Dr. Strangelove's last hurrah

Electronic News, May 11, 1992 by Jack Robertson

WASHINGTON -- Uncle Sam--one of the last in the world still spurning the metric system--is fast becoming the last to hang stubbornly on to the remnants of high-technology export controls. The Pentagon and intelligence community hardliners are fighting a rear-guard delaying action to retain the last vestiges of curbs, even though the Evil Empire and Cold War threat no longer exist.

The rest of the world, meanwhile, is rushing to transfuse sagging economies by exporting leading-edge products and technology as widely as possible. Where the last lingering Free World CoCom (Coordinating Committee) curbs may get in the way, other nations often simply "interpret" the guidelines to their own advantage to clear exports.

Even that is becoming less of a problem, however, as CoCom continues to scrap obsolete export barriers to the former Soviet Union republics.

U.S. paranoiacs have shifted the export control fight from "national security" grounds under the CoCom aegis to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and chemical warfare export curbs. Only one problem: many of the global trading powers haven't firmly signed on to these controls and no "CoCom" type multilateral process has been set up to govern such restrictions.

American high-tech companies so far have fended off threatened moves by the DOD and spy hard hats to impose rigid unilateral U.S. nuclear and chem warfare controls. But this stand-off has left the U.S. situation in suspended animation: the country wobbles with no firm national policy, while hardline snipers try to pick off scattered export requests, or stall any action.

The spy community has also come up with a new threat to replace the Cold War antagonists. The CIA and FBI have told Congress that industrial and technology espionage by foreign powers have replaced Communist spies as the greatest menace to the country. Of couse any company with a proprietary edge in technology doesn't need the FBI to tell it that safeguarding this intellectual property is Job One. Industry definitely doesn't need another round of ill-conceived rigid technology transfer controls to guard against this type of spying.

As always, unilateral U.S. West-West controls become more burdensome to U.S. high-tech industry than any curbs on shipments to other countries. Often this is merely an infuriatingly protracted paperwork delay, with export approval almost always given in the end. But with comparable technology increasingly available outside the U.S., other countries can simply buy from non-American suppliers and avoid the hassle with Uncle Sam.

The Bush Administration isn't even consistent in the West-West state-of-the-art trade. The White House, NASA, Commerce and Treasury are promoting international joint ventures in space and science -- to sign partners to share soaring costs. But when U.S. firms join hands with the invited offshore partners, they frequently run into the same obnoxious export control swamp trying to get approval to ship leading-edge systems and technology.

"Industry is working hard with government to clear up the roadblocks but all too often we still run into problems getting export approval to ship some electronic devices to foreign partners in a joint space or scientific project set up by the U.S.," said Jay Davis, vice president and general manager of Harris Semiconductor military and aerospace division.

Now U.S. concerns are valid in trying to block technology shipments to terrorist powers and to block nuclear arms proliferation. But as sordid recent history proves, even Uncle Sam himself was not above slipping embargoed technology to such tyrants as Saddam Hussein when it served perceived self-interest at the time. The molasses speed at which the world powers are moving to firm up nuclear and chem warfare export controls is not very reassuring either.

The U.S. Strangeloves also have been strangely silent about the greatest nuclear technology diversion of all -- the dismantling of the former Soviet nuclear establishment poses a frightening threat of expertise and material slipping outside to eager big money buyers from aspiring warlords. If the hardliners were less preoccupied with arcane unilateral U.S. export curbs, they might have pressed the Bush Administration to do more to prevent any possible Soviet nuclear diversion. The White House window-dressing program that has finally emerged to help the former Soviets keep the nuclear base intact is too little, too late and too abstruse.

But these are not the times for timid government and industry leaders -- in the U.S. and other global powers -- to strike out with bold new policies. The world seems destined to continue bumbling along with various multilateral and unilateral controls. We're beginning to look more like Peter Sellers all the time.