Eliminate the “specially designed” export licensing loophole

Research notes

Cluster negative search BIS-1 (chapter log): a jq pass over all 154 in-window Federal Register records whose agency is the Industry and Security Bureau — every Entity List, Unverified List, Denied Persons, Section 232 and licensing document of the window — plus quoted-phrase Federal Register full-text searches since 2025-01-20, plus the Bureau’s whole active Unified Agenda on reginfo.gov (agencyCd 0600, DOC/BIS: seventeen RINs, each opened and read). "specially designed" returns 33 in-window Federal Register documents; the export ones are State’s ITAR U.S. Munitions List revisions (2025-08-27, 2025-12-30) and BIS’s firearms and drone rules (2025-09-30, 2026-01-21, 2026-08-14), all of which use the existing definition. None amends it.

This ask and #1855-#1862 are the Mandate’s bullet list of ways to reverse the 2008-2016 Export Control Reform loosening of the EAR; the major-tier ask covering the list as a whole is #1845 (not started), whose Evidence — the silencers rule, the drone streamlining rule and the ITAR USML revisions — is the trail this page starts from. Each bullet is leveled on its own object below.

Reginfo agenda sweep, 2026-09-01 (§3b). The seventeen active RINs of the DOC/BIS slice of the 2026 Unified Agenda (agencyCd=0600, pubId=202510, published in the Federal Register 2026-08-14) were re-read against the rule settled 2026-09-01 — a dated agenda entry naming the ask’s object is attempted. No entry amends the definition of “specially designed” at 15 CFR 772.1. The nearest is RIN 0694-AJ60 Commerce Control List Additions and Revisions (Final Rule Stage, final action 10/2026), whose CFR citation includes 15 CFR 772 but whose abstract is confined to CCL entries for quantum computers, additive manufacturing, coating systems and GAAFET technology; RIN 0694-AJ95 uses the phrase only as an ECCN qualifier for proteomics mass spectrometers. Subject area only — Status unchanged.