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The sale or transfer of supercomputers is, and has long been, a sensitive national security issue. It is an issue that not only directly affects the United States, but also is of great importance to America's friends and allies. Ultimately, it is a subject that affects international security and world peace. In this connection I believe the sale of 46 or more supercomputers to China is a risk to American national security, and it is a threat to many of our allies and friends. This includes, but is not limited to, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Korea in the Pacific region and our allies and friends in the Middle East, because of China's arms sales to Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Syria.
My expertise is in technology policy. Technology policy considers how to enhance technology and America's technology leadership and also how to prevent the loss of technology to potential adversaries.
In my years of service in the Defense Department as the Deputy under Secretary of Defense for Trade Security Policy, and as the founder and first director of the Defense Technology Security Administration, I was closely involved in the issue of safeguarding supercomputers. I helped negotiate and implement the 1986 U.S.-Japan Supercomputer Agreement, which set up a system to carefully monitor and regulate sales of supercomputers.
It should be emphasized that regulations on supercomputers had nothing to do with the Cold War. Our interest in working with Japan was to make sure that supercomputers were not used to help develop weapons of mass destruction. In the case of China I am convinced that U.S. supercomputer sales are being used precisely for this purpose.
Our policy of technology transfer to China is, in many respects, more extreme than what the Europeans and the United States did in transferring technology to Saddam Hussein before the Gulf War.
In the case of Iraq, Saddam got hold of nuclear technology, missile manufacturing know-how, and chemical and biological weapons from Western companies. The acquisition of these capabilities made him much more dangerous than he otherwise might have been. In my opinion, we were very lucky that Saddam jumped the gun and invaded Kuwait before his nuclear weapons capability was in place.
In the case of China, we are transferring much. more sophisticated technology than anyone ever sold to Iraq. The consequence of this is that China's military will have greater sway over decisions in China that will affect American national security.
China is seeking to enhance its nuclear weapons and their delivery systems. Examples include adding MIRV (multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles) capabilities to Chinese ICBM's and manufacturing small nuclear warheads for extended range cruise missiles.
Supercomputers are important for China to achieve these goals. Having them will enable China to speed up the design and development process by many years, to develop advanced weapons covertly and to build far more accurate nuclear systems that can be used against military targets.
China can use supercomputers to enhance many other weapons programs. For example, China can work out the best way to disperse chemical and biological weapons, can design advanced stealth aircraft and missiles, can improve its ability to detect submarines (enhanced ASW), and can intercept and crack encrypted communications. China has already been given enough supercomputer power to break any commercial encryption program, such as those in use today by financial institutions. Giving China supercomputers also enhances her ability to use advanced information warfare techniques, such as attacking our own computer infrastructure.
Chinese acquisition of additional nuclear capabilities, and the more rapid modernization of her conventional systems, will make our ability to maintain peace in the region surrounding China more difficult. Chinese nuclear threats will have to be taken more seriously.
Last year during China's military exercise in the Taiwan straits, I was in Taiwan with former CIA Director Jim Woolsey and Admiral Leon "Bud" Edney. While China may only have been attempting to disrupt the Taiwanese elections, it was far from a sure thing that China would not expand its military exercise (which included live missile firings that closed off important parts of the Taiwan straits) into an actual attack on Taiwan. The dispatch of two of our aircraft carrier Task Forces to the Straits area acted as a deterrent to China -in fact, it shocked the Chinese. At one point a senior Chinese official, in reaction to the appearance of the Task Forces, threatened to incinerate Los Angeles in retaliation.
The sale of supercomputers to China should be regarded as a crazy policy. Logic dictates an urgent reevaluation of our technology transfer policy to China based on Chinese behavior in the Taiwan straits and its threats against Taiwan. But, instead of a reassessment, reckless transfers of supercomputers to China not only continue but have been stepped up.
It is even more shocking to realize that neither the Defense Department, the CIA nor the Commerce Department, which has licensing authority for supercomputers, had any idea where the supercomputers were going."Ask me no questions, I will tell you no lies" seems to be the official policy.
Why did this happen? One reason is the Commerce Department set up a system to transfer supercomputers where reporting is not required. In fact, the only reason anybody bothered to find out what was going on was the public disclosure by the Russians that they had acquired supercomputers from the United States for two of their nuclear weapons facilities.
From what can be pieced together from public sources, the situation in China is much worse and far more dangerous.
Consider the supercomputer system sold to the Chinese Academy of Sciences. I understand this is a Silicon Graphics Challenge XL supercomputer system made up of some 32 processors. According to public data, this single system is faster than two- thirds of the classified systems available to the Defense Department, including one NSA site, the U.S. Naval Underwater Weapons Center, U.S. Army TACOK the Defense Science Organizations and the U.S. Air Force/National Test Facility.
The Academy of Sciences in China is deeply involved in nuclear programs. In fact, in 1987 when I was in China I toured one of the Academy's nuclear research facilities.
According to research done by an independent expert, the supercomputer system at the Chinese Academy of Sciences installation is sitting behind a firewall" (a Cisco router) Basically, it is set up so that many parts of the system are accessible only by computers and networks on the restricted side of the firewall.
A computer "firewall" is a security device that prevents an outsider from having access to all or part of a computer system. A firewall can be software, hardware or a combination of both.
The system has about a dozen SGI workstations that are clearly identifiable by names like "Indigo" and "Iris", which are particular SGI models. Then there are other workstations that use the names of flowers and animals. It would seem these other workstations are part of the hidden network of the supercomputer complex. The network is set up so that the public part of it can be connected to the outside world. The rest of the system is what we would call a "classified" system". The outside has no access to it.
The classified networks in China are probably encrypted. The U.S. has sold encryption technology to China.
The computer networks in China are state of the art and are supplied primarily by the United States. They are supported by digital telecommunications systems.
It is United States policy to prohibit sales of supercomputers for any nuclear, chemical, biological or missile end use. There is good reason to believe this prohibition has been effectively bypassed.
There is information that U.S. companies selling supercomputers understand they will be used for military and nuclear purposes. For example, one U.S. company marketing supercomputers is in a joint venture with a state-owned aerospace enterprise and focuses on selling high-end computers to the aerospace industry in China, much of which is involved in military work. Another distributor of supercomputers in China, Geotech, says that its target market for supercomputers includes "oil and gas industries , research institutes and defense." And, in any case, all Chinese supercomputer assets are in networks and, as we have seen, major parts of these networks are closed. There are those who say that supercomputers going to China are only for basic scientific research. But, as is well known and accepted, there is no need to have closed, secure network for basic research.
So far, the Department of Commerce has disclosed that 46 supercomputers have been sold to China over the past eighteen months. Actually, the number may be far higher. There are three reasons to distrust the Commerce Department's disclosure:
1. The Commerce Department only recently asked U.S. companies for data on supercomputers they sold to China. Not all the companies have reported yet.
2. Powerful computers slightly under the 2,000 MTOP (Millions of Theoretical Operations Per Second) threshold are supercomputers and perform the same way as those just above the 2,000 MTOP regulatory limit, are not counted by the Commerce Department.
3. Many of the less than 2,000 MTOP machines in China may have been upgraded by adding additional processors. Machines made by SGI, Convex (Hewlett Packard), Digital Equipment and others can be upgraded by adding additional processors.
4. Additional computing power can be obtained by special software for networking parallel-processor type machines.
It is important to know the real number of machines sold, the networks they are hooked into, and to determine how many are part of the classified system China is constructing. In addition, it is important to find out the types of software that have been sold for these computers, and the likely uses there may be for the software. Above all, it is vital to assess how these acquisitions will impact on U.S. defense programs and policies.
The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs Board of Directors made the following recommendations earlier this month, which I support. They are:
1. Suspend the current regulations on High Performance Computers, restoring the previous validated licensing requirement for supercomputers.
2. Demand a full accounting of supercomputer sales under the current export regime.
3. Conduct a full assessment of the impact of computer sales on national security and on weapons proliferation.
4. Assess, using the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency, who is seeking supercomputers and why they are wanted.
5. Develop and propose an effective multilateral export licensing system.
This
material is produced independently for NTI by the James Martin
Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of
International Studies and does not necessarily reflect the
opinions of and has not been independently verified by NTI or
its directors, officers, employees, agents. Copyright © 2007 by
MIIS.
