The US government is easing export restrictions on powerful
computer hardware saying it needs to balance national security
concerns with "unnecessary regulatory burdens" on government and
the technology industry.
The White House said the maximum power of computers that can be
exported to Tier 3 countries without prior notification of US
authorities will rise from 85,000 MTOPS (Millions of Theoretical
Operations Per Second) to 190,000 MTOPS. The Tier 3 countries
benefiting from the export lift include Russia and other former
Soviet republics, China, India, Pakistan, the Middle East, Vietnam,
and parts of south eastern Europe.
The export restrictions, imposed during the Cold War, are meant to
prevent certain countries from obtaining powerful hardware with
potential military uses. The US will maintain its near-total ban on
technology exports to Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan
and Syria.
The White House also said it will move the Baltic country of Latvia
from Tier 3 to Tier 1, meaning it can obtain equipment with the
same ease as Western Europe, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Australia, and
New Zealand. Latvia thus joins the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland
and Slovenia among the countries formerly in the Soviet orbit to
have full access to US technology.
The maximum MTOPS level listed in the regulations has been
regularly adjusted upwards in the past to meet rapidly improving
industry performance standards. Early last year the Clinton
Administration announced the new limit of 85,000 MTOPS, up from
28,000.
But industry representatives have been critical of the MTOPS
standard as restrictive and ineffective, and security experts have
pointed out that a blacklisted country could achieve processing
power above the limit by clustering lower-powered machines.