Industry Officials, Advocates Warn BIS Against BCI Tech Export Controls

As U.S. government regulators continue to face pressure from Congress to more quickly place export restrictions on emerging technologies, the Commerce Department and industry officials are grappling with the potential ethical consequences of controls on a technology that could have groundbreaking medical benefits.

Officials with the Bureau of Industry and Security say brain computer interface (BCI) technology may eventually provide military advantages to foreign governments, but neurotechnology advocates say export restrictions will slow American innovation in a field that could lead to medical breakthroughs in assisting people with ALS and other debilitating diseases.

“Law, at its best, represents the values of the citizenry. And when things are clearly black and white, you don't really need an ethicist,” Karen Rommelfanger, founder of the Institute of Neuroethics, said during a two-day conference hosted by BIS last week. “But we're on the horns of a dilemma here.”

The agency organized the conference to better understand the future uses of BCI technology, which is viewed as a nascent industry. In public comments to BIS in 2021, tech companies and universities said BCI export controls, if not properly tailored, could stifle U.S. competitiveness within the industry and slow academic research (see 2201100010).

Researchers and industry representatives echoed those concerns at the conference last week, saying BIS should avoid imposing strict export controls that could cede U.S. technology leadership and impede innovation in neurotechnology medicine. They were joined by disability-rights advocates, who said new regulations could set back emerging treatments for ALS and other diseases.

Blaire Casey, executive director of Team Gleason, a foundation that helps provide technology and other care services to ALS patients to improve their quality of life, stressed the importance of innovation. He said he learned early on from the ALS diagnosis of former professional football player Steve Gleason, the foundation’s namesake, that they needed to “continue to advance the technology.”

“Watching Steve progress, watching him struggle to walk, watching him thinking that if he yelled loud enough, he could walk again -- it'll break you,” Casey said. “And it’ll break you in a way that's needed to make the change that this community and other communities need.”

BIS held the conference as it faces pressure to better control technologies that may be exploited by adversaries, including China. Congress and technology experts have criticized BIS for being too slow to implement the Export Control Reform Act of 2018, which directed the agency to identify and restrict exports of emerging and foundational technologies that could, if fallen into the wrong hands, harm U.S. national security. A congressional commission in November said lawmakers should create a new executive branch committee to oversee the effort, and in 2021 said BIS has “failed” to carry out its ECRA responsibilities (see 2106020024). BIS officials have acknowledged delays in the process (see 2002040057) but have pointed to its more than 40 emerging technology controls as progress.

The agency’s ECRA effort includes considering export controls on BCI technology. While government officials acknowledge its current and future medical benefits, they also fear the technology may have certain defense uses, including in unmanned military operations that could be used to overpower U.S. armed forces.

“We have BCI being used for beneficial things like ALS research, and then I have people thinking superman in combat,” BIS Undersecretary Alan Estevez said during the conference. “And that is not good for the United States, it's not good for our allies and it's not good for the world in general.”

But Jen French, founder and director of the non-profit Neurotech Network, urged BIS to “not fall into the hole of hype around brain interfaces, around human augmentation and human performance.” French, who has tetraplegia and uses an implanted neural prosthesis that allows her to use her paralyzed muscles, urged policymakers to consider how BCI technology can help revolutionize medical treatment for paralysis and other neurological conditions.

“Don't allow those outliers that use scare tactics that are not based on true facts,” she said. “I encourage you to really approach this with mindful opportunity and mission.”

In addition to the ethical dilemma of potential export controls, industry executives said the restrictions, particularly if they are unilateral, would only hurt U.S competitiveness by incentivizing companies to move to other countries that don’t have similar regulations.

“I love living in this country,” said Marcus Gerhardt of Germany, CEO of Blackrock Neurotech. “But if I can't do my work here, I know where I can move back to.”

Several officials specifically urged BIS against imposing deemed export controls -- which are license requirements on sharing controlled technologies with certain foreign citizens located in the U.S. -- because the industry depends on foreign researchers.

“Anything that would keep the best people in the world from coming here to the United States and working on these problems would be a terrible idea,” said Matt Angle, CEO of Paradromics, which is building an interface that allows for data exchanges between a brain and a computer. “People not born in the U.S. built this industry.”

Gerhardt, whose company is working on next-generation neural implants, said “everything we have done has relied heavily on Chinese citizens being here, researching and contributing to the research we do.” He said export controls would “threaten the primary position we have in the U.S. at the moment in running this technology.”

Several speakers suggested BIS and industry can find a middle ground. “There is a world where ethics, regulation and pro-BCI can work in additive ways and not in adversarial ways,” Rommelfanger said. Amy Kruse, a neuroscientist and chief investment officer for Satori Capital, is “concerned” about export controls and doesn’t want to see limits placed on the industry, but said she also thinks there may be a compromise.

“We have some great examples of opening up international markets while at the same time protecting against the use of technologies by adversaries,” Kruse said. “So I think there’s a conversation to carve that path forward. I don't think it's a binary outcome.”

Any potential BCI technology export controls would likely include a public comment period and would seek to restrict only a “slice” of the technology, said Matt Borman, deputy assistant secretary for export administration at BIS. He pointed to the agency’s artificial intelligence export control introduced in 2020, which placed license requirements on geospatial imagery software instead of a broad range of AI-related items (see 2201050027 and 2001030024).

“We would never have a control that covers [all of] artificial intelligence. That would be completely ineffective and unworkable and, frankly, counterproductive,” Borman said. “The way we craft these controls, we try to be as technical as possible so that everybody in the affected community can have a clear understanding of what is covered and what is not.”

Estevez said BIS is hoping to understand what aspects of the technology could provide adversaries advantages over the U.S. military. He pointed to Russia’s war against Ukraine, urging conference attendees to think about what “an autocrat can do” by taking “science to a bad end instead of a good end.” That’s why “we might have to put some kind of regulatory regime over some part of that science,” he said.

But Estevez also stressed that the agency hasn’t yet made a decision. “I'm not saying here what we might do. I don't know, frankly,” Estevez said. “And that's why this is important.”