Ever since
Congress changed the legal definition of the US defense industrial base—officially
known as the National Technology Industrial Base (NTIB)—to include Australia
and the United Kingdom, there has been a question of whether to add New Zealand
to the club. As national security industrial base issues have a basis in geo-economic
intelligence matters, there is a logical argument to make for conforming the
NTIB to the Five Eyes or other intelligence arrangements.   

Still in 2016, when
the NTIB was expanded beyond the long-standing joint US-Canadian industrial
base construct, it was decided to include just four of the Five Eyes by initially
adding those nations with recently ratified defense trade treaties with the US.
It was thought that New Zealand’s smaller industrial base could be incorporated
subsequently with perhaps other close allies once technology transfer processes
were reformed and streamlined within a core group of defense treaty nations. Congress
also was concerned that adding too many members might complicate and slow down industrial
base integration that was rapidly needed to effectively compete with a newly
appreciated threat from China.

Six years later, the
process of “seamless integration” envisioned in law couldn’t be any slower, while
the threat from a growing alliance of autocracies has only grown more profound.
The NTIB, like the defense trade treaties before it, has been undermined from
the start. As a result, barriers to cooperation between the US and its closest
allies have been rising rather than falling throughout the Trump and Biden administrations.
The US government seems unable to embrace the concept that it is stronger not
weaker when it joins in cooperative technology development with allies who
share our values, particularly when contending with nations who cannot be any clearer
in their intentions of undermining the global basis for prosperity and
democracy.

The sabotage of first
the defense trade treaties and then the NTIB have emanated not from Moscow or
Beijing but from within the US bureaucracy. These officials carry on as if it
is still 1976 when the Arms Export Control Act was enacted and the US
government was the dominant force in global research and development. It may thus
come as a surprise that a lot of history has gone under the bridge since then and
that the original foundation for US technology superiority has completely
changed. Military-related knowledge and technologies have widely proliferated
around the globe. Multi-national commercial companies (not government-protected
and isolated defense firms) are now leading in fields critical to military innovation.
Moore’s law and Chinese manufacturing ascendency have continued to take a
sledgehammer to American defense technological dominance. Reforms proposed over
the last two decades to counter these trends by advancing defense cooperation with
our closest allies and encouraging working with trusted private sector firms have
unfortunately gone nowhere.

One way for
Congress to reset the importance of working with our close partners to enhance military
innovation is to now align the NTIB with the Five Eyes intelligence partnership.
Including New Zealand to the NTIB would more succinctly call attention to the
distinction between the kinds of sensitive information the US routinely shares
with its closest allies and the hyper-bureaucratic mentality reigning in the executive
branch technology control bureaucracy. While Top Secret and higher levels of
classified information can flow freely to our Five Eyes partners, nothing but
process and wasted time flows when these same countries attempt to work with
unclassified data under the International Trafficking in Arms Regulations
(ITAR). 

Congress should
make clear that the ultimate goal of a Five Eyes NTIB would be to create a
separate ITAR-free zone for unclassified but sensitive information within an industrial
alliance that incorporates trusted commercial and defense firms. To do
otherwise relegates US defense to continue to lose the innovation race to not
only the commercial sector but to our adversaries. China and its now client
state Russia must relish every missed opportunity for US-allied co-development
and every day lost to complying with bloated bureaucratic procedures.

If adding New Zealand could reinvigorate and reset the NTIB process and make it easier for reform advocates to argue their case for closer cooperation, then Congress should do so. The Kiwis in other forums have been able to punch above their weight and bring some common sense to issues they have embraced. The development of Rocket Lab’s launch site on the North Island and the significant commercial space investment seen in the country has surely given New Zealand’s government a greater insight into the impact US export controls can have on the dynamics of innovation. If that is the case, they would be worthy partners to bring to any discussions that might help address a US bureaucracy run amok and in denial.

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