No Need for Stealth: Chinese Access to US Technology

The pending takeover of technology company 3Com by a consortium led by Bain Capital (founded by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney) has highlighted concerns that China continues to seek access to technologies that would otherwise have been denied it by the US government.
The buyout group includes Chinese company Huawei Technologies which is led by Ren Zhengfei, a former officer in the People's Liberation Army.
The Financial Times reports that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (or CIFus, an executive branch body) will likely extend its investigation into the deal because of concerns that the Chinese military might gain access to 3Com's "intrusion technology" which the company sells to the Defense Department.
It might be difficult to believe that the Bush Administration would sign off on such a deal, given the obvious potential security issues, but as the New York Times reported, the "administration quietly eased some restrictions on the export of politically delicate technologies to China" six months ago.
Mario Mancuso, Under Secretary of Industry and Security, said in November 2007 that "our core mission at BIS [Bureau of Industry and Security] is to advance U.S. national security, foreign policy, and economic objectives by ensuring an efficient and effective dual-use export control system and by promoting continued U.S. strategic technology leadership."
But is US national security advanced by this deal (one of several)? The Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, in a newly released report subtitled "Lowering U.S. Controls on Militarily Useful Exports to China," says the the US government, by lowering the export threshold on technologies which might have military application, has eased the way for China to have access to sensitive technologies "since U.S. officials will no longer review these shipments before they go out." The report notes that "of the first five companies approved, however, two (forty percent of the total) do not meet the selection criteria. They are affiliated closely to China’s military industrial complex and to companies that have been punished by the U.S. government for proliferation or other improper export behavior. Reducing controls on exports to such companies increases the risk that American goods will help China improve its armed forces, and that American goods will be sent illicitly to Syria or Iran."
The Bain takeover of 3Com isn't listed in the Wisconsin Project report (as are American companies Boeing and Hexcel, both fined multiple times by both State and Commerce Departments for export violations in selling sensitive technologies to China), but the 45 day extension by CIFus underscores the seriousness of the problem.
Serious enough that the House of Representatives passed in October 2007 a "Sense of the House" bill that expressed its concern over the Bain transaction. The bill concludes by saying "the preponderance of publicly available evidence clearly suggests that as currently structured, the proposed transaction involving Huawei threatens the national security of the United States and should not be approved by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States."
Undersecretary Mancuso has said that "our regulatory regime is essentially a regime of denial. In effect, it assumes that we have something that other nations don’t have or can’t get. In an era where technology and talent are ubiquitous, this assumption is no longer always and everywhere true."
Perhaps not. But we need not make it easier for potential foes, despite the supposed ubiquity of technology and talent, to acquire knowledge, skills and manufacturing sites that produce tools and/or weapons that might be used against us in the future.
Congressman McCotter (R-MI) has described Bain's proposed purchase as a "stealth assault on America's national security."
But with such a friendly administration in power, China doesn't require stealthiness. It merely needs dollars.