Tighten the definition of “fundamental research”

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). "fundamental research" returns 6 in-window documents, each opened and none from BIS.

Research-security policy did move in the window, but through the grant agencies rather than through the EAR: the 2026-07-16 financial-assistance rule on conflicts of interest and commitment (FR 2026-14333) and NIH’s foreign-component and biospecimen policies. Under §3b progress is measured on this ask, whose object is the EAR’s definition, so those are context and not delivery. Chapter 12 and Chapter 14 carry the research-security asks.

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 “fundamental research” exclusion at 15 CFR 734.8, and no entry mentions universities, students or researchers. The part-734 entries in the slice (RINs 0694-AJ43, 0694-AJ74, 0694-AK11) are about end-user controls and the direct product rules. Subject area only — Status unchanged.