A bipartisan group of four senators introduced a bill that would impose sanctions on foreign banks and foreign cryptocurrency firms that do business with terrorist organizations such as Hamas.
The U.S., the U.K. and Canada last week issued a range of new sanctions to mark the internationally recognized Human Rights Day on Dec. 10, designating people across more than 10 jurisdictions for their ties to human rights violations. They include U.S. sanctions against Chinese officials with ties to human rights abuses in Xinjiang, including one designated under the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act.
The multilateral Wassenaar Arrangement this month posted a summary of export control changes made during the group’s Nov. 30 plenary meeting, covering editorial changes, clarifications and updated control parameters for various categories under its list of dual-use goods and technologies. Wassenaar’s plenary chair said member states adopted new controls involving equipment used to make certain electronic components, updated existing controls for “high-performance electronic equipment,” and clarified language surrounding sonar technology, optical sensors, rocket propulsion technologies, encryption and decryption technologies, and communication interception technologies, among other updates.
U.S. export controls will slow China’s innovation efforts, but they'll never “stop” the country from advancing technologically, Bureau of Industry and Security Undersecretary Alan Estevez said.
The U.S. and its allies need a new framework to coordinate export controls on advanced, critical technologies, Bureau of Industry and Security Undersecretary Alan Estevez said. But he also said there is some disagreement within the U.S. government about the best way forward.
The Bureau of Industry and Security is studying ways it can place potential export controls on access to advanced open-source software, including artificial intelligence-powered models similar to ChatGPT-4, as well as certain cloud computing services, BIS Undersecretary Alan Estevez said. Although Estevez said no controls are imminent, the agency is working to form a set of export control policy options to address both.
The U.K. this week designated 25 people and 20 entities under its Russia sanctions regime. The listings included a mix of businesses based in Russia, China, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Serbia and Uzbekistan, covering industries in the energy, shipping and defense sectors. Among those sanctioned was Russian firm Aeroscan, which was designated for supplying drones to the Russian military, along with Dubai-based shipping companies Radiating World Shipping Services and Star Voyages Shipping services, which do business in a Russian "sector of strategic significance."
The Biden administration should sanction Russian weapons manufacturer JSC Alabuga, which is receiving help from Iran to produce its own version of Iran’s Shahed-136 kamikaze drone, known as the Geran-2, on Russian soil, according to Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark.
A conference report on the 2024 defense spending bill released this week by House and Senate negotiators said the legislation won’t include a polarizing measure that could have led to new guardrails around U.S. outbound investments into China. The leaders of the Senate and House Armed Services committees ultimately decided to leave out the provision in the compromise version of the National Defense Authorization Act despite the fact that it passed as part of Senate’s version of the NDAA in July (see 2307280052).
The U.S. and the U.K. this week sanctioned two Russians involved in phishing campaigns against the U.K. to undermine the country’s “democratic processes.” The sanctions target Aleksandrovich Peretyatko, a Russian Federal Security Service officer, and Andrey Stanislavovich Korinets, a Russian information technology worker.