US urged to end IT export restrictions
- Posted:
- 16:26 11 Jun 2001
A 28-member commission, headed by former deputy secretary of defence John Hamre, and former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, produced the report, titled "Computer Exports and National Security in a Global Era: New Tools for a New Century." The report, which is part of a policy review conducted by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, could give momentum to legislative changes under consideration in Congress.
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The 54-page study concludes that export controls on IT must now be "fundamentally reassessed" because they no longer constrain the military activities of other nations. "Moreover, they are starting to impinge on the vitality of the US economy, potentially eroding an industry that America needs for its long-term vitality," the report states.
Surprisingly, the report's recommendations may not face the uphill battle in Congress that they would have a few years ago, said James Lewis, director of the technology and public policy programme at the CSIS. "There are still some in the House and Senate who believe in tight controls on computers, but they are a minority," he said.
The CSIS report may help push the Export Administration Act of 2001, introduced in January by Republican senator Phil Gramm, through Congress. That bill seeks greater protections for fewer but more militarily significant technologies.
The report is also likely to get support from outside of Congress. Vinton Cerf, senior vice president for Internet architecture and technology at WorldCom and a member of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC), said he thinks "there would be positive support from PITAC" and industry for the report's recommendations.
The commission's main argument is that today's commodity desktop and laptop computers are equal to or more powerful than the supercomputers that powered the cold war race for military technology. Also, Internet and clustering technologies now make it possible for everyday commercial systems to offer massive computational capabilities.
For example, the US Air Force's F-22 fighter jet, the most advanced US fighter, was designed using about a quarter of the processing power found in Intel's mass-produced Pentium chips, according to the report.
Current US regulations governing which computers can be sold to other countries are based on the computer's millions of theoretical operations per second (MTOPS) rating. Although the Clinton administration significantly eased export regulations to allow more powerful computers to be shipped to so-called Tier 3 nations such as India, Pakistan, China and Vietnam, MTOPS regulations remain ineffective, the CSIS report states.
"MTOPS cannot accurately measure performance of current microprocessors or alternative sources of supercomputing like clustering," the report says. "Congress should repeal or amend existing legislation to eliminate any requirements for the use of MTOPS-based controls."
To ease the concerns of members of Congress who oppose eliminating controls for national security reasons, the CSIS report notes that the US would still have a catch-all control known as the Enhanced Proliferation Control Initiative. With it, the government can stop firms from selling systems of any capability to countries considered a security risk.
However, the report says the government could do a better job of communicating restrictions to companies and recommends that a Web portal be developed for companies to get the latest information.
