Bush Eases Computer Exports

AP ^ | 2002/01/03 | CHRISTOPHER NEWTON, Associated Press Writer

[ChaseR]

bttt

[Right Wing Professor]

I don't see much difference....

gw is directly allowing the sale of world-class technology to our enemies.

We could argue for hours about what constitutes world-class technology. However, if this is world-class technology, then Best Buy should be using it in an advertising slogan, because you can buy it there.

Unlike nuclear weapons, which take a considerable amount of economic resources; or chemical weapons, where amateurs will usually end up poisoning themselves rathert ahn someone else, a decent comp. sci. undergrad. can build and run a Beowulf cluster out of over-the-counter components. In fact, most of the clusters used in chemical research were put together by chemistry (not comp. sci.) graduate students - essentially amateurs. You can't get this genie back in the bottle.

[Austim]

If this had been Klintin, we here at FR would have hanged him!

Yes, I seem to recall posts here at FR chastising Clinton for permitting American computer technology to go to China. Now, when Bush is President he can call for easing computer exports and people at FR cheer with delight. Last week when President Bush extended MFN Trade Status to China people at Free Republic were interestingly quiet. However, when President Clinton extended most MFN Trade status to China the masses here at Free Republic called him a traitor.

[Mudboy Slim]

"Barksdale gave $2,000 to the Bush campaign..."

LOL...now I'm convinced...hang the dude...MUD

[rightwing2]

China's main nuclear weapons center is using U.S. supercomputers illegally to simulate warhead detonations without actual underground tests, The Washington Times has learned. Supercomputer sales have been restricted because they are crucial elements for designing and developing nuclear weapons, missiles and advanced conventional arms, according to defense officials. According to Clinton administration officials, the president hopes to dramatically ease export control on high-powered computers. "That's been the great worry about transfers of supercomputers," he said. "That they would be able to design a new generation of smaller warheads that can fit on smaller missiles or which can be MIRVed" - multiple, independently targetable re-entry vehicles, or multiple warheads.

The report stated that under relaxed export rules, China may have purchased as many as 603 high-speed computers between 1996 and 1998. In July, Mr. Clinton loosened the restrictions further to allow exports of machines capable of 6.5 billion operations per second, and in February announced he will allow sales of computers that carry out 12.5 billion operations per second.... The nation's most popular and powerful computer technology will be available to Russia, China, India and Pakistan because of a Bush administration decision to relax Cold War-era restrictions.

Bush is continuing the treasonous Clinton policy of appeasement of the Butchers of Beijing with this disasterous relaxation of export controls. Please note that the Washington Times reported that supercomputers capable of carrying out billions of operations per second are useful for developing more advanced nuclear weapons among other things. Clinton allowed export of computers capable of a mere 12.5 billion operations per second in February 2000. Now, President Bush, who has a sacred duty to put America's national security interests first has apparently betrayed the public trust by allowing the export of supercomputers to Russia and Communist China capable of 190 billion operations per second!

If US supercomputers capable of peforming 2 billion operations per second enable the ChiComs to develop more advanced nuclear weapons, think of what wonderweapons they will be able to design with US supercomputers that can do 190 billion operations per second!! This is HUGE! Essentially, this means that the ChiComs and the Russians can purchase virtually any US supercomputer on the market today at will courtesy of President Bush. These export controls must be tightened by Congress immediately. Unfortunately, the Congress has a pro-Communist Chinese majority consisting of members of both parties and will do nothing to stop this Bush betrayal. Get ready for a firesale as Communist China and the KGB-led Russian Federation trip all over each other to take advantage of this suicidal and pro-Communist US export policy.

[Scholastic]

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[Scholastic]

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[Poohbah]

rightwing2, the most powerful "supercomputer" in the world operates at 12.3 TRILLION floating-point operations per second ("flops"). It's at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and it's almost 100 times faster than the new export limit.

And it's perfectly legal to export from the United States.

It consists of 8,192 IBM RS/6000 servers running Linux in a Beowulf Cluster configuration. The specific model computer isn't an issue: and Intel or AMD box will do nicely for the task. If you're willing to plug more computers together, you can run an equally powerful cluster on old 80486 machines. The operating system isn't even from the US: the developer of Linux is Linus Torvalds, a Finnish citizen. Heck, the OS is available for a free download all over the world.

About all that the old export ceiling accomplished was to lock the US out of the supercomputer market and let the Europeans and Japanese firms monopolize it.

If you want to restrict the use of supercomputing power to the United States, blocking exports sure isn't the way to do it.

[Leto]

THe fact is that the pc you are currently using is more powerful than the supercomputers used for weapon simulations in the 1980's.

Cray's that were state of the art in the early 80 are obsolete boat anchors.

The idea that preventing computer sales will slow down our enemies is a joke. Better we should put GPS chips on the machine so we can tell where the R&D facilities are.