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On January 2, President Bush announced a relaxation of controls on computer exports. According to a White House Fact Sheet, the "President's decision will promote national security, enhance the effectiveness of our export control system and ease unnecessary regulatory burdens on both government and industry."
The main change is an increase in the processing capacity considered safe to export to a listed number of states - known as Tier 3 countries. Before the announcement, all exports to Tier 3 countries of computers with a processing capacity above 85,000 millions of theoretical operations per second (MTOPS) required approval from the Department of Commerce. The new processing threshold is to be set at 190,000 MTOPS.
The Tier 3 countries, as summarised by the White House, "include India, Pakistan, all of the Middle East/Maghreb, the former Soviet Union, China, Vietnam and parts of South Eastern Europe." As the Fact Sheet makes clear, the "United States will continue to maintain a virtual embargo on computer hardware and technology exports to Iraq, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Cuba, Sudan and Syria."
On January 11, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a rather scathing statement responding to the new regulations: "A few days ago, yet another 'liberalisation' of US high-performance computer hardware exports was announced in Washington. It does not escape our attention, however, that the announcement retains the openly discriminatory system, that has been continuing unchanged since the time of the Cold War, of dividing potential country importers of US computer hardware into different tiers by the 'degree of risk' of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery means. Significantly, Russia is again assigned to the last but one...tier of countries, far from the most 'trustworthy'. in the USA's opinion, in the non-proliferation field. We would like to hope that in the conditions of the [cooperative policy] line proclaimed by the President of the Russian Federation and the US President for the formation of a new strategic relationship, the US administration will in the nearest future revise this discriminatory system as well."
Reports: Fact Sheet - Changes to US Dual-Use Export Controls, The White House, January 2; Bush lifts speeds limits on computer exports, Reuters, January 2; Bush eases computer exports, Associated Press, January 3; Russia slams US blacklist as alliance wobbles, Reuters, January 11; Concerning US administration decision on computer export controls, Russian Foreign Ministry Statement, Document 41-11-01-2002, January 11.
© 2002 The Acronym Institute.