Posted on 01/03/2002 7:49:12 AM PST by truthandlife
Edited on 07/12/2004 3:50:23 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
President Bush yesterday more than doubled the limit on the speed of supercomputers that U.S. companies can sell to such countries as China, Pakistan and India, a move critics said endangers U.S. security and puts American troops at risk.
Under the new guidelines, U.S. producers of supercomputers can export hardware capable of running at 190,000 millions of theoretical operations per second without notifying the federal government. The current cap is 85,000 MTOPS.
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
Some corporations derive 50% of their sales overseas. Not with just China in mind, that is not forgotten. China is actually one of the smaller markets.
The pace of building newer and faster computers is outpacing several things:
1. Our government keeping up on more than one front. a) updating our OWN stuff with the latest equipment so that selling more stuff overseas won't be such a threat. b) with other nations ability to develop weapons. I am sure there is a c) d).. etc too.
In other words a 5 year old computer could aid in weapons development for the sole reason that the tech gap between the US and other countries is widening. Anything anyone has in the product line will help someone...
Trying to control every pocket calculator results in a big chaotic system where people drop the ball. That is when the controls don't work. Plus the idea that you can now buy 5 year old (former) "supercomputers" at a garage sale in Bangkok does not help prevent the bad guys from getting stuff.
The problem as criticised was that our government is not keeping up. They have 1990 export controls on 2002 product lines. Plus in a defense sense of the word they are not investing nearly enough in encryption development or whatever else there is.
Those foreign governments progress slowly. Our government progresses slowly too, and so far has drugg their feet on updating themselves. The only people not really sitting around doing 'little' in ways of new technology is the tech industry. In other words it seems like we have all this stuff laying around that no one uses yet.
What consoles me though is that at least Bush is coming to the realization that proliferation is going to happen and is taking pertinent measures. Missile Defense.
Keep in mind that just because someone has a computer does not mean they automatically can get a bomb or something.
You don't need to convince me that I don't want every freak on the block having these computers to make weapons. But what else are you going to do?
The push for NMD, the increase in intel funding, and alleviation of the 'post cold war; its ok' thinking is good.
Another difference between Bush and Clinton is that they were seperated by time, and overall security environments. Clinton was in an era where they were not funding intel nearly enough, there was no real push on NMD, and America was in an overall weaker position. In that overall environment making a decision about loosening export controls was definately not good, literally or politically. While Clinton may have won brownie points with the industries involved, he did not make his decisions in an overall environment. He had just one slice of the pie going and that was about it.
Bush on the other hand is retooling the whole focus of the military and pushing NMD. Then Sept 11 pushed everyone into giving more money to the intel community and forced everyone to invest in them. To be honest I feel a whole lot better about this in the new environment than I ever did in the old. Clinton was loosening controls, but at the same time not doing much in way of meeting threats.
While on the surface the decisions look the same, it is other things that make the difference.
Give me your honest opinion.
Figure up 2% for each of the mentioned...
7 areas are mentioned and some areas do more than 2% of corporate revenue, but at an average of 2% that would amount to almost 15% of corporate revenues, and in reality probably a lot more.
Most big corps in this industry get about 40-50% of their revenue outside the USA. They are making money off of development...mostly legit development...
Then take into account that most, probably 98% of those computers are used to develop countries infrastructure, such as telecom, or whatever...
the vast majority have total legit uses... but yet those corporations are sick of waiting 180 days to sell one 3 year old computer... and lose out on those development projects....
Here is another good read from super175, for those interested:
Jiang's heirs will bring about Cold War foe's vision
You are right though, NMD is no silver bullet. I never said it was, but I do think it is a really good tool in the arsenal of a comprehensive policy.
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