U.S. Threatens Use of Novel Export Control to Damage Russia’s Strategic Industries if Moscow Invades Ukraine

The Biden administration is threatening to use a novel export control to damage strategic Russian industries, from artificial intelligence and quantum computing to civilian aerospace, if Moscow invades Ukraine, administration officials say.

The administration may also decide to apply the control more broadly in a way that would potentially deprive Russian citizens of some smartphones, tablets and video game consoles, said the officials.

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The most important goal now is deterrence, officials and analysts said, and that means threatening the most severe sanctions — such as severing the largest Russian banks from the U.S. financial system, said Edward Fishman, adjunct fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Export controls wouldn’t have as immediate an effect, said Fishman, a former State Department official in the Obama administration.

But, he said, they are a good move.

“The United States has no interest in aiding Russia’s technological and industrial capacity,” he said, “so long as Putin is using it to bully neighbors and attack democracy.''

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