US Hoping to Reduce Tech-Sharing Barriers, Issue Nat’l Security Strategy Soon, Official Says

As the Biden administration prepares to issue its long-awaited national security strategy, it’s also hoping to reduce barriers to sharing technology with allies and speed up its foreign military sales program, said Cara Abercrombie, a National Security Council official. Abercrombie, speaking during a Sept. 27 defense industry conference hosted by IDEEA, said she hopes these initiatives lead to more cooperation with allies, particularly as the U.S. and others continue to sanction Russia and send weapons to Ukraine.

To “deepen” this cooperation, the administration knows it has to “work on overcoming some of the burdens to that cooperation, which may look like reducing barriers in information sharing, technology sharing, etc.,” Abercrombie said. “I would expect to see more of that.” She specifically said the U.S. is hoping to increase opportunities for the American defense industry to sell to Europe and “participate in EU defense initiatives.”

She also pointed to AUKUS, the trilateral pact signed last year by the U.S., Australia and the U.K., which included an agreement for the U.S. to provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines. While “agreeing to cooperate on nuclear propulsion technology is really unprecedented,” Abercrombie also said she is hopeful about the deal’s potential to increase cooperation in hypersonics and artificial intelligence.

“I think these actually have the potential to be even more consequential than the submarine cooperation,” she said. “We're making progress. We are working to try to really reduce barriers to information sharing and technology cooperation -- the sort of perennial sticking points to closer cooperation between the United States and partners.”

Abercrombie hopes AUKUS can be replicated with other trading partners. “If we can make this work with our two closest allies … I think it’s actually a sort of a preview for what may be possible in different and varying degrees into the future.” She said the administration will emphasize this cooperation and other themes in its upcoming national security strategy, which “will be coming out shortly. The U.S. released an interim national security guidance last year as it looked to flesh out its priorities.

“The national security strategy is coming soon. That is what I can tell you,” Abercrombie said. “I think you will see the themes largely unchanged from that initial document” without “any real surprises, but rather a sharper articulation of those themes.”

She also said the administration is still working on its conventional arms transfer policy, which will detail how the White House and various agencies approach arms sales. The administration hopes the new policies place more of an emphasis on human rights concerns while helping to remove foreign barriers to U.S. defense exporters (see 2111040056).

Although it’s “important” for the administration to outline its CAT policy in “an actual policy document that can be shared,” Abercrombie said defense companies have already “seen us exercising” the policy, especially with its “lightning speed” delivery of arms transfers to Ukraine. She said the State Department should get “credit” for expediting licenses for arms exports to Ukraine.

“These things take weeks if not months, and the State Department is turning them in, in like 24 to 48 hours,” Abercrombie said. “So the conventional arms transfer policy, while I think will help clarify what the priorities are for the Biden administration, will not effectively change in any remarkable way the way we're conducting our business.”

But there may be some changes soon to the U.S. foreign military sales program. DOD confirmed this month that the agency recently began a process to explore “a wide range of immediate and systemic areas” to improve the program and expedite certain arms sales. Abercrombie said the effort aims to “make the system move faster without cutting corners.”

“The foreign military sales process was designed to be deliberative and deliberate,” she said. “I can tell you we have done a lot of work within the U.S. government, and even from the Department of Defense, to shave timelines where we can, because it is a multistep, multi-faceted process.”