Commerce Expected Proposed Rule for Foundational Tech to Be Released By Now, BIS Official Says

A Bureau of Industry and Security official acknowledged a delay in the agency’s proposed rulemaking for foundational technologies, saying she and other top Commerce Department officials expected the notice to be published by now. “I personally thought foundational would be out faster than it is. It was not just higher-level people,” said Hillary Hess, BIS’s director of the regulatory policy division, speaking during a Sept. 3 panel hosted by the American Bar Association.

Hess and Commerce's Assistant Secretary for Export Administration Rich Ashooh said in June the notice would be released soon. Ashooh said “weeks, not months” (see 1906040038). Hess declined to give an updated timetable. “Having guessed badly once,” she said, “I don’t think I’m going to guess again right now.”

While Hess did not provide more details on the status of the foundational technologies, she briefly addressed the proposal for emerging technologies, which was published in November. She said Commerce has been meeting with “a number of companies” to understand what emerging technologies are most important for U.S. industry and which technologies they’re interested in pursuing.

Hess also said Commerce has created several “technical teams” of engineers to tackle emerging tech categories but said they’re still working. “They’re basically doing evaluations to look at what should be proposed for control and also, I think importantly, what shouldn’t be,” Hess said. “So that’s what’s going on right now.”

Hess also said controls may not be proposed. “They could [say], ‘you know what, we’ve pretty much controlled everything we want to control in this area,’” Hess said. “Which would mean you wouldn’t have a date” for proposed controls to be released.

But if Commerce does issue controls on emerging technologies, Hess suggested the agency wants to do it soon. “We would like to -- to the extent we’re going to publish -- we would like to get some stuff out the door,” she said.