GAO Probe Finds HHS, USDA Sold National Security-Sensitive Medical Deviceshttps://washingtonstand.com/article/gao-probe-finds-hhs-usda-sold-national-securitysensitive-medical-devicesSophisticated biomedical devices subject to rigorous export controls due to their value in creating biological warfare weapons were nevertheless sold by officials at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA) between 2022 and 2025.
Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigators said in a report made public October 1 that they “identified nine pieces of HHS and USDA laboratory equipment subject to export controls. Of the nine export-controlled items, seven belonged to HHS and two were from USDA. The nine export-controlled items that we identified included three freeze dryers and six mass spectrometers.”
“Freeze dryers can be used to preserve biological material such as viruses and toxins, as well as to produce powders for easier dissemination. Mass spectrometers are analytical instruments that can be used to identify and characterize proteins, and study their structures, functions, interactions, and modifications, such as how such proteins respond to viruses and treatments.”
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When, according to the report, GAO investigators reviewed the buyers of the nine pieces of export-controlled biomedical devices, they found reason to be concerned about their potential ties because “GSA data show that the purchasers of the HHS and USDA laboratory equipment included a range of recipients. For example, for the six items that were purchased by companies, three items were purchased by companies that appeared to be laboratory equipment resellers and the other three were purchased by companies that appeared to provide property disposal services, according to information available on the internet. Of the three individuals that bought export-controlled equipment, one was a professor at a university and two did not have any clear affiliation with a relevant entity.”
Any of the nine critical pieces that should not have been sold could end up in the wrong hands if the purchasers were not screening the recipients to whom they in turn sold the equipment. ...
WTF were they thinking?!!! Well, consider: LIEden's SecHHS, Xavier Becerra was a lawyer and is a politician, a bureaucrat os less than dubious usefulness wrt the functions of HHS; LIEden's SecAg was basically a career politician, mayor of a city, Governor of Iowa (who had a program to attract industry; as for Iowa's agriculture, ????). IOW, HHS and Ag bureaucrats were, at best, ignoring export controls.
This disturbs me greatly. Silicon Valley companies are burdened by export control laws - countries they can sell into, avoiding fake shell companies whose businesses don't match the tech they want to buy, vetting resellers and their purported customers. Tech companies train their employees - all, not just sales and marketing (guess how I know this) - in what an "export" means (i.e. not just a finished product) and how to recognize possible excluded buyers. In an elaborate scheme recently discovered an outfit that exported servers to China evaded, for a time, detection by actually using to of the computers they bought for actual work. Their dodge was that they bought more equipment than their data center(s) actually used. My point is that many/most companies do make illegal exports difficult, but LIEden's Departments of HHS and Ag just sold willy-nilly to whomever.
