More MTOPS for China?

The President, following the lead of the Commerce Department, has approved another liberalization of supercomputer export controls, which will send powerful capabilities to countries including China without an export license. Not to be distracted from the war, but China’s military and intelligence organizations are scooping up American-made supercomputers for programs that directly target the U.S. From 1996-2000 China bought over 800 supercomputers. Today they may have 1,000.

The President, following the lead of the Commerce Department, has approved another liberalization of supercomputer export controls, which will send powerful capabilities to countries including China without an export license. Not to be distracted from the war, but China’s military and intelligence organizations are scooping up American-made supercomputers for programs that directly target the U.S. From 1996-2000 China bought over 800 supercomputers. Today they may have 1,000.

Many supercomputers (which can design small, efficient nuclear weapons) from the Clinton years went to Chinese national security and nuclear facilities, including the Academy of Sciences, which designs nuclear weapons and does advanced nuclear research. All can be upgraded to the new higher performance standards, usually with hardware, so the liberalization will help China upgrade its nuclear R&D capability.

There is little evidence that the administration considered China’s drive to obtain computational parity in conjunction with its qualitative military build up. Too bad. China is pursuing key U.S. military and security targets, and the major barrier to its regional military goals is the presence of the U.S. fleet, especially our aircraft carriers and submarines.

Supercomputers can be used for cracking encrypted communications, which will help China intercept and decipher American communications, providing important operational information about our fleet. Supercomputers are handy for interpreting acoustic information from the sea’s depths. America has the quietest nuclear submarines in the world, but they become more vulnerable if an adversary has sensors in the ocean that can feed back to powerful supercomputers.

There’s more. The U.S. Army’s High Performance Computer labs use supercomputers just like those sold to China to teach us how to defend against biological weapons attacks. China can use them to develop offensive scenarios.

It appears that the administration received its advice on supercomputer licensing from the same Commerce and Defense Department bureaucrats who prepared the liberalization report for the previous administration. Predictability, there was no serious effort to evaluate the national security implications of further liberalization and further supercomputer acquisition by China or other potentially hostile countries.

The White House should freeze its decision on supercomputer exports and consult with the head of its own Defense Science Board, Dr. William Schneider. Schneider and the Board were bypassed in this process despite the fact that he and others (including Dr. Stephen Bryen of JINSA’s Advisory Board) in 1997 conducted a study for the House National Security Committee that found supercomputer export control policy to be inadequate for national security purposes and would lead to nuclear proliferation.

At the minimum, this study should be briefed to the President.