Bush Advisor Says Scrap Computer Export Control Restrictions

Washington, D.C. -- If Bush adopts Perle`s recommendations on export controls it would put the Texas governor sharply at odds with a bloc of GOP members of Congress who have demanded tighter restrictions on exports of commercial satellites and high-speed computers, particularly to China.

Perle, who ran the export control programs as an assistant defense secretary under President Ronald Reagan, said the old rules were particularly outdated in dealing with computer exports. "I don`t think we can effectively control raw computing power," he said. "There`s too much available and it only indirectly contributes to military power. "So it would be foolish to try to control computer exports," Perle said.

Although he would like to restrict the distribution of "a small category of computers that are used in nuclear weapons development," Perle said, "even here I would be reluctant to try to control them by the licensing process." Perle suggested replacing the current attempts to control dangerous technologies through the export licensing process run by the Defense, State and Commerce departments, with a "more conventional police activity to determine who the end user will be."

He further suggested that the job of determining the final recipient of sensitive technologies could be given to private contractors, instead of government officials. "If we focus not on what`s being exported but on who`s doing the importing, we could do a better job" of protecting U.S. security, he said.

Perle`s views on high-technology exports are significant because of his record as a hard-liner on blocking the flow of sensitive material to the old Soviet Union and because of his current role as a key adviser to Bush, the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination.

Current U.S. export policies impose different restrictions on what can be sold to nations depending on whether they are considered close allies, friendly neutrals or potential adversaries. For example, exports of "supercomputers" are tightly limited to potentially hostile nations, such as China, Libya, Iraq and North Korea.

But U.S. computer industry officials insist that the current definition of a "supercomputer" a machine capable of more than 2,000 MTOPs, or millions of theoretical operations per second is unrealistically low. Perle also discounted the value of another practice favored by the GOP hard-liners in Congress unilateral economic sanctions against unfriendly nations. Such restrictions on selling even non-military items to countries, such as Cuba, "not only don`t work, they can be counter-productive," he said.

For more information about CCRE and the issues surrounding export controls, visit the CCRE website at: www.ccre.net.