LEXIS-NEXIS® Academic Universe-Document

LEXIS-NEXIS® Academic

May 27, 2000, Saturday

SECTION: BUSINESS;Pg. C-1

LENGTH: 606 words

HEADLINE: Experts say U.S. lax on export limits

BYLINE: Otto Kreisher; COPLEY NEWS SERVICE

BODY:
WASHINGTON -- The government's method of controlling exports of high-speed computers and other technology with military uses does not adequately assess the national security risks of such sales, government watchdogs told a Senate committee yesterday.

That criticism, and the committee chairman's reaction to it, could spell trouble for the push by the computer and high-tech industries to ease restrictions on selling the latest technology to foreign customers.

But a representative of the computer industry argued that the current constraints on exports hurt national security by reducing the profits that pay for research needed to maintain America's technological superiority. Officials from the General Accounting Office and the Pentagon's inspector general's office and a leading arms-control expert criticized the Clinton administration's policies for determining what kinds of computers and other products with potential military uses can be exported.

"We are concerned that the executive branch has not clearly assessed the dangers of exporting high-speed computers," GAO official Harold Johnson told the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee.

Since 1993, Johnson said, the administration has adjusted the restrictions on computer exports to potential adversaries, each time allowing more powerful computers to be sold. Supporters of the administration action say technological advancements have made such computers commonplace and they are being sold by other countries.

Also appearing before the committee were Assistant Pentagon Inspector General Robert Lieberman and arms-control expert Gary Milhollin. They also criticized administration and congressional plans to make it easier to remove computers and other items with possible military use from export-control restrictions.

Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, said the definitions in a Senate bill to rewrite the Export Administration Act were poorly written.

He cited high-speed computers and four components of nuclear weapons or missiles that would become unrestricted in the export bill.

"We're not talking about dollars and cents, we're talking about actual threats to our troops," Milhollin said.

Committee Chairman Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., said the industries' desire to compete in foreign markets and the government's need to protect national security represent "a classic case of competing interests. Both are valid.

"But it seems that all the movement is in one direction," Thompson said, referring to the Clinton administration's efforts to loosen restrictions on high-speed computers.

Thompson and Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, the panel's senior Democrat, appeared troubled by the criticism of the Senate's export control legislation to cut the congressional review of changes to the computer export limits from 180 days to 30 days.

But the bill, which would also reauthorize the export act, was pulled from the Senate floor this month because of opposition by several influential senators. Thompson said he considered the one-month delay too short.

The House approved language in the defense authorization bill to cut the computer review to 60 days.

Dan Hoydysh, a Unisys executive representing the Computer Coalition for Responsible Exports, complained that the current export control system is broken.

The delays in approving more powerful computers for export are unworkable when the top speed of business computers can double in months, Hoydysh said. And trying to restrict U.S. sales of a commodity produced by a dozen other nations "attempts to control the uncontrollable," he said.

LOAD-DATE: May 30, 2000