Us Seeks Permanent Tab On Indias Use Of Supercomputers
The US is planning to issue new regulations under which it will permanently peek into all end-uses to which India, China, Russia, Pakistan and Israel put any supercomputers of American build.
Earlier, the US had demanded spot checks to prevent misuse for military purposes but now it wants everything covered, even peaceful uses, under the regulations scheduled to be issued this week by the US Commerce Department.
The new rules have been prepared by the Export Control Administration while legislation with similar intent is already under preparation by Senator Thad Cochran, the Washington Post reported on Sunday.
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Cochrans original target, according to the Journal of Commerce, was Russia and China. But the Clinton admimistration, which seeks good relations with Beijing and does not want relations with Russia to deteriorate further, apparently threw in India, Pakistan and Israel for good measure so that the bitter pill will hopefully be swallowed by the former two, the journal said. It said China had so far barred post-shipment inspections and Russia refused to cooperate with US government inquiries. India has built its own supercomputers, much more efficient and cheaper than their American counterparts, after Washington refused to sell New Delhi its products.
The Post said the aim of the proposed regulations was to stanch the flow of computing power to countries that might develop nuclear arms. It said computer-makers were already contending that the proposed regulations would slow their exports, not weapons development. The rationale advanced by the administration, according to critics, is that the commerce department wants to clarify what both companies and the government must do to implement a law congress passed last year.
That law calls for controls on sales of computers that can perform from 2,000 to 7,000 millions of theoretical operations per second (mtops).
This class of machines includes high-end computer workstations and sophisticated servers made by companies such as Hewlett Packard, IBM, Digital Equipment Corp, Sun Microsystems Inc and Silicon Graphics Inc.
In the past, the post said, once sales of supercomputers were approved and completed, Commerce Department officials would do spot checks to ensure that the machines were used in the ways permitted by the export licence.