Supercomputer export link in National Security Committee report
From JYA's copy ("Purpose and Background" section, about 8 paragraphs down):
(3) It would direct the Secretary of Commerce to allow the export or re-export of encryption-capable software for non-military end-uses in any country, or computers using such software based on considerations of foreign availability. Importantly, the committee notes that section 3 of H.R. 695 would require the government to approve exports of high performance computers (so-called ``supercomputers'') if those computers contain encryption products or software that are commercially available. In the committee's view, this is one of the most serious consequences and flaws of the bill. Under this proposed arrangement, any company would be in a position to force the government to allow the export of even the most powerful supercomputer available in the United States, if they first loaded a piece of foreign-available encryption software on the supercomputer. As confirmed by Secretary Reinsch in his testimony before the committee, this provision would overturn the Spence-Dellums amendment to H.R. 1119, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1997, adopted by the House on June 19, 1997, by a vote of 332-88. That amendment would prevent the inadvertent export of supercomputers to questionable end users in countries of proliferation concern. Are we getting screwed by a false link to supercomputers? Ern
Are we getting screwed by a false link to supercomputers?
Supercomputers have been part of the Export Controls for a long time. Of course, a few years ago, "supercomputer == Cray-1" was the obvious definition. Eugene Brooks's "Attack of the Killer Micros" has hit that industry hard.* Some of the DEC Alpha machines hit that speed point, and lots of lobbying was started that gradually moved the limit. But now, "Cray-1 ~~ Pentium-133" for basic number-crunching, though there are still applications requiring really high memory bandwidth where the Cray-1 will outperform the Pentium, and the Crays have a much better I/O architecture than your basic PC (though PCIbus is no slouch, and Ultra-Wide-Hyper-SCSI stuff keeps improving as well.) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ * "Careful with that VAX, Eugene!". The "Attack of the Killer Micros" was Brooks's restatement of Moore's Law for the supercomputer industry, probably 10 years ago when I was still reading comp.arch. Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, stewarts@ix.netcom.com Regular Key PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In <199709181634.JAA26324@ohio.chromatic.com>, on 09/18/97 at 09:34 AM, Ernest Hua <hua@chromatic.com> said:
Are we getting screwed by a false link to supercomputers?
No we got screwed when these so-called "civil-liberties" groups got envolved. Never has anything good come out of legislation in DC (atleast nothing in the past 75yrs). There were several of us who warned about this, of cource if a lobbist isn't lobbying then he is out of a job, so it is no suprise that our warnings went unheeded. <sigh> "those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it". - -- - --------------------------------------------------------------- William H. Geiger III http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii Geiger Consulting Cooking With Warp 4.0 Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail. OS/2 PGP 2.6.3a at: http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii/pgpmr2.html - --------------------------------------------------------------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3a Charset: cp850 Comment: Registered_User_E-Secure_v1.1b1_ES000000 iQCVAwUBNCFq+49Co1n+aLhhAQGkgQQAgn1l6FL93b3MBuM+2NfAyjxaF/j2vrYz m4QcPVQrmWmbvRty6lhNP3gVlSOf6bVNSLnchroz1ZVY3ucrt4nf4SrXA53Q7NKz WNVDDham82qV6gEKnw8MUcVyPGT4rckiYssBuTJjxkqeanBmXzrQFhGs5Ob2Kk5a 4Qk5jiVqwyQ= =TBVW -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
participants (3)
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Bill Stewart -
Ernest Hua -
William H. Geiger III