BIS Announces New Controls Targeting Foreign Military-Intelligence Activities
The Bureau of Industry and Security announced new controls on technologies and activities that may be supporting foreign military-intelligence end-uses and end-users in China, Cuba, Russia, Venezuela and other “terrorist-supporting” countries. The agency also will bolster controls to prevent U.S. people from supporting weapons programs, weapons delivery systems and weapons production facilities, BIS said in an interim final rule issued Jan. 15. The changes take effect March 16. Comments are due March 1.
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The controls will prevent U.S. people or companies from conducting certain activities, including brokering the sale of foreign-origin items or providing “maintenance, repair, or overhaul services” that support certain foreign military-intelligence services, BIS said. The agency will also expand license requirements for exports, reexports and transfers for military-intelligence end-uses and end-users “beyond enumerated items” subject to BIS’s existing military end-use and end-user controls (see 2012220027). These requirements and controls will apply to all items subject to the Export Administration Regulations and destined to “terrorist-supporting and embargoed countries,” BIS said.
Commerce named several foreign military-intelligence organizations that will be impacted by the new restrictions, including agencies in Cuba, China, Iran, Russia, Syria, North Korea and Venezuela. But BIS stressed that license requirements are not “limited to” just those organizations. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the new controls will “inhibit China’s Intelligence Bureau and Russia’s [Main Intelligence Directorate] from leveraging U.S. technology and services to support espionage, intelligence collection and operations, and other activities contrary to U.S. national security interests.”
Commerce also said BIS will revise end-use controls related to chemical and biological weapons, rocket systems and unmanned aerial vehicles. These controls will ensure that “any U.S. activity” related to the “operation, installation, maintenance, overhaul, repair, or refurbishing” of these weapons, systems or UAVs “triggers a catch-all license requirement.” Along with these revised controls, BIS will create a “framework” to inform exporters, reexporters and transferors about items subject to the EAR that require licenses for transactions “intended to circumvent Entity List-based license requirements, or for specific foreign parties assisting listed entities in circumventing such license requirements.”
The new controls and license requirements will apply to “any U.S. person that’s providing support to a WMD program or a foreign military-intelligence program,” a senior administration official said during a Jan. 14 call with reporters. The official pointed specifically to Chinese and Russian intelligence agencies that have “leveraged U.S. technologies for their espionage intelligence collection,” which impacts U.S. national security. “We feel this is an important expansion of our controls to prevent WMD,” the official said.
The foreign military-intelligence organizations listed by BIS in the interim final rule are:
- Cuba’s Directorate of Military Intelligence (DIM) and Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (CIM)
- China’s Intelligence Bureau of the Joint Staff Department
- Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Intelligence Organization (IRGC-IO) and Artesh Directorate for Intelligence (J2)
- North Korea’s Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB)
- Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU)
- Syria’s Military Intelligence Service
- Venezuela’s General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM).