LEXIS-NEXIS® Academic Universe-Document

LEXIS-NEXIS® Academic

July 2, 1999, Friday, Home Edition

SECTION: News; Pg. 1A

LENGTH: 614 words

HEADLINE: U.S. lifts computer export lid

BYLINE: Bob Deans, Cox Washington Bureau

SOURCE: AJC

DATELINE: Washington

BODY:
President Clinton took steps Thursday to make it easier for U.S. computer makers to export some of their most advanced wares to potential enemies of the United States.

The action reflects the dramatic gains in the speed and power of today's personal and business computers, which rival what were considered to be exotic supercomputers less than five years ago.

The export restrictions Clinton plans to relax originally were designed to keep advanced information technology out of the hands of countries such as Russia and China. The White House move amounts to an admission that the pace of computer advances has outstripped the ability of Cold War-era export controls to regulate them.

High-technology gadgets that once were the property of spymasters and smugglers now are the domain of shopping malls and mail-order catalogs.

The administration concluded that computers capable of performing up to 6.5 billion theoretical operations a second have become so widespread and easily obtainable that their sales cannot be controlled.

''These reforms are needed because of the extraordinarily rapid rate of technological change in the computer industry,'' Clinton said in a prepared statement Thursday. ''The number-crunching ability of a supercomputer that once filled a room and cost millions of dollars is now available in an inexpensive desktop computer.''

The decision, after months of analysis, represents a major victory for U.S. computer makers. They argued the controls were no longer effective because such machines are now widely available at prices well below $ 1,500 from Asian and European manufacturers.

Continuing the restrictions, the industry argued, could result in the loss of $ 4 billion worth of sales over the next four years to U.S. competitors overseas.
Clinton weighed that position against national security fears that relaxing export controls on powerful U.S. computers would trigger uncontrollable proliferation of advanced machines.

The technology presumably could be used to assist rival nations, pariah states and even terrorist groups in their efforts to build and deploy a new generation of threats to U.S. interests.

The threats, some fear, would include information warfare --- the attacking of computer systems --- high-tech espionage and the design and production of chemical, nuclear and biological weapons of mass destruction.

Clinton decided the existing export control regime --- passed by Congress in 1996 --- would fence U.S. companies out of the global market for about 5 million high-powered computers a year without having a decisive impact on U.S. security interests.

''Maintaining these controls would hurt U.S. exports without benefiting our national security,'' Clinton said.

Under current law, manufacturers must obtain federal approval to sell advanced computers to certain countries, which are divided into four categories according to the threat they pose to U.S. interests.

For example, manufacturers must get government approval to sell computers that perform more than 2 billion operations a second to China, India, Pakistan and the states of the former Soviet Union. Clinton has proposed eliminating the requirement for machines capable of performing 6.5 billion operations or fewer per second.

Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.), who led a congressional investigation into allegations of Chinese spying, wrote in a newspaper opinion article last week that such exports have been ''a great democratizing and liberating force.''

Clinton proposed no change in what amounts to an embargo on U.S. computer sales to so-called pariah states such as Iraq, North Korea, Libya, Cuba, Sudan and Syria.

LOAD-DATE: July 2, 1999