March 19, 2022

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has accelerated an historic expansion in the use of export controls, well beyond their traditional focus on stopping the spread of nuclear and conventional weapons.

But that shift towards new goals, such as inflicting economic pain on adversary nations and preventing the abusive use of new technologies to monitor populations, is taking place in the United States without a key official in place — the undersecretary of Commerce for industry and security, the post that oversees implementation of U.S. export controls.

Nine months after President Joe Biden announced he had picked former Defense Department official Alan Estevez for the job, the full Senate still hasn’t voted on the nomination, thanks to a policy dispute between the Biden administration and Senate Foreign Relations Chair Bob Menendez over regulating firearms exports. That’s left the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security without a chief at a time when the department is trying to enforce an unprecedented array of new restrictions.

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