Political Quotes

“This mentality that enforcing the law could further fray relations with countries such as China, for example, lies at the core of much of what we are debating with respect to the legislation before the Senate. It is the continued relevance of robust export controls on the one hand versus legislation that is explicitly designed to weaken those controls in order to enhance trade on the other. While the case that the Washington Post article discussed involves Chinese technology transfers to Pakistan, these actions on the part of foreign countries with records of proliferating militarily sensitive technologies are central to the overall debate over U.S. controls on exports to countries that in turn transfer knowledge and hardware to third countries to which the United States would not currently export such items or knowhow. In other words, it is the transfer of this technology through a middleman, so to speak. In addition to this most recent China-related proliferation development, the U.S. Customs Service last week arrested two United States-based Chinese nationals involved in smuggling, and smuggling extremely sensitive military encryption technology to China--another violation of the Arms Export Control Act.”