DOD’s key priority is maintaining military superiority. To this end, DOD has established a department-wide policy to ensure that military and dual- use articles—items that have military and commercial applications—are treated as valuable national security resources and critical U.S. military technological advances are preserved. Under the Export Administration Act, which governs exports of dual-use items, DOD has primary responsibility for developing the MCTL, which has broadened to a compendium of worldwide science and technology capabilities—existing or under development—that could significantly enhance or degrade U.S. military capabilities now or in the future. First published in 1980, the MCTL’s original purpose was to inform export licensing determinations and was to be integrated with expediency into the Commerce Control List,and technologies subject to export controls. The MCTL itself is not an export control list. Rather, according to DOD, it is the department’s recommendation for the criteria, parameters, and operating conditions that constitute militarily critical capabilities for defense and dual-use items that should be controlled. This knowledge can be used to limit a potential adversary’s access to technologies that would enable a significant military advantage. which is maintained by the Secretary of Commerce and lists goods A range of DOD components, other federal agencies, and non- government entities need to know what is militarily critical to facilitate decision making in efforts to minimize or prevent the compromise of U.S. technological or military advantage. Knowledge about which technologies are critical and warrant protection from illegal or unauthorized access is needed for, among other things: export controls and licensing decisions for dual-use and arms exports, which fall under the purview of the Departments of Commerce and State, respectively; consideration of anti-tamper protection of critical technologies on defense systems, which is primarily coordinated by anti-tamper officials and acquisition program offices within the military services; review of foreign acquisitions of U.S. firms that are involved in the development or manufacture of defense technologies, which is coordinated with several federal agencies; counterproliferation and counterintelligence programs and activities performed by DOD entities such as DSS to protect against industrial espionage; and determinations about the public release of technical or scientific information. To meet the range of information requirements and enhance knowledge of what is militarily critical, the Militarily Critical Technologies Program within DOD oversees periodic assessment of dual-use and military technologies. The program, which has resided in various DOD offices throughout its 30-year history, currently is part of the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering with program oversight provided by the Technology Security Office. Since its inception in 1980, the program has contracted with the Institute for Defense Analyses, a federally funded research and development center, to provide scientific and technical support to develop and maintain the MCTL. Produced in both public and restricted versions, the list is divided into 20 sections and covers a range of technologies that are of concern in the near term. Its content is derived from periodic technology assessments completed by various technology working groups consisting of experts from government, industry, and academia, who identify the parameters and associated values at which technologies are assessed as being militarily critical, based on definitions established by the Export Administration Act. To develop the list of critical technologies, DOD is required to consider the collection of elements of technologies—design, manufacturing, inspection, testing, operations, and maintenance—which, if exported to another country, would permit a significant advantage to a military system of that country.baseline, experts may add or remove technologies and make other modifications based on their assessments. The experts’ findings are presented in individual datasheets that profile a specific technology type. In addition to describing the technology and the technical issues that drive or influence the technology, the datasheets include quantitative and qualitative information to help facilitate determinations about the criticality of a technology. Figure 1 describes the key elements of a datasheet. Since our 2006 report, DOD has taken steps aimed at clarifying the MCTL’s purpose and improving its utility. For example, to better understand users’ requirements, the program office solicited feedback from DOD, Commerce, State, and the Defense Technology Security Administration (DTSA), military services, and DOD counterintelligence offices. Based on users’ requirements provided at that time, DOD determined that the MCTL’s purpose is to serve export control decisions. However, the department also recognized that the MCTL had expanded to serve other purposes such as counterintelligence and weapon system program protection, among other things. In addition, to allow users to more easily access the list content, DOD added a search engine capability to improve navigation and initiated efforts to convert the MCTL into a dynamic database to enable users to conduct advanced analytical queries such as identifying interdependencies across multiple technology types. In fiscal year 2007, the program’s budget was doubled to $4 million, which program officials said was the appropriate funding level at the time to update and maintain the MCTL. To address concerns about the currency of the list, DOD began updating the MCTL to ensure that each technology section had been updated at least once since our 2006 report. As part of these efforts to revamp the MCTL, DOD issued an instruction, in 2008, that clarifies MCTL implementation by outlining roles and responsibilities for informing the list’s content, specifying procedures for updating and maintaining the list, and designating the purposes for which certain DOD components are to use the MCTL. Among other things, the instruction: specified that it is DOD policy that the MCTL serve as a technical reference to inform the development and implementation of technology security policies on international transfers of defense- related goods, services, and technologies; directed DTSA to consult the MCTL when developing DOD export control proposals, processing export license requests, and making technology transfer decisions; specified that DOD components are to use the MCTL in making decisions about what information can be shared with foreign entities and provide subject matter expertise in identifying and assessing technologies for the MCTL; required the development of a methodology—based on objective criteria that produce logical and repeatable results—for determining whether a given technology is militarily critical; and accelerated the frequency of technology section updates from every 4 years to every 2 years to keep pace with technology development. DOD also planned to migrate its emerging technologies list to the MCTL rather than maintaining two separate lists. According to program officials, the findings from our previous report served as a roadmap for corrective action and informed the development of a new concept of operations, drafted in 2010, which aims to implement the MCTL program requirements outlined in the 2008 DOD instruction. Further, implementation of the operational concept has been limited due to funding constraints; however, it calls for enhancing the functionality of the MCTL by: supporting real-time technology updates from approved contributors as information becomes available rather than updating a technology section with all its sub-sections and datasheets in a single effort; transitioning to a web-based application that will make data available in various document formats; providing a more robust capability to search across multiple MCTL technology sections which is beneficial in cases where a given technology may have relevance to multiple sections; enabling users to track content changes to each section and providing rationale for changes and access to previous versions; and linking a given technology to its corresponding reference in export control lists such as the Commerce Control List and U.S. Munitions List. After responding to our 2006 report with such actions as issuing the 2008 instruction and developing the 2010 concept of operations, DOD ceased updating the MCTL in 2011 and disbanded the technology working groups that assessed technologies and produced updates because of funding constraints, according to officials. DOD provided $1.49 million for the program in fiscal year 2012, which program officials say is not sufficient to support the work needed to meet the DOD requirement to update each technology section every 2 years. In light of expected funding decreases that began in fiscal year 2012, officials decided not to invest resources in updating MCTL sections and instead dedicated resources to complete archiving of research material for section updates that were underway. In the past 6 years, each section has been updated at least once; however, the Militarily Critical Technologies Program has not fully met its goal to update each section at least every 2 years in accordance with the 2008 DOD instruction. The majority of updates—15 of 20 technology sections—took place in 2009 as shown in figure 2. Although five technology sections—armament and energetic materials, materials and processing, processing and manufacturing, signature control, and weapons effects—were updated in accordance with the new instruction, currently none of the MCTL sections are in compliance with the 2-year update requirement. While funding was not reduced until fiscal year 2012, none of the sections were updated in 2011 and only one section—space systems—was updated in 2012 to support DOD’s report to Congress on the risks associated with moving certain satellite components from the U.S. Munitions List to the Commerce Control List. Four sections were updated after 2009; however, none of these updates have been validated, published, or made available to users, according to officials. Technology areas that advance rapidly, such as information security and information systems, have only been fully updated once in the past 6 years. These two sections, along with sections on electronics; biological; and position, navigation, and timing technologies, have been prioritized for updates once resources become available given the increasingly dated content in the MCTL, the technologies’ impact on national security, and the rate at which these technologies are being produced. In light of the risks associated with using outdated content to support technology protection decisions, in March 2011 program officials removed access to the public version of the list from the DOD website that hosted the list. The restricted version is still available via the same website, but program officials have posted a disclaimer noting that the list is no longer being updated and that content is being provided for information purposes only and is no longer intended to support technology decisions.