Export Control Revisions for Australia, United Kingdom, United States (AUKUS) Enhanced Trilateral Security Partnership

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>Bureau of Industry and Security</SUBAGY> <CFR>15 CFR Parts 734, 738, 740, 742, 743, 744, 754, 758, 772, 774</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 240415-0109]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0694-AJ58</RIN> <SUBJECT>Export Control Revisions for Australia, United Kingdom, United States (AUKUS) Enhanced Trilateral Security Partnership</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Bureau of Industry and Security, Department of Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Interim final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> With this interim final rule (IFR), the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) amends the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) to remove license requirements, expand the availability of license exceptions, and reduce the scope of end-use and end-user-based license requirements for exports, reexports, and transfers (in-country) to or within Australia and the United Kingdom (UK) to enhance technological innovation among the three countries and support the goals of the AUKUS Trilateral Security Partnership. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective April 19, 2024. Comments must be received by BIS no later than June 3, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Comments on this rule may be submitted to the Federal rulemaking portal ( <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> ). The <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> ID for this rule is: BIS-2024-0019. Please refer to RIN 0694-AJ58 in all comments. All filers using the portal should use the name of the person or entity submitting the comments as the name of their files, in accordance with the instructions below. Anyone submitting business confidential information should clearly identify the business confidential portion at the time of submission, file a statement justifying nondisclosure and referring to the specific legal authority claimed, and provide a non-confidential version of the submission. For comments submitted electronically containing business confidential information, the file name of the business confidential version should begin with the characters “BC.” Any page containing business confidential information must be clearly marked “BUSINESS CONFIDENTIAL” on the top of that page. The corresponding non-confidential version of those comments must be clearly marked “PUBLIC.” The file name of the non-confidential version should begin with the character “P.” Any submissions with file names that do not begin with either a “BC” or a “P” will be assumed to be public and will be made publicly available through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Commenters submitting business confidential information are encouraged to scan a hard copy of the non-confidential version to create an image of the file, rather than submitting a digital copy with redactions applied, to avoid inadvertent redaction errors which could enable the public to read business confidential information. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For questions on this rule, contact Philip Johnson at <E T="03">RPD2@bis.doc.gov</E> or (202) 482-2440. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> BIS is amending the EAR (15 CFR parts 730-774), by revising the license requirements for items being exported, reexported, or transferred (in-country) to or within Australia and the UK. Background regarding these changes is detailed below. <HD SOURCE="HD1">AUKUS Trilateral Security Partnership</HD> On September 15, 2021, the leaders of Australia, the UK, and the United States announced their “resolve to deepen diplomatic, security, and defense cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region, including by working with partners, to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century” by creating AUKUS, an enhanced trilateral security partnership. Through AUKUS, partner governments are strengthening each other's ability to support their collective security and defense interests, building on longstanding and ongoing bilateral ties. AUKUS implementation promotes deeper information and technology sharing, while fostering integration of security and defense-related science, technology, industrial bases, and supply chains. In particular, AUKUS significantly enhances cooperation on a range of security and defense capabilities, many of which are detailed below. AUKUS is part of a broader U.S. Government effort to fortify international alliances and partnerships in mutually reinforcing ways across issues and continents. It is one of multiple partnerships that the United States is pursuing, enhancing cooperation on security issues in the Indo-Pacific region and around the world. As it currently stands, AUKUS consists of two main pillars, Pillar I and Pillar II. Pillar I focuses on trilateral submarine cooperation. Pillar II has a wider scope than Pillar I because it focuses initial partner collaboration efforts on advanced capabilities in the following areas: (1) advanced cyber, artificial intelligence (AI), and autonomy; (2) quantum technologies; (3) hypersonic and counter-hypersonic capabilities; (4) electronic warfare; (5) innovation; (6) information sharing; and (7) additional undersea capabilities. Recognizing the deep defense ties built over decades, the three partner nations endeavor to streamline their collective defense collaboration while strengthening the ability to protect the sensitive technologies that underpin national security on these topics. It should be noted that the AUKUS partnership will continue to evolve. The technologies and areas of cooperation highlighted above are illustrative, not exhaustive, and are referenced here to highlight how license-free exports of certain items facilitated by the changes in this rule directly support not only the AUKUS partnership, but general defense trade and innovation between and among the AUKUS nations. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Export Control Cooperation With the UK and Australia</HD> On December 22, 2023, President Biden signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2024, Public Law 118-31, which enacted provisions related to streamlining defense trade between and among the United States, UK, and Australia, provided certain conditions are met. The Department of State has purview over the implementation of the new authorities provided through the NDAA's revisions to the Arms Export Control Act. Separately, to support the United States' broader defense trade and technology cooperation with the AUKUS partners, BIS is issuing this rule to remove certain license requirements under the EAR. The UK and Australia are two of the United States' closest allies, with longstanding collective defense arrangements. They are also members of all four multilateral export control regimes ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> the Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Related Dual-Use Goods and Technologies, Australia Group, Nuclear Suppliers Group, and Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR)) and are also members of the Global Export Controls Coalition (GECC) of governments that have substantially aligned on export control measures in response to Russia's illegal war against Ukraine (see supplement no. 3 to part 746 of the EAR). The UK and Australia have robust export control systems and have taken additional measures in recent months to enhance technology protection and promote secure trade. Specifically, in December 2023, the United Kingdom's National Security Act 2023 came into force, providing for <E T="03">inter alia</E> enhanced protections against the unauthorized disclosure of certain defense-related information. In March 2024, the Australian Parliament passed the Defence Trade Controls Amendment Act 2024 and the Safeguarding Australia's Military Secrets Act 2024, providing for <E T="03">inter alia</E> controls on the reexport of items originally exported from Australia, and disclosures of controlled technology to certain foreign persons within Australia, as well as controls on the provision of defense services. Following their passage in their respective parliaments, the UK and Australian actions received royal assent. These actions highlight the UK's and Australia's commitment to implementing robust export controls and technology protection measures. Accordingly, this rule significantly streamlines many license requirements under the EAR for exports, reexports, and transfers (in-country) to and within the UK and Australia. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Regulatory Changes</HD> With this rule, Australia and the UK will have nearly the same licensing treatment under the EAR as Canada. The liberal licensing treatment of items destined to Canada was made possible in part because Canada is included in the National Technology and Industrial Base (NTIB) (as defined in 10 U.S.C. 4801(1)). In 2017, this definition was broadened to include the UK and Australia. Accordingly, the regulatory changes in this rule not only advance the goals of the AUKUS Enhanced Trilateral Security Partnership, but also further align treatment of the UK and Australia under the EAR with fellow NTIB member Canada. This rule makes six primary export control policy changes as well as several minor conforming changes to further align the treatment of Australia, Canada, and the UK under the EAR. The first three changes involve the removal of list-based license requirements for exports, reexports, and transfers (in-country) to Australia and the UK. Specifically, BIS is removing license requirements for national security column 1 (NS1), regional stability column 1 (RS1), and missile technology column 1 (MT1) reasons for control for the destinations of Australia and the UK. As Australia and the UK are not currently subject to NS2 or RS2 controls, with this rule all Commerce Country Chart-based NS and RS controls are removed for these countries. As detailed above, the AUKUS pa ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 71k characters. 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