Simi Valley, Calif. \u2014 The Commerce Department needs a bigger budget to better help the U.S. outpace China on technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That was the message today from Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo at the Reagan Defense Forum, a symposium of government and industry officials in California. She used her speech at the event to give a pitch for more funding from Congress \u2014 particularly for the Bureau of Industry and Security, which handles export controls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt needs to be funded so we can do what we need to do to protect America,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Raimondo is the first head of her department to attend the event, and her arrival was itself an emblem of the ways in which Commerce and the Defense Department are increasingly overlapping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Under the last two administrations, America has intensified its economic and security competition with China. To do so, it\u2019s needed separate departments \u2014 such as Defense and Commerce \u2014 to work as a team. For example, the Pentagon has built security partnerships in the Indo-Pacific to better counter China, while the Commerce Department has issues export controls on semiconductors meant to hamstring Chinese tech firms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Out of America\u2019s security-related agencies, the Pentagon has by far the largest budget and is hence relied on to address a host of the nation\u2019s security issues. That can be a problem when other departments are asked to play a larger role in the space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Bureau of Industry and Security has the same budget that it did 10 years ago \u2014 $200 million \u2014 despite the huge climb in export controls aimed at China, Raimondo said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe have twice as many license requests today than we did a decade ago but the same number of people doing the work,\u201d Raimondo said in an interview with Defense News.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The upshot is a capacity problem, she argued \u2014 one that the Pentagon is often relied on to solve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Commerce brings in staff members and subject matter experts from the Defense Department to consult with them on relevant national security topics, such as artificial intelligence and chips. Sometimes, due to staffing shortages in Commerce, these visits occur out of need, not only preference, said two former defense officials, speaking on background to talk freely, in interviews with Defense News.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Raimondo didn\u2019t specify the total budget she\u2019s seeking for the Bureau of Industry and Security. The House Foreign Affairs Committee is finishing a review of the office and will soon release a report, according to reporting from Politico.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, as the U.S. tries to deter a possible invasion of Taiwan later this decade, secure export controls have become a top priority for economic and military competition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe most high end compute semiconductors, we have in America, they don\u2019t have, and those are the chips that run and train AI models that the PLA would want to operate into their military,\u201d Raimondo told Defense News. \u201cIf we can deny them the chips they can\u2019t run the models, then they can\u2019t use that to advance their military capability.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Denying those chips is a difficult task, Raimondo acknowledged. More than any other adversary, she said, China can evade export controls, forcing her department into a game of \u201cwhack a mole\u201d to stop vulnerabilities when the spring up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI may be the first commerce secretary here,\u201d she said in her speech. \u201cI\u2019ll certainly not be the last.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Raimondo’s visit to the Reagan forum reflects the increased role the Commerce Department has in national security competition with China<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":75025,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":126,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":{"8":{"categories":["congress","home","leadership","management","federal-oversight"],"primary_category":"congress"}}},"categories":[160,126],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3458],"class_list":["post-65834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-reagan-defense-forum-smr"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"JYMPBDYDTBBJ3NYEY3ZEGKAQ4M","arc_canonical_url":"\/smr\/reagan-defense-forum\/2023\/12\/03\/commerce-dept-needs-funding-to-match-china-challenge-raimondo-says\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n