Technology transfers in a controlled world

“It’s not that the rules themselves have changed. But everything else has.”

According to Sarah Rice, clearBorder’s Head of Export Controls, that observation encapsulates much of today’s export landscape.

Physical technology transfers remain a core part of international trade: defence equipment, engines, sensors, drones, components, and other controlled goods continue to move across borders every day. Increasingly though, some of the most valuable defence capabilities never touch a shipping container at all.

They move through engineering software, CAD models, the cloud, remote meetings, source code, digital twins, AI systems, technical data, and collaborative research.

“The most valuable exports of the modern defence era never pass through a customs checkpoint.”

The challenge for firms? It’s not only controlling where products go. It’s more about understanding where the knowledge lives.

Invisible exports

Twenty years ago, export controls largely centred on physical goods. Today, organisations also need to think about invisible exports: software, engineering models, CAD files, cloud platforms, source code, technical data, automated systems, and even conversations that reveal controlled capability.

That has fundamentally changed the nature of technology transfer.

Many organisations underestimate just how easily technology can cross borders. A controlled export might now involve:

• Sharing a CAD drawing during a Teams meeting
• Providing code to a development partner
• Allowing an overseas visitor into an engineering design review
• Going on holiday with technical data stored on a laptop
• Granting access to cloud-based environments

“Tomorrow’s export controls will be defined by who gains access.”

The geography of knowledge

Governments have always been interested in where strategic capability is manufactured. These days, they are increasingly interested in where it resides.

The reason is straightforward: controlling access to knowledge means controlling future capability. Whoever possesses the expertise, software, data, or AI models will ultimately possess the strategic advantage.

• Who can access it?

• Who can copy it?

• Who can build upon it?

• Who ultimately benefits from it?

For Sarah, this reflects a broader geopolitical shift.

“Countries are working harder to keep strategically important technologies ‘in the family’, while applying greater scrutiny where knowledge might flow beyond those networks.”

That helps explain why defence cooperation agreements like AUKUS have become so important. More than just accelerating collaboration, the objective is to enable it within frameworks and alliances of trust that protect confidence over how sensitive capability is shared.

Regulators are following the knowledge

Three recent enforcements illustrate this. Each is different in its detail, but together, they reveal a clear direction of travel.

• General Electric accepted a $36 million penalty from the US State Department after more than one hundred ITAR violations involving military engines, including data associated with the F-35. The case centred on failures to govern engineering information, licensing, digital systems, and employee handling of controlled data.
• RTX agreed to a $200 million administrative settlement following hundreds of export control violations involving engineering data, foreign national employees, laptops, and technical information relating to some of the United States’ most sensitive defence platforms. Again, the issue here was systemic governance, not the movement of finished products.
• Temporary US restrictions on access to Anthropic’s most advanced AI models demonstrate that governments are thinking differently about frontier capability itself. The essence of the debate was around access to models that will likely underpin future economic and military advantage.

“Governments are regulating the know-how behind the product.

Not just the product itself.”

Regulators are looking beyond physical exports – increasingly, it’s not “what left the country?”, but “who gained access?”

Collaboration without paralysis

None of this means organisations should become reluctant to innovate. Research partnerships, international engineering teams, universities, suppliers, and global collaboration remain fundamental to progress.

The challenge is building governance that protects sensitive capability without discouraging legitimate collaboration. For innovative businesses, the objective must be to understand what can be shared, with whom, and under what conditions.

• Do you know what controlled information you hold?

• Can you identify when technology transfers are taking place?

• Who has access to sensitive engineering data?

• Can you demonstrate why certain decisions were made?
• Have you documented your reasoning?

“Technology transfer becomes manageable the moment you recognise it’s happening.”

Perhaps the biggest misconception is that compliance inevitably slows innovation. In reality, organisations with mature governance collaborate more confidently because they understand what can be shared, what cannot, and where appropriate licences or exemptions already exist.

A new era of technology transfers

Technology transfer has always been about capability; what’s changed is the form that capability can take.

For governments, that means looking beyond factories and freight routes towards software, engineering knowledge, AI models, technical data, and the increasingly digital foundations of national capability.

That changes how policymakers think about sovereignty, how regulators enforce export controls, and how businesses should manage innovation, partnerships, and international growth.

“The winners won’t be those that share less knowledge. They’ll be the firms that know exactly what they’re sharing, with whom, and why.”

As technology becomes more digital, the advantage will belong to organisations that can innovate freely and collaborate confidently while still maintaining control over where the knowledge behind that innovation lives.