The Militarily Critical Technologies List (MCTL) tersely describes the full range of technologies controlled by the ITAR, EAR and Regimes like the Wassenaar Arrangment. Information systems and cryptography are covered in Section 8 of the MCTL which we've put with the TOC at: http://jya.com/mctl08.htm It provides an informative chart that compares information systems capabilities for 27 nations, and the leaders in a few cases are surprising. The document summarizes crypto: 1. Cryptanalytic Technologies (for breaking ciphertext): Critical Parameters: Due to the numerous variables required to implement an information security scheme and the wide range of products and services in which information security can be deployed this technology does not lend itself to specifically enumerated parameters. Critical Materials: None identified. Unique Equipment: Computers of 10,000 CTP, or greater, and software specially designed to test the ability of cryptanalytic systems to perform key searches, statistical, linear and differential cryptanalyses; and factor 110 decimal digit, or larger, numbers. Unique Software: Operating systems and applications for massively parallel cryptanalytic processors (> 16 processors) specially designed to perform statistical, linear and differential cryptanalyses, exhaustive key searches and quadratic and number field sieve factoring. Control Regimes: WA ML 11, 21; WA IL Cat 5. 2. Cryptographic Technologies (for keeping data secure): Critical Parameters: Due to the numerous variables required to implement an information security scheme and the wide range of products and services in which information security can be deployed this technology does not lend itself to specifically enumerated parameters. Critical Materials: None identified. Unique Equipment: Computers of 10,000 CTP, or greater, and software specially designed to perform Randomness, Correlation, Weak Key and Symmetry Under Complementation tests to evaluate the strength of new USG encryption algorithms during development. Unique Software: The software providing the cryptographic functionality must be specially designed and integrated into each application. The system engineering and integration, user system interface, algorithms and key generators must have zero defects. Control Regimes: WA ML 11, 21; WA IL Cat 5. The document states, "A high rate of IS knowledge transfer from the US to foreign competitors occurs through open source US trade journals, technical literature, various international fora, the Internet and intelligence. As a result, the US technology leadership in communications and computer systems has declined in recent years relative to Europe and Japan." Section 9 covers Information Warfare Technology and will interest those who wonder what technologies may be more effective than cryptography for information security, as the NRC Crypto Report suggested. We've put this section (in its original PDF format) at: http://jya.com/mcsec09.pdf (122K)