gerry Horner provided an overview of the use of census data for export controls. There are three broad topics being studied:
--Impact of export controls on trade and assessment of usage of license exceptions. This work involves development of cross-correlation between HTS and ECCN; comparison of geographic (state) origin of the IVL and the port of export (to better allocate personnel resources); and monitoring closely shipments of high-technology items, which are identified by ~10 HTS numbers.
--Export Licensing. This work involved reconciliation of IVLs applied for and issues versus actual shipments against those IVLs. Data show that only 57% of IVLs are shipped against, and is interested to know why a rather large amount (43%) are unused. Any insight that industry can provide would be appreciated.
--Economic Competitiveness: This work looks at advanced technology items and uses US and foreign customs data. As part of this work, OTE may investigate concerns raised by various parties, including TACs, claimants or licensing officers, and the studies may evaluate foreign availability.
WA Proposals for 2009: Jonathan Wise of Agilent presented a list of possible proposals pertaining to test & measurement instrumentation. These were:
--Deletion of 3A2e and 3A2f. These instruments do not have military operational use. Further, since 3A1b6 was decontrolled several years ago, and it is not necessary to control test equipment for uncontrolled items.
--Cleanup of 3A2c1 and 3A2c3, with possible deletion of 3A2c3. Cleanup of 3A2c1 is necessary to address control status of signal analyzers with IF outputs.
--Increase the bandwidth threshold in 3A2d3b to correlate with new and emerging telecom standards.
--Move 3A2b to 3A1 and update it with a structure similar to that of 3A2d3a-e. 3A2b is a component control, not an instrument control, and it properly belongs in 3A1.
--Decontrol certain broadband instrumentation amplifiers currently controlled in 3A1b4. Just as 3A2c, 3A2d and 3A2e provide the possibility of an uncontrolled instrument up to 43.5 GHz, it should be possible to have an uncontrolled instrumentation amplifier up to 43.5 GHz. The technical details of this proposal remain to be determined.
--Clarification of the scope of 4A3d. It is currently unclear whether this control intends to capture plug-in A/D converters boards where the A/D capability arises from integrated circuits that are controlled in 3A1a5.
--Revisit the 5E1c1 control threshold for digital data transmission technology. It is possible that 100G Ethernet, implemented as four channels of 25 Gb/s, may provide rationale for relaxation of this threshold.
--Change the definition of “frequency switching time” from “to within 100 Hz of final frequency” to “within 1% of final frequency”, to reflect the physical reality of frequency measurements.
--Update the definition of frequency of an arbitrary waveform generator to be 40% of the sampling rate (i.e., factor of 2.5 rather than the Nyquist factor of 2).
--Update the definition of pulse width to include depth, to release fast but shallow pulses from control.
Brian Baker (BIS) requested that industry review the magnetic tape recorder controls (3A2a1-a4) for possible deletion. It was agreed that industry would investigate this.
4A3d A/D Converters: Jonathan Wise continued with a discussion of 4A3d, with focus on understanding the intended scope of that control. As written, this entry appears to control many ADC boards simply because they have a computer bus (e.g., PCI) but may not control similar boards that have instrument buses (e.g., PXI, NIM, etc). It was suggested that a key factor for 4A3d may be the ability to transfer digitized data onto the data bus or into the registers at the conversion speed, and that comparison to 3A2a5 may be useful. Industry will investigate this as a possible Wassenaar proposal for 2009.
Sigma-Delta A/D Converters: Dave Robertson of Analog Devices discussed the possibility that export. Briefly, processing gain in a white-noise system provides an additional ½ bit for every 3 dB. But sigma-delta converters do noise-shaping by using oversampling (up to 32x or 64x), with the result that most of the noise can be filtered out and much higher processing gains obtained. The point is that the modulator portion of a sigma-delta converter is specially designed for high linearity and for the purpose of achieving many bits of ADC resolution. However, because the actual output of the modulator is only a few bits of ADC resolution, the modulator is not controlled by 3A1a5. Accordingly, it may be desirable to rewrite or extend 3A1a5 to explicitly control certain modulators. A copy of the presentation was provided to DoD, for their review and consideration.
Common Channel Signaling: Jack Edwards spoke on the background of the technology control on common channel signaling (5E1c5). The first common-channel signaling technology was associated mode (signaling and data in the same channel). This evolved to quasi-associated mode (signaling and data following the same route, through the same switching offices, but on different wires). Finally, the evolved to non-associated mode (signaling may take a different path than the data). Jack suggests that common-channel signaling is not used much anymore, because new installations are IP-based. Thus, this control might be considered for deletion. It is unclear whether this control remains relevant due to the large installed base of telecommunications networks that still use common channel signaling.
The open session was adjourned.