Bush asked to drop export controls on supercomputers
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SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Tuesday, June 12, 2001
The Bush administration is again being urged to discard
export controls on advanced computers.
A new report maintains that U.S. controls on computer exports are
useless
because software is no longer the key to integrate weapons systems. The
report by the the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International
Studies asserts that standard laptops have more computer power than
supercomputers of the early 1990s and can be used to operate weapons
systems.
"Computing power is considerably less important for building modern
weapons than is the ability to integrate materials, manufacturing equipment
and technology," the report says. "The problem is that the supercomputer of
1990 Ñ a computer then manufactured only in the dozens of units Ñ had by
the year 2000 become the laptop manufactured in the hundreds of thousands."
The administration appears to agree and is urging Congress to drop
restrictions on export controls. This includes the classification of
computers by millions of theoretical operations per second, or MTOPS.
The report said the standard is outdated. The future-generation F-22
fighter-jet was designed by Lockheed Martin 958 MTOPS Cray supercomputer. A
Pentium 3 chip found in laptops priced at $2,600 has 10 times the number of
MTOPS.
The leading opponents of the new approach have been Republican chairmen
of key committees. But the shift to Democratic control has deprived the
Republicans of much of their power.
The Washington center gathered a bipartisan commission to prepare the
report. The panel included two former CIA directors, James Schlesinger and
R. James Woolsey.
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