Liberty's Blog

Another Bonehead Defense Bill

A House version of a new Defense bill would cause result in having to liscence for export anything faster than a 650 MHZ P3.

The dramatic tightening of export regulations is included in the National Defense Authorization Act, an annual military funding bill that has already passed the U.S. House of Representatives. Though the proposed rules are only a tiny portion of the 630-page bill, they could have a devastating impact on the computer industry.

"It would bring exports to a grinding halt," said Dan Hoydish, director of trade, public policy and government affairs for Unisys and chairman of the Computer Coalition for Responsible Exports, a trade group that counts many major technology companies as members. "We wouldn't be asking for 20 export licenses in a year, we would be asking for 20,000 in a day."
Moreover, the proposed rules would apply to exports destined for any country, including U.S. allies.

What is stupid about this is that many of the motherboards and even the computers themselves are not even made in America. Of course the chips and computers could be sold to almost any country as long as they were properly liscenced. Smuggling would be pretty much a mater of course to prevent the certain country's agency's from getting them.
Fotrunately:

The controversial section is not included in a U.S. Senate version of the bill that passed last week. That means the fate of the proposed rules, known as Section 1404, will be determined by negotiations between the House and the Senate, currently slated for later this month.

Whick means that there is a possibility that a surge of common sense is possible before this bill is passed. Unfortunately there are still boneheads who will try to defend this idiotic bill:

A representative of the House Armed Services Committee, which drafted the amendment to the original House bill, said the legislation would reverse a trend that has weakened U.S. national security and made the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction much more likely. Supercomputers can be used in nuclear-weapons research, as well as in cryptography, antisubmarine warfare and intelligence activities.

"There shouldn't be much daylight between the Department of Defense and Commerce about what requires a license," said Harald Stavenas, spokesman for Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., who chairs the House Armed Services Committee. "The problem is that there is. Commerce (isn't controlling) things that have critical military applications."

We are tralking about desk/and laptop computers here not cannons!

The current policy limits the export of computers having a processing power above a certain level to certain countries, including Russia, India, Israel, Pakistan and China.

What makes this even sillier is that powerful computers are bbuilt by talkin not so exotic computers networking them, and using the multiple computers in co-operatiuon with each other.

Further clouding the issue is the recent trend of building highly capable systems by linking scores of relatively off-the-shelf parts, a process known as clustering. Several of those countries whose imports are limited, such as China and Russia, have sidestepped the regulations by creating their own supercomputers using clusters of hundreds or thousands of less-powerful systems. The Top500 list of supercomputers, released last week, included five homegrown Chinese computers, including one ranked No. 10. A Russian supercomputer ranked 391.

"The number of clustered systems on that list has really multiplied," said David Rose, director of import/export information security policy for chipmaker Intel, a member of the Computer Coalition for Responsible Exports. "Supercomputers are no longer difficult to create."

This could prove a boon to the Chinese who are attempting to develop their own chips. Creating a market that won't require the red tape.

posted by Liberty @ 1:46 PM