| The U.S. technological edge is imperiled by new curbs on global scientific cooperation. |
By Neal Lane
Balancing these objectives is not new and has only become more imperative since the end of the Cold War. But, prompted by such events as the Wen Ho Lee espionage case, the U.S. Congress has pushed for tighter controls on foreign researchers seeking access to U.S. scientists, technologies, and facilities -- a move that threatens to shift the balance between openness and security controls in the wrong direction. Unless the new administration recognizes the importance of this issue and reduces impediments to international exchange, major areas of U.S. science and technology will suffer badly.
Although today's security environment differs markedly from the situation during the era of superpower rivalry, the issue of scientific communication and its effect on national security was just as relevant then as it is now. In 1981, presidents of five leading U.S. research universities wrote to the secretaries of state, defense, and commerce to warn of damage inflicted on U.S. science by a new batch of proposed controls on the dissemination of research-in particular, cutting-edge microelectronics. Largely in response to these concerns, U.S. President Ronald Reagan issued National Security Decision Directive 189, which states that "to the maximum extent possible, the products of fundamental research [are to] remain unrestricted." Thus, at the height of the Cold War an administration that was greatly concerned about preventing adversaries from eroding the U.S. technological advantage affirmed that the free exchange of ideas was so important that it justified the risk that U.S. adversaries might receive some advantages as well.
Today, controls over fundamental research are even less appropriate than they were during the Cold War. At that time, U.S. technology controls were used to buy time, preserve the U.S. lead, and keep adversaries from exploiting the latest technological developments. The task today is different: The goal is not to prevent competitors from reaching current U.S. standards. Instead, in large measure the most important task is to keep countries of concern such as Iraq and North Korea from catching up to, say, 1945, or maybe to 1960 -- a harder task, but one for which controls over fundamental research are even less well suited. At the same time, the speed of scientific and technological innovation, the increasing rate at which ideas from one area are stimulating advances in another, and the global disseminating power of the information revolution make international openness necessary for the health of U.S. science and technology. After all, the United States is not ahead in all technical areas.
The struggle between openness in scientific research and controls in the name of national security has become especially evident in satellite research. Because military and research satellites share common technologies, all satellites are subject to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which govern U.S. munitions exports. While ITAR does not restrict the reporting of fundamental research results, it governs the unclassified design, manufacture, and use of satellite and booster technologies needed for satellite-based research.
In the last two years, several events -- including criminal prosecutions arising from information divulged to the Chinese in the course of investigations of failed Chinese launches of U.S. satellites -- prompted a tightening of satellite export-control regulations, particularly for communications and scientific satellites. As a result, ITAR licensing procedures are delaying and inhibiting collaboration with foreign research groups, slowing international projects like development of the next-generation replacement for the Hubble Space Telescope and a future gamma ray telescope. Moreover, ITAR restrictions put universities conducting space-based research in a very difficult position, requiring them to secure licenses before satellite makers will provide needed, unclassified information to foreign students and faculty. Some universities are threatening to give up satellite-based research before they will make such citizenship-based distinctions.
ITAR also undermines the much larger commercial market. Before U.S. satellite export controls were tightened about two years ago, the U.S. satellite industry won about 70 percent of all international contracts for communications satellites. Today, U.S. export controls have proven so onerous that foreign customers avoid them entirely by eschewing U.S. manufacturers and eliminating the use of U.S. components. The U.S. market share is now about 40 percent and falling, and the extra business no doubt helps foreign providers master the very technologies the United States is trying to protect.
The balancing act between scientific openness and national security is also being tested at the U.S. Department of Energy's nuclear weapons laboratories. Sensational allegations of Chinese espionage and lax security, heated media coverage, and congressional action -- best described as "ready, fire, aim" -- resulted in more than two dozen new measures, including more lie-detector tests and tightened restrictions on travel and visitor access.
How might a foreign enemy go about attacking the U.S. national security technology base? A particularly insidious adversary might try to destroy morale at U.S. labs, hamstring them with new regulations, isolate them from the international community, drive away their most experienced, knowledgeable workers, and cut them off from promising new hires. It is sobering to consider that we could end up doing this to ourselves. Policymakers must learn to consider security comprehensively. One at a time, regulations can seem quite reasonable. Put together, they can be self-defeating.
The dangers of new technology-based threats such as cyberattack and bioterrorism are creating pressures to restrict scientific engagement further. But discoveries and inventions are made in every part of the world. The United States benefits far more than it loses from open scientific communication. To argue that we should build walls around our labs and our country is to promote a return to some imagined Cold War isolation that in fact never really existed -- at least in science. By working with scientists themselves, the Bush administration has an opportunity to prevent that from happening and to ensure a proper balance between scientific cooperation and security controls.
Neal Lane, former assistant to President Clinton for science and technology, is university professor and senior fellow of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy of Rice University.
A foreign graduate student at a major U.S university developed a new hybrid rocket fuel. A U.S. company wanted to fund further testing, but insisted it could not even discuss it unless the university obtained an export license. Repeated in countless variations, this kind of episode crystallizes the conflict that the United States faces between two competing objectives: How to protect U.S. national security while deepening the cooperation with the international scientific community that is essential for both U.S. prosperity and security.