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The US is easing its restrictions on sharing sensitive technology with the UK and Australia, removing barriers to trilateral defence co-operation as the allies try to counter China in the Indo-Pacific.

The US Department of State is amending its International Traffic in Arms Regulation rules to facilitate military-related technology sharing with the allies, erasing some hurdles for Aukus, the submarine and advanced technology development accord the allies agreed in 2021.

The state department said the reform would mean the UK and Australia did not need to apply for licences to obtain American technology for roughly 80 per cent of their defence-related trade with the US.

“These critical reforms will revolutionise defence trade, innovation and co-operation, enabling collaboration at the speed and scale required to meet our challenging strategic circumstances,” said Richard Marles, the Australian defence minister.

One UK official described the reforms as a “big deal” because it was “about the UK, Australia and US being as competitive as they can with China”.

The UK government estimated that the current Itar regime had generated annual costs for the UK of about £450mn.

The UK and Australia have been pushing the US for years to ease the restrictions. The effort took on renewed urgency after the signing of the Aukus pact, which requires an unprecedented level of co-operation and information sharing.

The UK official said the move would ease roadblocks to co-operation on Pillar 1 of Aukus, which involves the US sharing nuclear-propulsion technology to enable Australia — in conjunction with the UK — to build a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines. But the move would also be “critical” to Pillar 2, in which the three allies are co-operating in areas ranging from hypersonics to artificial intelligence and undersea military capabilities.

The US is maintaining exemptions for a range of technologies that will still require a licence, but will provide an expedited licence approval process.

“It doesn’t remove the bar. [But] it lowers the bar significantly,” said the first UK official, who said that once the new system was proved to be effective it would “open the space for further progress”.

He added that while the UK “would have been happy with a shorter list of exemptions” but stressed that the change on Thursday was a very significant development that was welcomed by London.

The Itar reforms do not affect US restrictions on sharing sensitive information with foreigners — a designation known as “NoForn” — which has hampered efforts between the countries and made it difficult for governments to share information with defence companies.

But the US allies are hoping that the Itar reforms will help change the culture and, as the UK official put it, “reduce the instinct for NoForn”.

The reforms became possible after the UK and Australia made changes to their export control regimes to convince Washington that any American technology that is shared with the two allies will remain protected.

A person holds a sign that reads “Mass Deportation Now” on the third day of the Republican National Convention in July.

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Leon Neal/Getty Images

A person holds a sign that reads “Mass Deportation Now” on the third day of the Republican National Convention in July.

Leon Neal/Getty Images

Donald Trump won the White House the first time in part by promising an aggressive crackdown on immigration.

“Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on,” he said at the time.

A controversial Muslim travel ban did later go into effect, and by the second year of his term the Trump administration was separating kids from parents at the border as part of the administration’s “zero tolerance policy.”

“Don’t break the law. I mean, that’s why they’re separated — ’cause they’re breaking the law,” then Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in May 2018.

If Trump gets back in the White House, he’s promising to go even further on immigration.

“As soon as I take the oath of office, we will begin the largest deportation operation in the history of our country,” he told a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan last month, repeating a promise that has become a familiar part of his rallies.

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Trump is taking the pledge on the road

At the Republican National Convention this summer, hundreds of attendees waved signs demanding “Mass Deportation Now!”

And all over the country, Trump’s supporters applaud when he repeats this promise.

He was greeted with cheers at a rally in Nevada when he said this: “When I’m re-elected, we will begin — and we have no choice — the largest deportation operation in American history.”

And he got more cheers at a rally in Montana last week when he said: “We will seal the border, stop the invasion and send the illegal aliens back home where they belong.”

Now, Trump’s former immigration advisors are laying out ambitious plans for a second term. That includes Tom Homan, the former head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), who said this at the National Conservatism Conference last month:

“They ain’t seen s*** yet. Wait ’till 2025 … Trump comes back in January, I’ll be on his heels coming back. And I will run the biggest deportation operation this country’s ever seen.”

Two NPR reporters have been following this story closely: Joel Rose, who covered immigration during Trump’s presidency, and Sergio Martínez-Beltrán, an immigration correspondent.

They have been looking through internal emails and documents from Trump’s time in office — obtained through the Freedom of Information Act — which shed light on how realistic Trump’s plan is to radically expand the United States’ deportation system.

What the documents show

The documents demonstrate how immigration authorities scrambled from the first days of the Trump administration to scale up their detention capacity in response to requests from the White House.

Yet they also reveal how bureaucratic hurdles slowed the process, limiting the administration’s ability to ramp up immigration enforcement to match Trump’s tough rhetoric and stated goals.

In one example, in January of 2017, Trump signed several executive orders on immigration, and the very next day the ICE official in charge of immigration detention sought to begin expanding detention facilities. Rose told All Things Considered:

“ICE did add about 15,000 detention beds under President Trump, which is a jump of about 35%. But that took years. It was not as fast or as easy as his advisers may have wanted. And I think that’s reason to be skeptical about Trump’s promises this time around.”

And Martínez-Beltrán says Trump’s rhetoric, while sweeping, has been vague:

“He has vowed to deport anywhere from 15 to 20 million unauthorized migrants. But that number is way higher than what the Department of Homeland Security reports. The agency estimates there are about 11 million unlawful migrants.”

Listen to the full Consider This episode to hear Rose and Martínez-Beltrán break down what the documents show, how this is playing out, and what former ICE officials have to say.

This episode was produced by Marc Rivers. It was edited by Courtney Dorning, Alfredo Carbajal and Eric Westervelt. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.

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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

The writer is founding partner of capital fund JourneyOne Ventures based in Los Angeles

The US Food and Drug Administration’s rejection of MDMA-assisted therapy is yet another setback in the global mental health epidemic.

MDMA, commonly known as ecstasy, works by suppressing the fear response, allowing patients who suffer from PTSD to observe and reprocess painful memories. Phase 3 clinical trial data from Lykos Therapeutics, the public benefit corporation that filed the MDMA New Drug Application with the FDA, showed that 71 per cent of participants no longer qualified for a PTSD diagnosis after taking the drug, while 87 per cent had clinically meaningful improvements.

This is an improvement compared to antidepressants, which on average have a 20-30 per cent complete remission rate and 60 per cent response rate.

MDMA primarily increases the release of serotonin and norepinephrine. Serotonin is crucial for regulating mood, sleep, pain, appetite and other functions, and the increased release of serotonin contributes to MDMA’s mood-elevating effects. It also affects the norepinephrine system, which contributes to emotional excitement, euphoric feelings and cognitive impairment.

The FDA faces many challenges when evaluating psychoactive drugs. It is concerned about abuse of these drugs and has criticised Lykos data. But better mental healthcare treatment is required. Six out of every 100 people in the US will suffer from PTSD at some point in their lives. Yet there have been no new prescription medicines since two antidepressants, Zoloft and Paxil, were approved for this use by the FDA 25 years ago.

MDMA was developed in 1912 by a Merck chemist. It is one of a number of historical healing practices resurfacing as empirical research supports their efficacy.

Egyptian medical papyrus dating back to around 1550BC suggests cannabis may have been used then to treat inflammation, for example. There is also archaeological evidence of psychedelic medicine use in both Central America and Europe.

Some 40 per cent of the drugs used in western medicine are already derived from plants that have been in use for centuries, including the top 20 best selling prescription drugs in the US today.

We should continue to look backwards in order to move forwards. The current approach towards healthcare is not working. We are not well as a society and the cost is high. Mental illness costs the US economy $282bn a year, according to a study published this year by the National Bureau of Research.

The US is in the grip of a mental health epidemic.

Patients are ready to try alternatives. Last year, a University of Michigan survey found that 80 per cent of adult patients aged 50-80 would be open to stopping one or more of their long-term medications if a doctor said it was possible.

The problem is that once people are on these drugs, withdrawal can be severe. Frontier wellness companies like Outro have developed “hyperbolic tapering”, a process to help people get off of antidepressants with minimal withdrawal while reducing the risk of relapse. Their objective is to create a world where people are empowered to think about their mental illness as recovery, not a life sentence.

Such innovations require reimagining wellness beyond the status quo. So does psychedelic medicine.

For now, the millions of Americans with PTSD and the patients who aren’t responsive to existing treatments have to bear the burden of waiting for new treatment to be approved.

But this is not a one-off project. The FDA has a pipeline of around 95 psychedelic drugs currently in pre-clinical to phase 3 studies. It makes you wonder what other ground breaking wellness modalities are stuck in regulatory limbo?