The hearing of the permanent subcommittee on the investigation will come to order. Welcome ericularly to the witnesses, some of you have come along way. And we greatly appreciate it. Just tee days ago president zelenskyy in ukraine along with my colleague sens. As i sat across from him, what i saw was a steely determination to continue to fight, but determination is shared by ukraine people, overwhelmingly. Their courage and strength again onhis visit visit inspired me anew. Fifth■8 visit inspired me an. The president handed me a folder that i took from him then. ■ w■ as the result of a conversation i had with him a week earlier in munich. Asking for evidence, if he had american manufacturers parts and components in weapons used by russia on the battlefield in ukraine. They folder that he handed me the folder that he handed me was a really searing piece ofour evidence that contained a listing of 211 manufactured hightechnology chips, semiconductors, and other American Technology in numerous missile and other hightechnology products used to kill ukrainians on the battlefield. I will ask if that folder would be made a part of the record without objection. Of those 211 separate components, 87 were made by just four companies. Until, Analog Devices, amd, and tech essentials. They are the four leading sources of American Technology going into the russian war machine. The simple truth is that a vast number of United States parts and components are found in russianttlefield. American manufacturers are fueling and supporting the growing rsithey are used in mis, drums, munitions f\drones, munitions, and other war. Our sanctions system is a s ieve. ■it is lethally an effective. Ineffective. That is why we are here today, experts can tell us how these parts can be traced and tracked. How potentially their flow to russia can bestemmed, and stopp. The evidence points overwhelmingly to the fact that russia relies on western technology to power its military capabilities. United States Companies reduce the majority of components found in russian weapons. President zelenskyy told me how cutting off russian supply of these components isukrainian de. This stack of documents that he handed to me shows that the technology he uses to fuel the russian war machine flows through thirdparty intermediaries and bordering countries. The United States companies no or should know whether they violated the law. We are not concluding at this point. We have ququestions for the unis department of commerce, and the department of the treasury. Russias successive efforts to avoid export controls can be seen in the very weapons recovered on the battlefield. I am appalled that Americans Technology breakthroughs are sustaining russian belligerents. We opened this inquiry last year in order to understand this absolutely astonishing and appalling pattern. On four American Companies whose products have been repeatedly identified in greater number and frequency, disproportionately showing up a russian Weapon Systems. We need to understand how■v thee American Products are getting to russia despite export controls and what death and be done to stop them and what more can be done to stop them. Our initial findings show irrefutably that those thirdparty intermediaries located in countries bordering russia are used to obey u. S. Export controls. This fact is a secret hidden in plain sight. I would like to enter into the record the subcommittee t we prepared providing evidence of this fact and i see no objection. The astronomic increases begin at exports to kakhstan fri■om Companies Going up thousand times from 2021 through two matched by exports going to georgia, 30 four times greater exports to armenia, 20 times exports to than double exports to finland. These sta increases are part of a larger trend. We know that other bordering countries outside of these five, notably china are home to enemies being used by russia to evade our export controls and i hope this hearing will enable us to under what more can be used to prevent technology from going to russia. Russia has been so successful in evading u. S. Export controls that its ability to import critical battlefield goods has nearly recovered to levels seen before the invasion of ukraine. Not only to defeating russia, but that status quo is unacceptable. J this issue is critical, not only to defeating russia, but also beyond that conflict, it has implications for our National Security across the globe. Semi conductor export controls are increasingly an importantn part of our security and to constrain countries like china from surpassing our abilities in ai. They are also crucial to security and other parts of the world including defending ourselves from overtly hostile regimes like iran and north korea. We need effective Semi Conductor export controls. Effective Semi Conductor export controls. Our technology cannot simply be wants to access it. The evidence collected from the battlefield in ukraine can providgu in defending our National Security on technology and many other areas. I hope that our work will uncover, not just what has gone wrong, but recommendations and solutions to stop future exports of United States technology and from keeping it out of the hands of the russian war machine. Again, whether they be violations of law, we are not conclusion concluding at this point. But, we have questions and we know that enforcement has been lacking. I commend the biden administrati f imposing additional sanctions, which they announced days ago. But sanctions are dead letter unless they are enforced. And we are writing to the Commerce Department in a letter that i am making part of the record to ask many of the same questions. I turned to the Ranking Member. Sen. Johnson i have a written opening i will enter into the record and i will make a couple of comments. In your Opening Statement you talked about the growing russian war machine. I think that is one of the reality is that we have to face that we are not really acknowledging. I have as supportive as i am for the ukrainian people and as much as i think Vladimir Putin is an evil war criminal, the face is that Vladimir Putin will not lose this war. The chairman talked about defeating russia. Russia has four times the population of ukraine. They are producing about 4. 5 million 150 five millimetersthee million shells a we are a year at the cost of five 6,000. We ought to be doing oversight on that as well but that is a separate issue. The average age of t ue are repe inner circle saying send us all the weapons you have we do no have the men to fire them. I hate that reality, it is an awful reality. But, if we are really concerned abou ukraine, and i do not doubt that they want to fight. If we are concerned about the people of ukraine we have to understand what is happeningoso, killed in action, civilians, probably more on the russian side. Half a million total casualties on both sides. Nobody knows the exactite the exact figures. With 400 billion to a trillion dollars of devastation. Every day■ war goes on, more ukrainians died, more russian conscripts died. I take no joy in that. People yankeou as cannon fodder to the front line a bloodied stalemate and more of ukraine gets destroyed. And so, this is an interesting hearing. I was criticized many years ago when i questioned the ability to sanctions to do what they were really designed to do, that they may be do more harm to our allies. I think that is kind of the record of the sanctions against russia, they have not worked. The war machine is growing. Some of the justification for spending 60 billion is not going to ukraine, but will build up our militaryindustrial complex. I think that is a deployment a depraved justification. For supporting ukraine. So again, we need to look at the reality. I know the witnesses will say there are all kinds of things we can do to plug the holes. I doubt it. It will just be way way and other peoples huawei and other people supplying things. We need to recognize the reality. We keep pushing russia and they have nuclear weapons. I think our policy ought to be how do we start reducing tensions in the world, and i would argue that the best way te strong, and it starts with addressing our debt deficit which is out of control. It starts with securing our borders, not letting military aged men from china from 150 it is about using our fossil fuel resources rather than artificially driving up energy costs. It is about stopping desperate spending so we do not continue to drive inflation. ■that is how you strengthen the country and make the world a more secure place. We need to face those realities. As interesting as his hearing might be in terms of sanctions being evaded, they will always be evaded. You plug one whole, another one will open up. It is laughable. It is a reality that we have to face so we better start facing that makes any sense inblic this country whatsoever. Thank you. Chair blumenthal thank you senator johnson. I am going to introduce the Opening Statements. James byrne is the founder and director of the open Source Intelligence and Analysis Group at the Royal United Services institute, the worlds oldest defense think tank. His6 team has generated reports based on open source and actionable intelligence on russias military, supply chains and worked with government organizations including United States department of state to help trace and shutdown these pathways. Elinaova is the director of International Affairs and the International Affairs program and Vice President for Foreign Policy at the keeps school of economics. She is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for internatna. She has been a coauthor on numerous reports out of the ksc institute examining the ability of russia to acquire United StatesTechnology Despite export control. ■u spleeters is the Deputy Director of operations at conflict armament research,anpeh organization that sends investigators to private conflicts to access weapons and other commodities recovered from the battlefield. Rhe has deployed to conflict zones around the world including trace the diversion of weapons and commercial commodities. We look forward to all of your testimony and we ask you to and take the oath as is our custom. Do you swear that the testimony you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you god . Thank you. Mr. Byrne, if you would begin. Mr. Byrne chairman blumenthal, Ranking Member johnson, it is really a great honor to be here today. Thank you very much for having me and us. My name is james byrne. I am the director of open Source Intelligence and analysis at the Royal Service introduce institute. It is an old institution. We were what by the duke of wellington after the napoleonic wars. Today we are independent but for almost 200 years we woand how t. Today we do many other things in direct militaryencicrime and a r portfolios. Since the war started in uke, russias invasion of ukraine, we have been engaged in work in countries united servics institute have been there many times giving a range of different pieces of work. One of those pieces of work has at russian Weapon Systems and how they are billed. And to look at the components within them. When we were first in the country. This was very early on in the nature of the war, the invasion went very badly for the russians. They an easy victory and they were met with indomitable resistance. Lost huge volumes of platforms, elect chronic warfare signals, tactical radios, missiles were shot down, uavs were captured. Across his huge range of platforms we got to look inside of them. So did a number of other people. What was shocking was that all of these systems that we saw were built with our technology. It is not just u. S. Technology but there is some with the united kingdom, germany, netherlands and a range from western countries and our allies. Nobody had ever seen inside russian weston Weapon Systems before acrosbreadth. It was something that we did not have an inkling of during the cold war. I that despite all of the rhetoc of the russian government about substitution and independence, they rely on our technology to build systems that they designed to threaten us and our allies. Irrespective of the progress of the war in ukraine or the particularities of the situation on the ground, my belief and i know many, is that we should dor best to prevent our technology being used in weapons that are designed to kill us and our friends. This is not simply just a question about russia. You will hear testimony i think later today. It is not just russianbut it isn platforms, north korean platforms. It is technology that fits into the systems that russia cannot replace. They cannot easily go to other manufacturers because our countries are the most sophisticated manufacturer of these things, and companies themselves create specialized things that are designed to have these roles. Modern work without these things, they are the brains that almost all modern weapons platforms from precision munitions to radiore. In that sense we have great leverage. Sanctions are difficult to enforce to enforce. Export controls are difficult to enforce and that is true. We see those components in those weapons difficult does not mean that we should not do it. In fact we should try our best to make it happen. Of course there is a selection bias anddo not see the shipments of components that we stopped, the visit the vessels that we interdicted and the people that we arrested because those components never made it and they never killed ukrainians and they were never used. I know from my experience that that has happened many times. I think we can and should do more. It is not just the role of the United States, but the role of the united kingdom. We this for a long time. It is the role of the European Union and our friends in japan, south korea and taiwan who assist. And we should have this program to prevent this happening. One last thing before we finish. f not just a question about microelectronics at all sorts of technology that adversaries need it. Carbon, lenses, cameras, a huge range of different aspects. If we can prevent them and stop them asr best we can we help the ukrainians and ourselves from fighting a technology an adversary with our technology down the line. It honor to be invited and i look forward to hearing my colleagues and answering questions from you. Ms. Ribakova chairman blumenthal, Ranking Member johnson, thank you for i am from a longstanding university with more than 70 staff and 700 students. We teach sometimes in the shelter and we contribute to the research and i am a nonresident fellow think take gives me an opportunity to focus my work not just on Data Analysis but all the way to the policy at work. So, my asme is not on behalf of any organization but from me. There are several messages that i would like to emphasize. One, despite the efforts to diversify production it overwhelmingly relies on foreign components. So National Sources in ukraine have disassembled a lot of weapons, more than 2800 components from a wide online an look at the photos. I strongly recommend you look at the website. It shows that 95 percent of the components come from coalition countries. 70 from the u. S. Alone because the u. S. Has■dntage in the prodf some of the technologies. That is fantastic. It also tells us that we have leverage about export controlssa continues to import significant demands of this component. In the first months after the beginning of the fullscale invasion, imports have halved, so there was an impact. By 2023 we only have 10 reduction. The third message is that more effective export controls will be required. The success of government policy always hinges greatly on private sector involvement. Decades ago when we started about the antimoney laundering sectors the u. S. Government risk required and incorporation of the financial industry and we saw great success. The transparency to block access from accessing our systems has changed dramatically. So we can use the lessons and the information from the Financial Sector to be able to help us enforce exit control. Fourth, export controls is not just about helping ukraine or preventing the russians from further aggression. About the credibility of our home system and statecraft. Malign actors are watching whether it is a sign of what works and what does not and we will have the opportunity to do homework and see how we can use export controls to effectively address challenges imposed by china and strategic technologies. So,■7c export controls must be enforced. My key recommendation for congressional consideration it is as follows. It is critical to strengthen the institution. There is much expanded responsibilities but their funding has not been increased to match. Second, we need to bolster corporate responsibility. Effective control of the supply chain starts at the point of production and the initial sale of the item. To incentivize corporations to do so we need to show that we are capable of enforcing export controls and investigate when necessy. Third, leverage the role financial industry in mobile trad