CSIS will carry out an aggressive outreach effort and hold high-level briefings to disseminate the report to a wide range of policymakers and other government and industry leaders with related responsibilities and interests. Under that initiative, the Center is launching a parallel, complementary effort to assess the viability of export controls on computers and information technology, which are governed by a separate framework. CSIS is also participating, with the Stimson Center, in an effort on multilateral export controls. The US export control system for military equipment that has evolved over the past 40 years is viewed as increasingly counterproductive. It does not reflect the significantly changed global security and economic environment of the twenty-first century.
Many experts believe the process itself is now creating security problems.
The purpose of licensing military equipment appears to have gotten lost in the bureaucratic maze and has grown so cumbersome, complex, and slow that it is generating tensions with allies and degrading the competitiveness of the US defense industry. Ultimately, 99.8 percent of the applications were approved. But the average time it took to process these applications ranged from several months to several years. Frustration with the license approval system has grown so significant that a major European defense corporation has instructed its design engineers to exclude US defense components from their designs to avoid problems with US export licensing. The implications of such a directive for the US defense industry are disturbing.