US – Japan Online Symposium “Economic Security & Export Control Issues for International Research Cooperation”

In Japan, a four-pillar law on economic security was passed in the ordinary Diet session of 2022. One of the pillars is “Research and Development of Advanced Key Technologies by the Public and Private Sectors” in the fields of space, ocean, quantum, AI, biotechnology, and others.
This bill was discussed at the “Expert Committee on Economic and Security Legislation,” which recommended that “international and strategic technological cooperation should be promoted in order to promote effective R&D, taking into account the characteristics of advanced critical technologies, and to avoid falling into the trap of self-sufficiency. As stated in the above, during the discussion process, there were strong opinions that international joint research should be conducted, especially with the US.
As stated in this recommendation, Japan-U.S. research cooperation, especially in emerging technology fields, is extremely important for Japanese universities. For example, the University of Tokyo and other Japanese universities have deep cooperative relationships with U.S. universities and companies in fields such as quantum, AI, and biotechnology. We believe it is particularly important to promote these relationships and research cooperation with the U.S. within the framework of future public-private R&D or even without government involvement.
To promote such research cooperation, differences of legal system and governance between the U.S. and Japan can be problematic. From the perspective of economic security, it is imperative that research institutions adequately manage research integrity and security, which should be a principle in the current G7 working group discussions. This concept has now been announced as a Japanese government policy last year and is being put into practice at universities.
On the other hand, actual research collaboration between Japan and the U.S. requires compliance with the export control systems established by both countries, and major differences in these systems can hinder research collaboration. The following is a specific list of differences:

(1) Differences between the entity list (U.S.) and user list (Japan)
(2) Differences in the application of the exemption for applied but still fundamental researches and technology and software that arise during, or result from, those researches in export control
(3) For highly sensitive research exchanges, such as the existence of security clearances, differences in systems for restricting the release of patents, etc.

In particular, (1) and (2) are considered to be problematic when conducting academic joint research among universities. The purpose of this symposium is to make a concrete comparison of these issues between Japan and the U.S., and then to discuss the future operation of the U.S. and Japanese systems and responses. At the same time, we like to discuss human resource development for export control management as well as security & integrity management under these systems.