1792 



Would private industry in the United States indeed be willing to 

 accept the principle of foreign inspectors of its plants and records as 

 a quid pro quo of U.S. inspection of their foreign counterparts? Was 

 any effort ever made to obtain the views of U.S. industry on this 

 matter? Had such an agreement been made, would its inspection 

 provisions have been legally enforceable and acceptable (or even 

 Constitutional!) in the United States? Will there be future demands 

 for mutual inspections under arms treaties? 



On the other hand, the Baruch Plan study raised the opposite 

 question as to whether secrecy could be relied on in any event. It 

 may be too obvious a point to deserve mention that the only value 

 a deterrent weapon can possibly have is obtained by its disclosure to 

 the adversary whom it is intended to deter. And once the disclosure 

 is made, the detailed technology can be more or less quickly duplicated 

 by a competent and determined adversary despite efforts to keep it 

 secret.*^^ Thus, proprietary and secret information can remain so only 

 if it is of less than major strategic importance. The protection of com- 

 mercial technology may well be analogous: possible only inversely 

 in proportion to its commercial value. 



In the absence of severe international patent restriction, the trans- 

 fer of technology may be reduced to a matter of convenience and 

 utility. Its volume may stand as a greater barrier to its universal 

 use than does the effort to withhold from disclosure individual pro- 

 prietary items of value. 



Historically, it is recalled that the British Government unsuccess- 

 fully sought to prevent emigration to the United States of skilled 

 textile technologists. And the Brazilian Government failed to prevent 

 the British from obtaining seeds of the rubber tree, native to the 

 Amazon Valley. All too often a technology emerges simultaneously 

 in two countries, as was the case with the calculus and the reduction 

 of aluminum. 



CASE two: commercial nuclear power in EUROPE 



This case raises the interesting question of the conflict between 

 national security and private profit. Historically, the role of diplomacy 

 is to protect the national security. But diplomacy is also expected to 

 serve the overseas interests of the Nation's business. Granted that 

 security is paramount, how should private interests respond to this 

 priority? Are private companies content to leave questions like this 

 to the bureaucracy? 



When, early in the administration of President Eisenhower, the 

 U.S. Government's monopoly on nuclear materials was somewhat 

 relaxed, private industry took over as commercial activities the 

 functions of constructing and operating nuclear power reactors.'*^^ 

 This policy was never fully carried out; enrichment has remained 

 in Government hands, and there has been a persistent hiatus in the 

 provision of spent fuel storage and high-level radioactive waste man- 

 agement. As for reprocessing, although pnvate ventures moved into 

 the supply of this nuclear service, as of July 1977 there were no com- 

 mercial facilities in operation, and prospects for the Nuclear Regula- 

 tory Commission to license such operations appeared dim. The new 



«2 Wu, The Baruch Plan, Vol. I, p. 119. 



"3 Donnelly, Commercial Nuclear Power in Europe, Vol. I, p. 246. The only two services retained as Gov- 

 ernment monopoly were the enrichment of uranium (which the customer supplied) and storage of radioactive 

 wastes from fuel element reprocessing. 



