U.S. Export Controls:  Bush Relaxes Computer Export Controls

By David Ruppe

Global Security Newswire

Although he recently called for strengthening export controls, U.S. President George W. Bush yesterday announced a planned massive relaxation of U.S. national security export controls on high performance computers (HPCs) and microprocessors to states of nonproliferation concern (see GSN, Dec. 18).

The changes, made by an executive order signed by Bush and urged by the computer industry, would in 60 days remove government licensing and scrutiny of HPCs up to 190,000 MTOPS, or millions of theoretical operations per second, for military and civilian entities in “Tier 3” countries such as India, Pakistan, China, Russia, and all of the Middle East.

Former President Bill Clinton set the previous threshold at 85,000 MTOPS last year, on his last full day in office.

Bush also raised licensing requirements for general-purpose microprocessors from 6,500 MTOPS to 12,000 MTOPS.

The changes continue a trend of controversial, unilateral HPC export control relaxations started by the Clinton administration expressly designed to increase global trade of the U.S. industry as it develops increasingly powerful computer technologies.

“These changes will advance the president's goal of updating the U.S. export control system so that it protects U.S. national security, and at the same time, allows America's high-tech companies to innovate and successfully compete in today's marketplace,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan said in a statement similar to those issued by the Clinton White House accompanying earlier computer decontrols.  Click here to read White House statement.

“These reforms are needed due to the rapid rate of technological change in the computer industry,” said McClellan.

The White House announcement did not explain how or why U.S. national security is protected by the changes, although a fact sheet it issued did say the Commerce Department, which is responsible for restricting the exports, “will remind exporters of their duty to check suspicious circumstances and inquire about end-uses and end-users.”  Click here to read White House fact sheet.

HPC Advantages

Critics of the decision say it does not protect U.S. national security—that countries affected, such as China, India, Pakistan, Israel and Russia, could use the computers to more rapidly and covertly develop new nuclear weapons and ballistic missile capabilities, as well as other military technologies such as advanced encryption and code-breaking that could hasten erosion of U.S. military qualitative advantages.

Tight U.S. and allied Cold War restrictions on HPC exports were instrumental in giving U.S. forces a decisive qualitative edge in military hardware over the Soviet Union and other potential adversaries, becoming a decisive factor in the rapid Gulf War victory over Iraq, according to Stephen Bryen, who founded and headed the Pentagon’s technology security office during the Reagan administration.

“It’s one of the reasons we won the Cold War. [The Soviets] couldn’t modernize, upgrade their equipment, couldn’t match our Strategic Defense Initiative efforts … [and the lack of computing power] added to their costs in terms of people. Their design bureaus had to do it by hand,” he said.

A secret 1986 CIA analysis released last year, said the Soviet Union lagged behind the United States in supercomputing by about 10 years, and as a result required larger testing programs and engineering design teams, and greater development time and expense to produce new weapons systems of relatively poorer performance.  Click here to read CIA analysis.

“Computational capabilities, as they improve, they speed up the solutions to very tough problems. However, you can solve those problems without having the very best machines or advanced computational capability,” according to Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Washington, and a Defense Department nonproliferation official during the first Bush administration. “The point isn’t that you need these things, it’s that they help.”

Vow to Tighten Controls

Bush’s decision comes less than a month after his expressed intention to step up U.S. export controls on technologies that could be used to develop weapons of mass destruction.

“To meet our new threats, I have directed my national security advisor and my homeland security director to develop a comprehensive strategy on proliferation,” Bush said in a Dec. 11 speech on the future of the U.S. military at the Citadel military academy, in Charleston, S.C.  Click here to read Bush speech.

“Working with other countries, we will strengthen nonproliferation treaties and toughen export controls. Together we must keep the world's most dangerous technologies out of the world's most dangerous people,” Bush said.

“The contrast between the speech at the Citadel and his action puts pressure on them to somehow come up with a broader nonproliferation agenda,” Sokolski said.

Nonproliferation Coordination

The eased controls could place U.S. HPC manufacturers well in front of the handful of other HPC-supplying countries.

HPC exports are subject to a multilateral regime, the Wassenaar Arrangement, whereby member countries agree to similarly restrict exports of technologies with military applications.

“The administration has consulted with other nations, including members of the Wassenaar Arrangement, to ensure that they understand the basis for these decisions. We are committed to working closely with them to adjust multilateral controls to reflect technological advances and collective security concerns,” the White House said in a fact sheet on the changes.

Wassenaar controls on HPC exports were raised from 6,500 to 28,000 MTOPS in December 2000. Delegates met in Vienna last month to discuss further export control policy changes, including changes for HPCs. Unable to reach consensus, they will meet again next month.  Click here for a summary of Wassenaar changes made in December 2000.

The Bush announcement could complicate U.S. efforts to curb nonproliferation to rogue states, said Sokolski.

“If you broaden what you are trying to do with regard to Iraq and Iran and other places, you better have some other routine to argue well, yes, we decontrolled computers, but that does not argue for lifting controls with regard to these states … I think it requires a bit of Kabuki.”

Consensus Within the Administration

Previous relaxations of U.S. HPC controls have received fairly little press scrutiny, perhaps because of the general unanimity of support for the changes among senior policy-makers during the Clinton administration and now the Bush administration.

When Bush notified the relevant congressional committees of his decision in a letter sent Dec. 28, he said the changes were made “based on the recommendation of the departments of State, Defense, Commerce, and Energy.”  Click here to read Bush letter.

Critics of the eased controls have charged that policy-makers have failed to inform themselves of their strategic implications.

“In hearings a couple of months ago, the [General Accounting Office] found that, contrary to a legal requirement, the Clinton administration never conducted national security analysis with regard to what they were decontrolling,” Senator Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.), said last April.

A GAO analysis last March found Clinton’s January changes were “not adequately justified,” saying presidential reporting to Congress failed to “address all militarily significant uses for computers at the new thresholds and assess the national security impact of such uses, as required by law.”  Click here to read GAO report.

A joint 1998 Defense and Commerce Department-sponsored study estimated that militaries could perform three-dimensional modeling of submarines on computers at 75,000 MTOPS.

It said computers at 85,000 could perform some 300 to 500 militarily significant applications currently used by the Defense Department.

The Bush administration on Dec. 28 also provided Congress a report, which could not be obtained by press time, explaining its rationale for the changes.

The GAO analysis said the United States, as a result of the Clinton decision, would need to rely more heavily on U.S. computer vendors to know their customers, and whether they might use the technology for proliferation purposes. “Past evidence has shown this reliance may be misplaced,” the GAO said.

The GAO added that increased thresholds would also reduce U.S. information that might be useful for detecting patterns of proliferation activity, and end reporting requirements on how the computers are used.

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Al-Qaeda:  Deadly Weapons Tested on Animals

Evidence has surfaced indicating that al-Qaeda tested chemical weapons on animals and suggesting that the terrorist network was researching how to use nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, the London Times reported Saturday (see GSN, Jan. 2).

According to documents obtained from several al-Qaeda houses in Kabul, al-Qaeda was studying theories of “superguns,” how to make a “dirty” nuclear device and how to make large batches of botulin poison that would kill 2,000 people (see GSN, Nov. 28).  Members were also training to assassinate Middle Eastern leaders, according to the documents.

Experts said al-Qaeda’s studies of weapons of mass destruction were crude but that the organization’s interest in the weapons was obvious, according to the Times.  Evidence found in al-Qaeda houses included guides for producing chemical weapons that could kill thousands of people.  The Times found evidence that al-Qaeda had produced some chemical weapons, including cyanide gas, and tested them on rabbits.

A chart of radioactive elements found among the documents contained all the elements needed for constructing a “dirty” bomb, said John Large, a British nuclear consultant.  “This type of table is only of interest to a nuclear scientist,” he said.  Al-Qaeda lacks the means to produce a long-range missile or nuclear device, but members were trying to find ways to manufacture or acquire such weapons, Large said.

Al-Qaeda members from different countries and with different educational levels compiled the information found in the documents the Times obtained.  The documents, many of them resembling instructional leaflets, were reproduced for distribution to others, the Times reported.  Autonomous cells of the al-Qaeda network conducted separate experiments.

“Rather than being assured by al-Qaeda’s diversity, in fact this proves a huge problem to the Western security forces,” an intelligence expert told the Times.  “What we can see is the work of different, potentially self-replicating cells, united only by an ideal.  They will be far more difficult to extinguish than a centrally organized terrorist force” (Anthony Loyd, London Times, Dec. 29).

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Al-Qaeda:  New Evidence of Chemical and Biological Weapons Pursuit

A computer formerly used by al-Qaeda members in Kabul contained documents about al-Qaeda chemical and biological weapon programs, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.  Files on the computer provided evidence that al-Qaeda began a project, code-named al-Zabadi (“curdled milk” in Arabic), to develop chemical and biological weapons after the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa (see GSN, Dec. 17).  Al-Qaeda had planned to spend $2,000 to $4,000 to begin the project, according to a 1999 file.  The files do not include information on specific planned attacks, according to the Journal.

The files said an al-Qaeda operative named Dr. Zawahri had discussed the program with an Egyptian scientist called Abu Khabab.  A letter written under an alias for Zawahri said Abu Khabab had suggested a nerve gas composed of insecticides with a chemical additive to increase penetration into the skin, and Abu Khabab had provided a computer disk with details of the substance. 

Other evidence has surfaced that Abu Khabab experimented with a nerve gas on dogs and rabbits at a camp near Jalalabad in Afghanistan (see GSN, Nov. 16).  In a later letter, the author said he was pleased with Abu Khabab’s “significant progress.”

A 1999 memo on the computer provided instructions for constructing a laboratory coated with oil paint for easily cleaning insecticides, but the memo noted electricity had to be installed before laboratory construction could begin.  The computer files did not provide evidence of the extent of al-Qaeda’s program, the Journal reported.

A 1999 memo, apparently written by Zawahri, said chemical and biological weapons were as destructive as nuclear weapons and expressed regret that al-Qaeda was slow to realize their potential.  “We only became aware of them when the enemy drew our attention to them by repeatedly expressing concern that they can be produced simply,” the memo said.

The memo said al-Qaeda members should read about the weapons, including a history of U.S. chemical and biological weapons programs and a study on napalm.  A progress report on the al-Zabadi program said a lack of specialists had hindered the program and suggested recruiting experts.  Another memo said al-Qaeda should use educational institutions to disguise their activities and gain access to specialists.

The computer also contained a table of lethal doses for poisons according to body weight and a list of lethal germs, including anthrax and Rocky Mountain spotted fever.  Another file provided instructions for manufacturing bombs from common items such as alarm clocks.

Al-Qaeda leaders used the computer for four years in Kabul.  A Wall Street Journal reporter bought the computer files for $1,100 after the Taliban and al-Qaeda fled Kabul, the newspaper reported.  U.S. officials said the files were authentic and provided a significant amount of information about the organization (Cullison and Higgins, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 31).

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Pakistan:  Suspect Scientists Have Assets Frozen

Pakistan froze the assets of former nuclear scientist Sultan Bashiru-din Mehmood due to accusations he cooperated with Osama bin Laden, Rawalpindi Jang reported Sunday (see GSN, Dec. 17).  Former scientists Chaudry Abdul Majid and Mohammad Tufail were also listed on a memo issued from the State Bank of Pakistan requesting banks freeze their assets (Rawalpindi Jang, Dec. 30 in FBIS-NES, Dec. 31).

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