[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 87 (Friday, June 20, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6021-S6024]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 1998
The Senate continued with the consideration of the bill.
Mr. GRAMS addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota is recognized.
Amendment No. 420
Mr. GRAMS. Madam President, I inquire of the business now before the
Senate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The pending question is on the Cochran
amendment No. 420.
Mr. GRAMS. Madam President, I rise this morning to strongly oppose
the amendment by my colleague and friend from Mississippi, Mr. Cochran,
first for jurisdictional reasons, and most importantly because it is a
seriously, I believe, flawed policy.
As chairman of the International Finance Subcommittee of the Senate
Banking Committee, I object to the consideration of this matter, since
it is within the jurisdiction of my subcommittee and the Committee on
Banking. This is a very controversial issue and it should be heard and
debated in the normal congressional process, by the proper committee of
jurisdiction, not by a floor amendment with little opportunity for
opponents to be heard. Many Members of this body may have already
returned to their States and will not even have the opportunity to
listen to the debate today.
The Senate has not had an opportunity to have a full debate on export
controls in the last few years. Members need the benefit of time to
fully analyze changes in an area that can have such a negative impact
on U.S. companies and on U.S. jobs.
What really concerns me, Madam President, is that this amendment
turns back the clock on technology. This amendment indicates it is
directed at supercomputers, but computers at the 2,000-7,000 MTOPS
level are not supercomputers, a point I will discuss later. The
amendment reverses 2 years of effort to decontrol computers that are
generally available. You will hear all sorts of talk today about how
this amendment improves national security. But it does not. If the goal
is to stop the sale of high performance computers to questionable end
users in Russia, China, India, Pakistan, and Israel, it will stop the
sale of United States computers to those end users--but it will not
stop our allies from making those sales.
It is true that there are two companies currently under investigation
for alleged sale without license to a questionable end user. Those
investigations are still pending and should be pursued, so it seems
premature to, in effect, have the Congress find them guilty. Let us let
the process work. If they are guilty, they will be penalized. The U.S.
companies selling computers abroad at this level are few; they are
reputable and they do care about selling to questionable end users. The
investigations have also had a positive effect in that they have
encouraged companies to seek more validated licenses for uncertain end
users. I disagree with my colleagues who believe businesses care only
about the almighty dollar, and not national security.
This amendment will bring us back to the cold war days when export
controls were required for computers sold in drug stores. A computer at
2,000 MTOPS, which is the level we would control, is a low-end work
station which is widely available all over the world. We would
establish unilateral controls on any computer over this capability. Our
companies would have to
[[Page S6022]]
obtain a validated license. Their competitors in other nations would
not have that requirement. Therefore, European and Japanese companies
would have a competitive edge in many, many computer sales in countries
where it is important to establish a foothold as a reliable supplier to
facilitate future sales. Licenses would be required for every sale
above this limit, not just those to questionable end users. We want to
expand markets in those countries, while protecting our national
security interests, rather than handing them on a silver platter to our
trading partners who will then be seen as reliable suppliers in the
future.
I know the argument will be that it is not hard to get an export
license and that there are statutory deadlines on agency review of
license applications. I can give you quite a list of companies--many of
them smaller companies--which have come close to shutting down due to
export license delays, even in recent years. We cannot return to this
uncertainty and bureaucratic maze. Even the larger companies will see
their expenses increase as they will have to hire more high-priced
attorneys to facilitate many of the licenses through the process.
Export licenses to these countries do not get approved in a couple of
months. Many of them take many months and earn the U.S. the designation
as an unreliable supplier. While we are pursuing regulatory reform in
many areas, what we are doing here is reimposing regulations we
eliminated 2 years ago.
What is curious to me is an independent study commissioned in 1995
for the Departments of Commerce and Defense which determined that
computers could be decontrolled to the 7,000 MTOPS level without a
negative impact on national security. The Departments of State,
Defense, Commerce, the intelligence agencies, and ACDA all signed off
on this report, and the decontrol was made at that time to 7,000 MTOPS.
The determination was made because the 2,000-7,000 range, again, Madam
President, was widely available throughout the world.
But you have also heard that we are stopping the sale of
supercomputers to tier 3 countries without a license. Again. Madam
President, a 7,000 MTOPS computer is not a supercomputer.
Supercomputers still need export licenses. I am told that the MTOPS for
a supercomputer is in the 20,000 range and can go up to one million
MTOPS--a far cry from 7,000.
Let's look at the level the amendment seeks to control--2,000 MTOPS.
This is a low-level work station computer. By 1998, personal computers
will reach this level. Also, the alpha chip available next year will be
1,000 MTOPS itself. So just two of those in a computer would qualify
the computer for an export license. It is very difficult for me to
justify that companies will have to jump through so many hoops just to
sell fairly low-level computers. We are truly turning back the clock on
technology.
I have previously made the point that we are stabbing ourselves in
the foot, since computer companies in other countries do not have these
controls, and therefore our efforts are futile to say the least. There
are four European companies which sell computers in the 2,000-7,000
range as well as Japanese companies. We all know that they will be
eager to make these sales.
What is really ironic is that the Chinese themselves have now
produced a computer at the 13,000 MTOPS level. They have surpassed the
7,000 current limit the sponsor of this amendment is trying to roll
back.
One argument I have heard is that Japan also requires validated
licenses for its sales. Yes, that is true, but Japan's validated
license system has always been a rubber stamp operation. The entire
process takes 24 hours, if that. Ours can take months. And I can show
you some unhappy constituents who can verify that.
Another question I have is whether it is good policy to codify export
controls at certain levels rather than leaving them to regulation. Do
we really want to be in a position to have to change the law each time
we need to decontrol? Is the Congress really able to act as quickly and
as often as needed to adjust to rapidly changing technology? I think
not.
Madam President, I plan to send a second degree amendment to the
amendment by my colleague from Mississippi and in a moment will ask for
its immediate consideration.
But I again want to mention that this amendment would request the GAO
to perform a study of the national security risks that would be
involved with sales of computers in the 2,000-7,000 MTOPS range to
military or nuclear end users in tier 3 countries. It would also
analyze the foreign availability issue to determine whether controls at
2,000 MTOPS and above would make any sense.
Further, the amendment would require the Department of Commerce to
publish in the Federal Register a list of end users which would require
the filing of a validated license application, except when there is an
administration finding that such publication would jeopardize sources
and methods.
Madam President, this is a sincere compromise in my position as
subcommittee chairman of the committee of jurisdiction over this issue,
which will help us decide whether there is a need to recontrol at the
2,000 level. It is far too controversial to decide this question today,
or by next Tuesday when we will vote.
I believe Commerce should be asked to publish this list and to
further seek ways to work with computer companies to determine whether
other end users are questionable in order to alleviate some of the
uncertainty that is out there.
Madam President, let us not turn back the clock on technology. Let us
make a rational national security decision that also take into account
the best interests of our exporters--and the jobs that they represent.
Amendment No. 422 To Amendment No. 420
(Purpose: To require the Comptroller General of the United States to
conduct a study on the availability and potential risks relating to the
sale of certain computers)
Mr. GRAMS. So, Madam President, I send my second-degree amendment to
the desk, and ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendment.
The bill clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Minnesota [Mr. Grams] proposes an
amendment numbered 422 to amendment No. 420.
Mr. GRAMS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that further
reading of the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:
In lieu of the matter proposed to be inserted, insert the
following:
SEC. . GAO STUDY ON CERTAIN COMPUTERS.
(a) In General.--The Comptroller General of the United
States shall conduct a study of the national security risks
relating to the sale of computers with composite theoretical
performance of between 2,000 and 7,000 million theoretical
operations per second to end-users in Tier 3 countries. The
study shall also analyze any foreign availability of
computers described in the preceding sentence and the impact
of such sales on United States exporters.
(b) Publication of End-User List.--The Secretary of
Commerce shall publish in the Federal Register a list of
military and nuclear end-users of the computers described in
subsection (a), except any end-user with respect to whom
there is an administrative finding that such publication
would jeopardize the user's sources and methods.
(c) End-User Assistance to Exporters.--The Secretary of
Commerce shall establish a procedure by which exporters may
seek information on questionable end-users.
(d) Definition of Tier 3 Country.--For purposes of this
section, the term ``Tier 3 country'' has the meaning given
such term in section 740.7 of title 15, Code of Federal
Regulations.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second for the Senator's
request for a rollcall vote?
There is a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
Mr. COCHRAN addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Enzi). The Senator from Mississippi is
recognized.
Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I have listened carefully to the comments
of my good friend from Minnesota in support of his second-degree
amendment. I must say that the language of the amendment is appealing
in some respects, particularly the suggestion that the General
Accounting Office ought to be asked to conduct a review of this
situation and the apparent risk to our national security caused by the
export policies of this administration with respect to the sale of
supercomputers and its technology to foreign purchasers.
There is some question in my mind about the efficacy of the last part
of
[[Page S6023]]
the amendment particularly, because in our hearings in the Governmental
Affairs Committee the administration officials talked about the fact
that the reason they did not publish and make available a list of end
users or potential purchasers of these computers at this time was
because of diplomatic considerations and the questions about whether it
puts in jeopardy our intelligence-gathering capabilities and a number
of other issues that concerned them enough so that they do not now make
available this list even privately to exporters of supercomputers.
So to require them to publish it in the Federal Register and to make
it available to the general public is probably something that ought to
be reconsidered and not approved by the Senate. They should not be
compelled to do that. It seems to me that the reasons they gave in our
hearing for not doing it even privately was enough and sufficient in my
mind to raise questions about whether we should compel them to do it
publicly.
But looking back at the earlier complaints and the comments from my
friend about the Cochran-Durbin amendment, let me say that this is not
an effort on our part to roll back regulatory policy with respect to
military end users. It is an effort to change the procedures and to put
the onus and the responsibility for determining whether a sale is
permissible or consistent with national security concerns on the
administration rather than on the sellers of the computers.
Computer companies do not have the capacity to make determinations on
their own about the use to which the computers they are selling in the
international market will be put, or the relationships between
prospective purchasers and governments, particularly in the case of
China or Russia. The U.S. Government, though, has the capacity, through
its contacts worldwide, to do a much more reliable and accurate job of
assessing whether or not someone would be a purchaser who would use
these computers to enhance the lethalness of nuclear weapons or missile
technology to put our own citizens at risk, the lives of Americans at
risk, in a way that they would not otherwise be, but for the sale of
our computer technology.
So it is for that reason and that reason alone not to prevent the
sale to legitimate purchasers who will use it for civilian or other
appropriate purposes. It is in those situations where there is very
real concern based on knowledge that we have about the potential
harmful use--harmful to our own interests--that we ought to have the
power, we ought to have the process reserved to the Federal Government
to prohibit that sale in those selected situations.
Right now the policy of our Government is to prohibit the sale of
this category of computers if it is for the purpose of being used for a
military use or sold to a military organization. It is prohibited under
current law, under current regulations. So the suggestion that the
Senator makes that we are imposing new restraint on trade in this
amendment is not true insofar as it concerns the sales for military
purposes.
Current policy simply says to the exporters, if you know it is going
to be used by a military organization, you cannot sell it--2,000 to
7,000 MTOPS speed computers cannot be sold under current U.S. law and
under current regulations. So this amendment that we are offering does
not impose a new definition that restrains the sale of computers. It
simply says that the Commerce Department is going to give you the OK.
Once you tell us who you will sell it to, they will tell you whether it
is permissible or not. That is all we are saying.
The current policy is it is up to the exporter to decide whether this
is a military end use or an end user. If they sell it to someone they
knew was a military end user, they violate the law right now. The
problem is a lot of exporters, the people in the business of
manufacturing and marketing supercomputers, do not have the capacity to
make this determination.
Also, there are motivations that are different. They are in the
business of making money. They are in the business of selling as many
as they can. The stockholders of these companies want to see sales go
up, and so when there is a close question--we are not questioning
anybody's motives here today--but where there is a close question and
you really do not know for sure, the temptation is to go on and make
the sale, particularly if there is really no hard evidence there.
Now, there have already been those cases where there is enough
evidence that people have sold computers to end users who are military
organizations or who are involved in nuclear weapons programs, that
they are now under investigations by a Federal grand jury. This is
serious business. That could have been prohibited, maybe, if you had
the Commerce Department saying, ``OK, it is fine, go ahead and make
this sale. Here is your license.'' Then the civilian marketer is off
the hook. The Commerce Department makes the decision. That is the
issue.
Do we leave it up to the honor system that has been developed by the
Clinton administration, which is not working--46, we thought it was 46,
but it turned out to be 47 as a result of the hearing we held of new
information of these computers that are in the hands of Chinese
entities and we do not know what they are being used for. Or if our
Government knows, they cannot tell us in a public hearing session. We
have to go behind closed doors to find out what they really know.
From what we can talk about right now, we know that this policy ought
to be changed, and for the business of ``this is not the right place,
this is not the right time,'' and the jurisdictional question--well,
the Commerce Department has jurisdiction over commerce issues, the
Banking Committee has some jurisdiction, our Governmental Affairs
Committee has jurisdiction over compliance with nonproliferation treaty
provisions. We are constantly monitoring the question of proliferation
of weapons of mass destruction in our committee, and we came upon this
information through the exercise of our oversight responsibilities.
It is a matter of some urgency, in our view, that this matter be
addressed, and we think the U.S. Senate will agree with that. I think
we have suggested a very modest but a very necessary first step in the
process of reform of our policies over exporting computers. This
administration came into office having made a promise to the computer
industry that they were going to make some dramatic changes in the
rules so that they could sell more computers in the international
marketplace. That is fine. That is fine. But they have adopted a policy
that is not working. It is not working to protect our national security
interests, which is important. It is working in that it has helped sell
a lot more computers and a lot of people have gotten rich under this
new policy. I do not have a problem with that. No complaints are being
made about that. But it was supposed to be a policy that both enhanced
our ability to compete in the international computer market but at the
same time protected our national security interests. It worked on the
one hand, but it has failed on the other.
We now see the Atomic Energy Minister in Russia, whose name is
Mikhailov, bragging in a public forum about the new supercomputer
technology they have bought from the United States that is 10 times
more powerful and sophisticated than anything they have had before.
This agency is in the business of modernizing the nuclear weapons that
the Russians have.
We have this Nunn-Lugar builddown program supposedly trying to
dismantle these weapons of mass destruction, and we are very actively
involved with the Russians in that regard. But at the same time, to be
selling them the technology to make the weapons, they are more
accurate, more lethal, capable of destroying potential adversaries like
the United States, it seems we are working at cross-purposes with
ourselves. We are trying to work to keep down the proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction, and here we are, in this instance,
contributing to the proliferation of more lethal nuclear weapon
systems. Certainly that is true in the case of Russia and China. We
know that. We know that.
So what do we do about it? Nothing? Have some hearings? Have the GAO
spend another year looking at things? We agree GAO ought to look at
this. We are asking them to do that, too. They have already begun some
work at our request. I agree with the Senator
[[Page S6024]]
that we need to do more, but to just say the Senate should not act on
this suggestion, this is a modest first step. It is not a suggestion
for comprehensive reform at this time. We need more information. We
need to do more work to decide on the details of a comprehensive,
workable policy than is on the books now and administered by our
Commerce Department.
So, but for the provisions of the amendment offered by the Senator
that I have suggested caused me some concern, I would like to be able
to support the amendment so that we could then go on and vote to
approve the amendment as amended, but I cannot do that at this point. I
hope the Senate will not agree to the amendment.
I know under the announcement that was made earlier today on behalf
of the majority leader, there will be no votes on amendments today.
They will be set aside and we will come to them later. So there will
not be a vote today. Knowing that there will not be, I will not push
the issue any further, except to suggest to the Senate that this is an
issue that ought to be debated, considered carefully, and we ought to
vote for this amendment that I have offered with the cosponsorship of
Senator Durbin.
Incidentally, I asked the other day, after we had described the
amendment, that Senator Abraham be added as a cosponsor. I have now
been asked to seek unanimous consent that Senator Lugar be added as a
cosponsor. I make that request at this time, Mr. President.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Privilege of the Floor
Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Janice
Nielsen, a legislative fellow with Senator Craig's office, be granted
floor privileges during debate on S. 936, the Defense Authorization
Act.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I want to say I appreciate the remarks of
my colleague from Mississippi, Senator Cochran. We hope to be able to
work with him over the weekend and hope to come to an agreement and
compromise with him by next week. Like he said, hopefully we can vote
on this at that time.
I yield the floor.
Mr. THURMOND. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call.
Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we may move
from this quorum call into morning business for 20 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to calling off the quorum?
Mr. LEVIN. I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
The clerk will continue to call the roll.
The bill clerk continued the call of the roll.
Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, making two separate requests, I ask
unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Frist). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I can proceed
for 20 minutes as in morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator yield for a unanimous-consent request?
Mr. LEVIN. Reserving the right to object, would the Senator add to
that, that following morning business that we go back into an automatic
quorum call?
Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following my
speech, if it ever begins, that we go back into the quorum call, and I
also ask unanimous consent that, without losing the floor, I might
yield to Senator Inhofe so that he might get a staff member on the
floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
____________________