Defense bill could stifle computer trade
http://news.com.com/2102-7341_3-5253873.html?tag=st.util.print
If section of House bill stays, any PC with a chip more powerful than
a Pentium 3 would be classified as a weapon.
In a move that has re-energized the debate over export controls on
high-performance computers, the latest version of a defense-spending
bill would require companies to seek licenses to export even
underpowered desktop computers.
News.context
What's new:
The latest version of a defense-spending bill in the House requires
companies to obtain licenses to export even low-powered computers.
Bottom line:
The proposed rules are the latest flashpoint in a decades-long tussle
between computer companies and national security hawks over the best
way to limit the export of technology that could end up in enemy
weapons.
The dramatic tightening of export regulations is included in the
National Defense Authorization Act, an annual military funding bill
that has already passed the U.S. House of Representatives. Though the
proposed rules are only a tiny portion of the 630-page bill, they
could have a devastating impact on the computer industry.
"It would bring exports to a grinding halt," said Dan Hoydish,
director of trade, public policy and government affairs for Unisys and
chairman of the Computer Coalition for Responsible Exports, a trade
group that counts many major technology companies as members. "We
wouldn't be asking for 20 export licenses in a year, we would be
asking for 20,000 in a day."
Today, computer sellers are required to get a license to export any
computer with performance equal to or greater than a system with 32
Intel Itanium processors. The current version of the defense
authorization act would lower that limit to systems deemed "militarily
critical" by the Department of Defense. That level is currently set to
the equivalent of a computer using a Pentium 3 processor running at
650MHz, state of the art in 1999 but considered feeble today.
Moreover, the proposed rules would apply to exports destined for any
country, including U.S. allies.
The controversial section is not included in a U.S. Senate version of
the bill that passed last week. That means the fate of the proposed
rules, known as Section 1404, will be determined by negotiations
between the House and the Senate, currently slated for later this
month.
"As the planet shows no sign of nearing the point where nuclear
weapons are banned, it is reasonable to assume that current or
aspiring nuclear weapons states will vigorously attempt to acquire
high-performance computers."
--Peter Leitner
Defense Department
A congressional staff member familiar with the House and Senate bills
said it's likely Section 1404 will be changed or dropped. Still, just
the specter of passage has rekindled the debate over whether to
control the export of computer technologies to other countries. The
issue pits the interests of a key U.S. industry against the needs of
national security. Though relatively high-performance computers are
widespread, lawmakers concerned with national security would still
like to block certain countries and terrorist organizations from
obtaining them.
A representative of the House Armed Services Committee, which drafted
the amendment to the original House bill, said the legislation would
reverse a trend that has weakened U.S. national security and made the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction much more likely.
Supercomputers can be used in nuclear-weapons research, as well as in
cryptography, antisubmarine warfare and intelligence activities.
"There shouldn't be much daylight between the Department of Defense
and Commerce about what requires a license," said Harald Stavenas,
spokesman for Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., who chairs the House Armed
Services Committee. "The problem is that there is. Commerce (isn't
controlling) things that have critical military applications."
Too relaxed to be vigilant?
The performance limits for exported computers, measured in millions of
theoretical calculations per second, or MTOPS, have increased almost
annually. Eight times in the last two decades, computer companies have
won a relaxation in the Department of Commerce's export limit, which
began at less than 160 MTOPS in the mid-1980s and has risen to more
than 190,000 MTOPS today.
That's far more lenient than the 1,500 MTOPS the Department of Defense
has deemed threatening to the United States' military superiority,
according to the Defense Department's Militarily Critical Technologies
List. A report published in 2002 by the U.S. General Accounting Office
found that most military applications of computer technology require
less than 20,000 MTOPS, including programs used to design and simulate
nuclear weapons. A currently exportable computer, such as a
32-processor Intel Itanium computer, could run 98 percent of the
applications used by the Department of Defense, the report said.
The gap causes many analysts to wonder exactly what the point of
export regulations are. The current policy limits the export of
computers having a processing power above a certain level to certain
countries, including Russia, India, Israel, Pakistan and China.
Calculated threat
Even modest systems have use in researching weapons of mass
destruction; experts estimate that the current export limit of 190,000
million theoretical operations per second (MTOPS) satisfies almost all
of the Department of Defense's computing needs.
MTOPS Military application Commercial equivalent
5,000 Joint Attack Strike Aircraft design Intel Pentium M processor, 1.5GHz
10,000 Ship's infrared search-and- track algorithm development Intel
Pentium 4 processor, 3.4GHz
15,000 Computational fluid dynamics to model extreme aircraft
turbulence AMD Dual Opteron, Model 248
20,000 Nuclear blast simulation (in conjunction with nuclear test
blasts) AMD Quad Opteron Model 842
25,000 Automatic target recognition template development AMD Quad
Opteron Model 846
50,000 3D reduced- physics simulation of nuclear weapon
applications Intel 8-way Itanium Processor
190,000 Satisfies 98 percent of Defense Dept. military computing
needs Intel 32-way Itanium Processor
Sources: Commercial numbers from Intel and AMD; military application
data from Center for International Security and Cooperation report on
export regulations (1998).
Further clouding the issue is the recent trend of building highly
capable systems by linking scores of relatively off-the-shelf parts, a
process known as clustering. Several of those countries whose imports
are limited, such as China and Russia, have sidestepped the
regulations by creating their own supercomputers using clusters of
hundreds or thousands of less-powerful systems. The Top500 list of
supercomputers, released last week, included five homegrown Chinese
computers, including one ranked No. 10. A Russian supercomputer ranked
391.
"The number of clustered systems on that list has really multiplied,"
said David Rose, director of import/export information security policy
for chipmaker Intel, a member of the Computer Coalition for
Responsible Exports. "Supercomputers are no longer difficult to
create."
Moreover, the current export controls, based on a computer's
theoretical performance, have widely been criticized as ineffectual
and unenforceable. The MTOPS measurement is no longer indicative of a
computer's true power and performance, researchers from industry,
academia and the General Accounting Office have concluded. Another GAO
report found that the Department of Commerce had fallen dangerously
behind in its inspections of foreign sites that have purchased U.S.
dual-use technology--that with both a commercial and military
use--such as supercomputers.
And the fact that the current exportable limit far exceeds the amount
of processing power needed for military applications has some analysts
scratching their heads.
"There is no linkage between computing power and military capability
any longer; in part because, if you want a bigger computer, you just
have to go out and buy a few more clusters," said James Lewis,
director of the Technology and Public Policy program at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies and a former export-control
negotiator for the U.S. Department of State. "There are so many
computers everywhere on earth, that it's impossible to stop."
An arms race
Not that previous administrations, particularly Ronald Reagan's,
haven't tried to control the flow. The proposed rules are the latest
battle in a decades-long war between computer companies and national
security hawks over the best way to limit the export of technology
that could hasten the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
The leapfrog race to ever-faster processors has frequently been
described as an "arms race." To many worried about the proliferation
of weapons of mass destruction, that's exactly what expanding computer
power represents.
"As the planet shows no sign of nearing the point where nuclear
weapons are banned, it is reasonable to assume that current or
aspiring nuclear weapons states will vigorously attempt to acquire
high-performance computers to advance their nuclear programs with a
degree of covertness hitherto impossible to achieve," Peter Leitner,
now the senior strategic trade advisor in the Office of the Secretary
of Defense, said in published comments from congressional testimony in
1998. The Defense Department did not make Leitner available to comment
for this article.
Until 1985, export of any computing systems to a country with a
communist government fell under the U.S. Export Administration Act and
was generally refused. The rapid growth of the personal computer
industry, and the increasing reliance on computer chips manufactured
abroad, made
"There is no linkage between computing power and military capability
any longer; in part because, if you want a bigger computer, you just
have to go out and buy a few more clusters."
--James Lewis
Center for Strategic and
International Studies
the continued restriction of mass-market computer systems much more
difficult, if not impossible. In 1984, the United States reached a
pact with Japan, the other major power in the computer chip industry,
to regulate the export of high-performance computers under the
Supercomputer Control Regime. The United States also used the
Coordinating Committee, established in 1949 to limit technology
transfer to the Soviet Union, as a forum to set international policy
on high-performance computers.
With the definition of supercomputers established, the industry
quickly started asking for relaxed export regulations. In January
1985, the Department of Commerce decontrolled the first PCs, allowing
the export of personal computers such as the IBM PC-XT. Three years
later, the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988 further
relaxed the restrictions to allow any computer under 160 MTOPS to be
exported without a license.
As computers became more popular and more powerful, pressure continued
to mount to ease the export regulations. In 1991, the United States
and Japan renewed their agreement and the first Bush administration
eased export restrictions to start at 195 MTOPS and higher. That
kicked off further easing of restrictions over the next decade. The
Clinton administration raised the maximum unlicensed export level five
times during its eight years, from 1,500 MTOPS in 1994 to 85,000 MTOPS
in 2001. The second Bush administration further raised the limit to
190,000 MTOPS in January 2002.
"Mind-boggling" legislation
Section 1404 of the appropriations bill would roll back the licensing
equation to a level not seen since 1994.
"The President shall require a license...for the export of goods or
technologies included on the Militarily Critical Technologies List,"
Section 1404 of the House bill states. That list cites a level of
1,500 MTOPS as being militarily critical.
The computer-export issue has already become a talking point in Sen.
John Kerry's presidential campaign.
Kerry promises that if he's elected president, he'll shift "the
emphasis of computer export controls from attempting to control widely
available business computers, to controlling the availability of
classified software created for applications such as weapons
development," according to the Kerry campaign's policy paper.
Yet, on that issue, Kerry may not differ much from his opponent. The
Bush administration has criticized that part of the legislation in its
Statement of Administration Policy for limiting the Executive Branch's
power, and listed it as the third most significant problem with the
bill.
"These requirements are contrary to the president's policy to refine
U.S. export control to protect truly critical technologies while
facilitating legitimate trade," the position paper stated. The paper,
however, did not promise to veto the bill if Section 1404 remained
intact, something the Bush administration pledged for its top two
concerns outlined in the position paper.
"The number of clustered systems on that list has really multiplied.
Supercomputers are no longer difficult to create."
--David Rose
Intel
Not only does the White House oppose that section of the legislation,
but a representative of the Office of the Secretary of Defense also
said it's not likely the Pentagon would support a bill that used the
list of critical technologies for export restrictions.
The Militarily Critical Technologies List "is not intended to be an
export-control list, neither can it function as one," a Defense
Department representative said.
Some analysts called the restriction a return to Cold War policies.
Seymore Goodman, professor of International Affairs and Computing at
the Georgia Institute of Technology and the author of two policy
papers used by the Clinton administration on the issue, stressed the
impossibility of restricting computers that no longer require entire
rooms to house them. Now smuggling a few more computer chips to expand
a cluster is easy, he said.
"If this gets through Congress, it is a regression of mind-boggling
proportions," Goodman said. "You cannot control anything that is made
by the millions and which you can put in your pocket."
Moreover, the rules are unlikely to prevent countries such as Taiwan
and China from producing for themselves and selling to other nations
computer chips exceeding the 1,500 MTOPS limit. In fact, developing
countries such as China may welcome any restriction on U.S.
competitors that help its own companies domestically, said Hoydysh of
the Computer Coalition for Responsible Exports.
"China is busy developing its own industry," he said. "To some extent,
the market penetration issues are welcomed by them, because it
protects their industry, without dealing with trade issues."
Some analysts believe the focus on controlling high-performance
computers has hurt national security, diverting resources away from
nonproliferation activities that have a higher payoff. If computer
exports are no longer controlled, the game is not lost, said Dale
Nielson, project leader of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's
Proliferation and Terrorism Prevention Program.
"If people put too much faith in (export controls), then they are
closing their eyes to the other things that can be done," he said. "I
think that there are enough other critical technologies that can be
controlled that people shouldn't see this as a last stance in
nonproliferation."
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