Do you know what a “deemed export” is?  If not, I suggest you take a look at Duke Law 3L Kevin Dugan’s fascinating essay, “Inhibiting Information Exports: Restricting International Travel After Deemed Export Violations,” which is the newest addition to the LENS Essay Series.

You’ll learn that it is the “release of covered technical data, source code, or certain technologies to certain foreign persons” who are (and here’s the kicker) “located in the United States.” (Emphasis added.)

Kevin not only explains how this piece of the export control regime works, he also highlights that serious criminal penalties can result.  Further, to address the problem of how to deal with a deemed export violation once it occurs, he explores the legality of “employing passport administration to restrict these deemed export violators from international travel.”

Kevin’s essay is here, and the abstract of the article is below

Abstract:

The release of covered technical data, source code, or certain technologies to certain foreign persons located in the United States is “deemed” an export. United States’ export controls carry significant penalties for deemed export violations. Employers and universities must therefore carefully regulate access to covered information.

Professors otherwise run the risk of violating export controls by working with or teaching foreign students or researchers, evidenced most clearly by the multi-year criminal sentence of Professor John Roth for working with two foreign graduate students on sensitive research at the University of Tennessee.

Two factors accelerate the urgency employers and universities should have in ensuring compliance: (1) adversaries, namely China, engage in technology transfer in a variety of ways, including coercing students and employees to share information gained in the United States; and (2) the second Trump Administration has focused on China, its propensity for technology transfer, and elite universities, including their large number of international students and researchers. Given this renewed focus, deemed exports may emerge as a favored, frequent tool. Yet, after the deemed export violator pays their fine or serves their sentence, the information they illegally released is, in all likelihood, still in their head.  

Agencies enacted the deemed export concept to ensure that persons could not circumvent export controls simply by traveling to the United States, learning the information, and then leaving. At that point, what the person carries in their head is no different than carrying a briefcase full of restricted semiconductors; adversaries of the United States will seek to attract such persons with talent programs and other incentives to gain that information.

Therefore, after discussing the current climate and the export control regulations, this paper explores the legality of the United States government employing passport administration to restrict these deemed export violators from international travel. The paper does not make a normative suggestion; it only finds that such use of passport administration would be legal to restrict the effective export of sensitive information in the interest of national security.

Again, you can find Kevin’s essay here,

About the Author

Kevin Dugan is expected to graduate with his Juris Doctor from Duke University School of Law in 2026. At Duke, he was the President of the International Law Society, part of the Mock Trial Board, and an intern at the Department of the Treasury’s International Affairs office. During his first-year summer, he studied international topics in the Hague, Netherlands, with a cohort of other first years and worked at Van Bael & Bellis in Brussels, Belgium. Before law school, Kevin got his B.A. from the University of Michigan and worked at Sidley Austin for a year as a paralegal. Soon, Kevin will begin his legal career on the international trade team at Sidley Austin hoping to work at the intersection of trade and national security.

The views expressed by guest authors do not necessarily reflect my views or those of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security, or Duke University. (See also here).

Remember what we like to say on Lawfire^®: gather the facts, examine the law, evaluate the arguments – and then decide for yourself!

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