At any rate, Noriko had decided to begin with hard-easy at this morning’s video-conference, and work her way toward easy-hard, which ran contrary to her policy of always getting the most onerous task of the day out of her hair before anything else. Yes, class, that’s correct, she thought, here again logic was coiled in on itself like the proverbial snake eating its own tail. But she figured that if you were going to start out that way, you might as well do it with total commitment. Also, she hadn’t yet decided how to make her easy-hard argument to her respected SanJo colleagues — namely persuading them to keep their oversized shoes from clomping all over her turf — and wanted to buy some time in the hope that some creative ideas would burst upon her as they rolled merrily along.
“The problem with our country’s export law is twofold, or maybe threefold,” she said now, more or less facing the Webcam above her desktop’s flat-screen display. Three thousand miles away in their SanJo conference room, their faces in perfect resolution, Pete Nimec, Rollie Thibodeau, and Megan Breen the Ice Queen waited. “First, regulatory controls change with the political and economic tides, and that makes them ambiguous to everyone except specialized lawyers,” Noriko went on. “Second, we have firms selling goods overseas that instruct those hired-gun trade attorneys to search for loopholes with magnifying glasses. Then there are companies that have been slow to put comprehensive export management systems in place, resulting in decent employees throughout the corporate hierarchy… top executives, members of the sales force, people at every level of every division and department… who want to comply with the rules but are utterly lost in the muddle. And then there are people in those same positions who know how to exploit the confusion for a crooked buck.”
“Tough shovin’ an oar through those waters,” Rollie Thibodeau said.
“Very.” Noriko motioned toward the coffee carafe beside her. “Anybody care for some of this?” she said, and held the pot up toward the camera’s eye. “It’s nice and hot.”
Smiles.
“Sure,” Nimec said. “Cream and a pinch of sugar.”
“Yuck. Don’t allow any on premises.”
“Then I’ll pass.”
Noriko sipped from her cup. There, class, was what we consider a prime instance of injecting a moderate dose of levity into a serious discussion, acceptable in most forums, and highly recommended for loosening up its participants.
“Dual-use items are a category that can really drive you crazy,” she said after a moment. “The government has to evaluate whether a product marketed for some harmless commercial purpose could be applied in some way that threatens our national security. If there’s a determination that it might, the question becomes what’s going where… or who’s okay to receive a certain product from us, and who needs to be stopped from getting hold of it. But another country with firms capable of manufacturing that same commodity, or something similar, might disagree with our assessment, or be moved by conflicting economic and political interests, and refuse to go along with a proposed international ban. There are predictable rounds of lobbying, negotiation, and compromise before any accord is reached. And say we leverage what we want. Or most of it. With the spread of existing technologies, and the arrival of new ones, any controls have practical limits… as we know from hard experience.”
She read immediate understanding on all the faces in her display.
“That lab in Canada, Earthglow,” Megan said, airing their shared recollection. “Its scientists imported the same equipment you’d find in a factory that makes powdered baby formula to create a freeze dried medium for dispersal of its gene bombs. Then they used the same microencapsulation tech that’s used for perfume samplers to stabilize the agent.”
Noriko nodded and drank some coffee.
“The application of export policies isn’t fixed in place — and it can’t be,” she said. “For a lot of reasons, usually involving shifts in political winds. Diplomatic relationships with countries change for the better or worse. Treaties are made and nullified. Restrictions are relaxed as incentives or goodwill gestures, tightened as safeguards or penalties. Sometimes licenses are issued for products shipped to our closest allies. Sometimes a product becomes so readily available outside our borders that whatever bans we put on it become irrelevant and hurt our companies competitively unless they’re modified…. It depends. Even when you go to the opposite extreme, embargo a country by classifying it as a denied party, it can find legal, borderline legal, or patently illegal ways to get around the prohibition.” Noriko paused, lifting her cup to her chin again. “You guys really should try this coffee, it’s my personal blend.”
“Another time, thanks,” Megan said. “I’ve already filled my morning quota.”
Noriko shrugged, sipped.
“Getting back on point, I want to give you an example of dual-use hardware in action… and then talk about its distribution,” she said. “My cute little Mini Cooper — chili red, christened Sue Marie by moi—has an adaptive cruise control system that automatically slows it down if I drive over a hump in the road and come up short on an overturned semi. It uses sensors that aren’t too different from the ones you’d find in a cruise-missile seeker. In fact, the semiconductors that regulate electrical current through the system are Gunn diodes, which are used in thyratron switches, which have a wide range of laser-based civilian and military applications.” She took a deep swallow of coffee, held a finger up in a just-a-minute gesture, freshened her cup. “As a couple of for-instances, you’ll find these kickers in surgical equipment and multichannel, or tunable, lasers used for optical communications networks. You’ll also find them in nuclear triggering units… and potentially hard-kill high energy beam weapons. UpLink makes high-capacity Gunn diodes and builds oscillators around them. Armbright manufactures its own versions… and loathe though I am to admit it, they’re not only competitive with ours, they’re superior.”
“The distribution angle,” Megan said. “Let’s stick with it, if you don’t mind.”
Noriko was thinking Queen Breen had reacted to her last statement a mite curtly, and doubted it was out of defensiveness over a product comparison that weighed favorably toward the competition. It was obvious everybody knew what was coming here. Aside from an exchange of information, their bicoastal klatch was definitely leading up to a staking of territorial claims. And while Noriko preferred to keep the sparks to a minimum, she wasn’t about to set herself up to be taking crap from anybody either.
Breen wanted data, she’d get it in spades.
“Gunn oscillators are controlled items that require licenses for sale abroad,” she said, rapid-fire. “Depending on the performance specs of a particular oscillator… its heat and transmission capacities to name a couple… it may qualify for a license exception under conditions stipulated under Part Seven-four-oh of the Export Administration Regulations. These exceptions allow sale and shipment to government agencies, private firms, and distributors in certain country groups classified by the Bureau of Industry and Security. Offhand, I know some of our oscillators go to Canada, Mexico, England, France, Germany, Sweden, and Japan… democracies that have cooperative export policies. But while the policies of these countries are guided by common principles, there’s nothing that approaches unity in how they’re implemented. England might allow license exemptions that differ from those of the United States. Mexico might have other variances in its criteria—”