[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 16341-16359]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                   EXPORT ADMINISTRATION ACT OF 2001

  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the Senate will 
resume consideration of S. 149, which the clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (S. 149) to provide authority to control exports, 
     and for other purposes.

  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Nevada is recognized.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, the Senate is going to be working today on 
the export administration bill. Senator Daschle called a joint 
leadership meeting today, and he and Senator Lott, among others, 
indicated a real desire to move on to the many things we have to do in 
this month, especially appropriations bills.
  Senator Sarbanes is certainly one of the most skilled legislators, 
and I know he is doing everything in his power, as is Senator Gramm, to 
move this export administration bill as quickly as possible. We had an 
overwhelming vote yesterday on an amendment. The opposition to moving 
this bill forward I think got 18 votes. From my personal perspective, 
that is a high water mark. I certainly hope the few Senators who oppose 
this legislation will recognize the need to move forward with the 
legislation not only for the Senate but, more importantly, for this 
country.
  We have eight appropriations bills we need to complete by the end of 
the month. Using the numbers we have, we probably only have about 12 
legislative days this month, with the Jewish holidays and the big 
conference being held late in the month that will take a day away from 
us. We just need to move expeditiously.
  I repeat, I hope those people who oppose this legislation will 
recognize that we are going to pass this bill. It is just a question of 
when. Their holding this up isn't to the good of this country. I know 
that the people who oppose this legislation believe they are doing the 
right thing. I hope they will recognize that just a few Senators are 
opposing this bill. We need to move forward. We have a fiscal year that 
is coming to an end in just a few weeks. We have not completed a single 
conference on the five appropriations bills that have passed.
  The leadership has committed 1 week to Defense authorization, which 
takes away more time from our appropriating process. Whether people 
like it or not, the 13 appropriations bills have to be passed or we are 
going to wind up with a big fat omnibus bill called a continuing 
resolution that doesn't help anybody, especially the country.
  So I am confident there will be rollcall votes on amendments 
throughout the day. The Senate is going to recess from 12:30 to 2:15 
for the weekly party conferences today. Again--and I think I speak for 
the joint leadership--we need to move past this bill and get on to the 
appropriations bills. On appropriations bills, we have to have a way of 
moving them more quickly. I think that is the belief the leadership has 
in trying to move to the Commerce-State-Justice bill just as quickly as 
possible.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The senior Senator from Maryland, Mr. 
Sarbanes, is recognized.
  Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, I echo what my colleague, Senator Reid, 
just had to say. We are back on the bill. We did a number of opening 
statements yesterday. I know there were a couple Members who indicated 
that they want to be able to just speak on the bill briefly. I invite 
them to come over. Anyone who has amendments, we are open to consider 
them. I hope we can possibly finish this bill today and thereby enable 
the Senate to move on to other business for the remainder of the week. 
I frankly say that ought to be our objective. Hopefully, we can reach 
it. I do know there is a state dinner this evening that may impact on 
the Senate's schedule.
  Mr. REID. If the Senator will yield, all of us haven't been invited 
to the state dinner, so some of us can still work.
  Mr. SARBANES. I implore my colleagues who are within earshot, if they 
wish to make a statement on this bill, to come to the floor and get 
that done this morning before we go to the two weekly conferences. I 
also hope that at some point shortly we could have an amendment laid 
down and proceed to move through the amendments.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The senior Senator from Tennessee, Mr. 
Thompson, is recognized.
  Mr. THOMPSON. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. President, I have listened to the distinguished majority whip 
this morning expressing concern that we move on with this bill. I think 
we can do that. We had a good discussion yesterday. We had a vote on 
one amendment that was a pretty definitive vote. We all get to the 
point where we can count votes around here, and we know which way the 
die is cast as far as this bill is concerned.
  The administration supports this bill. Apparently, the administration 
is going to oppose any and all amendments. That is unfortunate. That 
is, frankly, shortsighted, but that is the way it is. I do not think we 
want to belabor the matter any more than necessary.
  I must say, we have had some very good discussions this morning on 
both sides of export administration in this country. We are still 
talking, and we

[[Page 16342]]

may be able to come together on some things that will help the bill and 
help some of us who have concerns about this bill. I know Senator Kyl 
from Arizona is on his way to the Chamber and would like to make an 
opening statement, and then we will move on from there and see where we 
are.
  Until Senator Kyl gets here, I will reiterate some of the bases for 
our concern. We make no apologies for bringing these amendments up 
regardless of the fact we have an appropriations bill pending. As 
important as these appropriations bills are, the national security of 
this country is even more important. That is what we are dealing with 
here, the issue of national security. We all have the same thing as our 
ultimate goal for the protection of this country, but we have some 
quite distinct and different ideas about how to get there.
  Export administration legislation in this country traditionally has 
been designed not to facilitate business but to help protect the 
national security interests of this country. If one looks at the 
purpose that is set out in this legislation, it does not say anything 
about expediting business.
  No one wants to bog these exports down, but the fact of the matter 
is, they are not being bogged down. It was said yesterday for a broad 
category of items, the average processing time is 13 days, I believe--
13 days. What it does set out and the purpose for this legislation, as 
similar legislation in the past has set out, is that we want to make 
sure we are not assisting the proliferation of weapons of mass 
destruction. We want to make sure that in our haste to do business--
there is no greater freetrader in this body than I am--and to export 
that we do not make mistakes. That is what the export administration 
legislation is all about.
  We are living in a different time than the last time we addressed 
this issue. We are living in a world where we do not have the old 
Soviet Union and the massive European assault that we all feared 
looming over our heads. But what we do have is many different threats, 
more insidious threats in many respects and more dangerous in many 
respects because those threats are in the hands of totally 
irresponsible individuals in other parts of the world.
  We get these reports from Presidential commissions. We get these 
reports from our intelligence community warning us, time and time 
again, that it is growing, that it is based on technology, that the 
threats are great--nuclear, biological, chemical threats--and the 
ability to deliver those threats to our soil is growing year by year. 
Even a country such as North Korea, which is starving it's people to 
death, can pose a mortal threat to major American cities, having 
already launched a three-stage rocket over Japan just to demonstrate 
what they can do, while a million people are starving in North Korea.
  That is the nature of the growing threat based on technology. Our 
intelligence agencies point out to us that a lot of this technology is 
derived from countries such as Russia and China, which our intelligence 
agencies still say are massive proliferators of weapons of mass 
destruction.
  Here we are getting ready to pass legislation to make exports of 
dual-use items, which can possibly be used for military purposes, to 
countries such as Russia and China easier.
  When Mr. Cox and others on the commission tell us that the Chinese, 
for example, are diverting products imported for civilian reasons to 
military purposes, and they also tell us that part of the problem has 
been created by our own laxity in our export laws, I do not know how 
much more definitive the record needs to be for us to be concerned, 
when we sit down to write an export administration bill, that we not 
make any significant mistakes in the bill with regard to contributing 
to the growing threat to the national security of this country.
  There are great commercial interests involved. There is substantial 
commercial interest. They are substantially involved in the political 
process, but in terms of the trade welfare to this country, they 
constitute about 3 percent of our total exports. The exports to these 
controlled countries constitute about 3 percent of our total exports; 
90-some-odd percent of those export applications to those countries are 
approved, so we are talking about a small fraction of 3 percent of our 
exports that we are dealing with.
  Some make it sound as if we are trying to shut down exports or we are 
trying to close the borders. We are not. It is important, and it is 
growing. The interest here is not what can happen today. The interest 
is the potential, and the potential is great, but therein lies the 
potential problem.
  Even though the technological genie is somewhat out of the bottle, to 
be sure, but not totally out of the bottle or we still would not be 
trying to keep things out of the hands of Saddam Hussein, Iran, and 
North Korea, we implicitly acknowledge some control is doable. But 
let's just say for the sake of argument the genie is out of the bottle 
and eventually everybody is going to get everything.
  Does it not benefit our country somewhat to say with regard to these 
most sensitive items we need to slow certain countries down while we 
are trying to come together on a consensus on things such as national 
missile defense? We are expending great political capital in this 
country and will be spending, I think, great monetary capital, as it 
were, on a missile defense system. I think that is an appropriate thing 
to do.
  We are willing to go to our European friends, Russia, China, and have 
a debate here based upon this threat about which I am talking. Does it 
make sense when we are so concerned about this threat, and we do not 
have a missile defense system off the drawing board yet, for us to be 
hustling to make sure that potential adversaries a few years down the 
road are caught up to date, technologically, to be even with us or to 
improve themselves to a point where they can be competitive with us?
  Does it make sense for us to be helter-skelter assisting as much as 
we can while we are in this stage over here and trying to defend 
ourselves against these same technological challenges? That is what 
this is all about.
  We may have appropriations bills we want to get passed and we may 
say: We had a big vote yesterday and the die is cast; get away, son, 
you bother me.
  It is not going to be quite that easy. This issue is not going to go 
away. I understand those of us who comprise the committees that have to 
do with intelligence and national defense matters form a distinct 
minority. When we first started debating this issue, I was chairman of 
the Governmental Affairs Committee that has jurisdiction over matters 
of proliferation, as well as other things.
  The chairman of the Armed Services Committee, the chairman of the 
Intelligence Committee, and the chairman of the Foreign Relations 
Committee, all of us were as one in expressing the concerns I have laid 
out today. We still have those concerns, although we are ranking 
members now instead of chairmen of the various committees, but we also 
recognize we are in a distinct minority. We have been unsuccessful in 
persuading enough of our colleagues these concerns are so great we 
ought to at least have some amendments to address some of these 
concerns.
  I am still hopeful. We have had some good discussions recently, as 
discussions tend to come about once we are considering an issue. With 
regard to things like a Presidential commission, for example, that is 
an idea that Senator Shelby, who was chairman of the Intelligence 
Committee, now ranking member, has espoused for a long time and one 
that we have all supported at one time or another. The idea is we have 
a blue ribbon commission established. We know some of these commissions 
do a good job and some do not, but we had such a good experience with 
the Rumsfeld commission, a bipartisan commission made up of experts, 
some from a more liberal persuasion, some more conservative, but people 
of unimpeachable expertise who were appointed and took a look at the 
kinds of issues I have been talking about this morning, why can't we do 
something along those lines to answer some of these questions we have 
posed, such as what effect are our export policies having on national 
security?

[[Page 16343]]

  As I talk about it, I am very well aware the distinguished senior 
Senator from West Virginia, who now presides, has been a leader on this 
very issue and he is responsible for a commission that is doing some 
good things in this same area but perhaps targeted a little bit more on 
answering some of these questions. The problem, as I see it, is not 
that I have the answers that we are definitely doing something that is 
going to be hurting national security or it is not that my colleagues 
on the other side of this issue have the answers that they are 
definitely sure we are not doing anything that is going to be harming 
national security. I am afraid the point is, we do not really know. We 
do not know the effect of what we are doing. We do not really know, now 
that we are about to pass this bill, what the effect of this bill is 
going to be or what it might look like a year from now.
  As a part of the Defense appropriations bill in 1998, there was a 
provision which acknowledged, first of all, that there was a massive 
decontrolling of our supercomputers going on in the Clinton 
administration. They changed the MTOPS level rapidly so more and more 
supercomputers could be exported. There has been a growing concensus 
almost, I would say, among a lot of the people who follow these matters 
in the country that perhaps MTOPS is not the best way to decide what 
should be controlled in terms of these supercomputers. Maybe we need to 
look at something else. We did not really look at something else. We 
decontrolled, and now what we are doing in this legislation, in terms 
of MTOPS, is totally decontrolling and doing away with it. So it is an 
extension of the Clinton policy.
  Also in that 1998 legislation, there is a provision that says, as we 
do that we must do a national security assessment of the effect of 
doing this. That was never done. It has never been done.
  It is bad enough we are not following our own laws, but it is doubly 
bad we do not know the answer. So we are having some discussions now 
about can we not get together and come up with an independent 
assessment, over a period of time, as to what the effect of this might 
be?
  Another issue we are discussing is the so-called deemed export rules. 
As I am sure the Presiding Officer knows, we have a system in this 
country that basically says if you export a certain item or information 
to another country, you need a license for certain kinds of things. 
Also, if you give that same information to a foreign student, a foreign 
national, who is over here working in, say, one of our laboratories, or 
one of our businesses, if you give him that same information, that is 
the equivalent, potentially, of exporting the matter. It is called a 
deemed export, and we need to look at that carefully also.
  We had hearings in the Governmental Affairs Committee a year or so 
ago, and we found out that the law is being universally ignored by our 
laboratories. Private business is doing a much better job of complying 
with the deemed export rules and seeking licenses for these transfers 
of information than is the Government. Of course, they have a 
proprietary interest in doing so, but for whatever reason they are 
doing a much better job. Our laboratories have done a very poor job and 
now, of course, we know that valuable information has been taken, 
illegally and improperly, from our laboratories, which is the 
repository of some of the most sensitive information, if not the most 
sensitive information, our country possesses. We need to do something 
about that.
  This bill does not address that. These are as much exports or 
potential exports as some of the goods flying to another country.
  My understanding is the administration has expressed some concern 
that this is a complicated subject which they have not had an 
opportunity to address yet and would prefer to have the opportunity to 
address, and I understand that. A lot has been laid on their plate in a 
short period of time. We came to them with this whole export business, 
this whole overhaul issue, when they were still trying to get draperies 
in their office. Getting any modern President's team together now is a 
long, drawn out process. Some say it will be 12, 14, or 16 months 
before this administration gets its team together. We are laying this 
highly technical stuff on them at a time when many of the important 
departments do not have their team together. I prefer to put this off 
until later, until they have had the opportunity to get their team 
together, but they have seen fit to agree to have this go forward. It 
makes a certain amount of sense.
  We do not want to discourage foreign students from coming to the 
United States. It is important for many different reasons. We do not 
want to close our borders. With as many problems as we have had with 
the People's Republic of China over the last few years, they have 
54,000 students here now. We do not want to reverse that process. Many 
make valuable contributions to us and what we are doing. Many choose to 
stay here. However, in the process we have to learn to protect 
ourselves. Because we have peace and prosperity today does not mean we 
will have it forever.
  I just finished reading a book called ``While America Sleeps'' in 
which the Kagans were drawing a parallel between the United States 
today and England after World War I. This book is based on Winston 
Churchill's ``While England Slept.'' They talk about when a country 
wins a war or skirmish, the tendency is to allow your military to go 
down, to have a higher threshold for engagement elsewhere. You want a 
peace dividend. You want to come back home and enjoy the peace dividend 
and forget about the unpleasantness. By doing that, you encourage 
problems here, there, around the world. They are very small at first, 
and they grow into major problems that ultimately a democracy has to 
address. We do not want to do that. That is what we are trying to 
avoid.
  These are a couple of areas on which I think we might still have come 
together, even at this date. I am hopeful of that. Again, I reiterate, 
this is not foolish business we are engaged in. These are not dilatory 
tactics. These are not things to get on with while we wait to get on 
with the more important business of spending money. It is not about 
money but about the national security of this country. I do not care if 
we have to have 95-5 votes on some of these issues. Time will tell the 
correctness of the various positions. Some Members believe it is very 
important to lay them on the table, require deliberate consideration, 
and see whether or not even at this stage of the game we cannot come 
together at least on some things that might make this a better bill and 
ensure the enhanced security of this country.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Cantwell). The Senator from Maryland.
  Mr. SARBANES. Madam President, I am hopeful we can work out some of 
these matters which he discussed. I think the idea of a presidentially 
appointed independent advisory committee to review the matter and 
submit its findings to the Congress at an appropriate time is a good 
idea. It may well prove of significant benefit.
  I repeat what I said yesterday. I think all 100 Members of the Senate 
are concerned that our national security is effectively protected. I 
hope what we went over yesterday, provisions of the bill and some of 
the authority given to the President, provided some reassurance in 
terms of ultimate authority to act on behalf of important national 
security and foreign policy interests. I hope in the course of the day 
we can work through some of these matters and perhaps move to a 
conclusion.
  Again, I state my appreciation to the Senator for the questions he 
raised and focusing our attention on them. He has done that 
consistently as we have moved through the process. I know my very able 
colleague from Wyoming, Senator Enzi, has interacted throughout. What 
is before the Senate in this legislation has been shaped in part by 
questions and concerns the Senator has raised. It is not as though 
there has not been a response to some of the matters brought forward, 
and that is reflected already in the legislation before the Senate.

[[Page 16344]]


  Mr. THOMPSON. If the Senator will yield, I certainly agree with that. 
I should not leave the impression that this has been a totally 
adversarial proceeding. We have had discussions, and this bill does 
incorporate some of the points we have discussed at prior times. I 
appreciate that.
  Mr. SARBANES. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona is recognized.
  Mr. KYL. Madam President, this past weekend the Washington Post ran 
articles on a Bush administration decision to impose sanctions on a 
Chinese company that it found to be transferring sensitive missile 
technology to Pakistan in violation of last November's agreement to 
terminate such transfers. Two of my colleagues, the chairman of the 
House Intelligence Committee and the chairman of the Senate 
Intelligence Committee, and I just returned from a visit to Pakistan, 
and we expressed concerns about the proliferation of weapons of mass 
destruction technology in that area of the world. We are very aware of 
the situation which could easily evolve in that part of the world 
because of tensions between different countries that could 
inadvertently result in the use of nuclear weapons, something no one in 
the world wants to occur. Part of that is because of the willingness of 
countries such as China to transfer technology to countries that could 
use those weapons.
  Sunday's Washington Post article to which I referred noted that the 
decision to impose sanctions on the Chinese Metallurgical Corporation 
came over the objections of Asia experts in our State Department who 
``had warned that this could further fray Sino-American relations.''
  Of course, anytime one enforces a provision which is designed to 
protect the U.S. national security on a corporation that is violating 
the terms of agreements or provisions which could prevent the transfer 
of this technology, it will upset someone. They have been caught 
cheating, and to the extent we are willing to enforce it, they are not 
going to like the result. However, that is what is at stake: Our 
willingness to enforce the regime which we have heretofore imposed that 
hopes to at least reduce the amount of transfer of technology to 
countries that would use that technology in an irresponsible fashion.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the article 
``Chinese Arms Firm Faces U.S. Sanctions.''
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Post, Sept. 1, 2001]

                 Chinese Arms Firm Faces U.S. Sanctions


                Technology Allegedly Passed to Pakistan

                           (By Alan Sipress)

       The Bush administration will impose sanctions today on a 
     major Chinese arms manufacturer because it transferred 
     sensitive missile technology to Pakistan despite assurances 
     by Beijing last year that it would refrain from these 
     exports, according to the State Department.
       A department official said yesterday the United States 
     would place sanctions on the China Metallurgical Equipment 
     Corp., A private company that administration officials say 
     works closely with the Chinese government, and at the same 
     time on the National Development Complex of Pakistan, which 
     received the missile technology.
       The decision to take these punitive measures comes a week 
     after a U.S. delegation to Beijing headed by Deputy Assistant 
     Secretary of State Vann Van Diepen failed to break a deadlock 
     over U.S. demands that China halt the transfer of technology 
     for missiles that can carry nuclear warheads. Last-ditch 
     negotiations in recent days also proved unsuccessful, 
     officials said.
       The new American measures could further sour relations 
     between the United States and China, which have begun to 
     rebound after a tough spell in the opening months of the Bush 
     administration. With President Bush scheduled to visit China 
     late next month, the two countries have tried to move beyond 
     their dispute this spring when a U.S. Navy surveillance plane 
     and its crew were detained on Hainan Island after colliding 
     with a Chinese jet.
       Secretary of State Colin L. Powell raised American concerns 
     about missile proliferation during a visit to Beijing in July 
     and warned that the administration might impose sanctions 
     unless China adhered to an agreement reached last November. 
     Under that accord, the United States agreed to issue licenses 
     for American companies to launch satellites on Chinese 
     rockets.
       Powell and his Chinese counterparts agreed during his trip 
     to resume talks on weapons proliferation. The two sides had 
     not discussed this matter since last November, when China 
     agreed not to help other countries build missiles capable of 
     delivering nuclear weapons. U.S. diplomats had filed formal 
     protests with China alleging that it had violated the 
     agreement numerous times by providing missiles or missile 
     technology to Pakistan and other countries.
       Both the Chinese and Pakistani officials have denied 
     allegations of missile technology sales.
       But a State Department official said yesterday that China's 
     transfer of Category 2 technology had contributed to 
     Pakistan's missile program, flouting the international 
     guidelines established to govern the proliferation of missile 
     parts and technology. Under the Missile Technology Control 
     Regime, Category 1 refers to whole missiles while Category 2 
     includes constituent parts and technology.
       As a result, the administration has also been considering 
     whether to suspend the issuance of licenses for U.S. 
     companies to place their satellites on Chinese rockets and 
     make it illegal to transfer American technology to China's 
     satellite industry. The Los Angeles Times reported in today's 
     editions that the United States had decided to take these 
     punitive actions.
       These steps, which could set back China's efforts to 
     develop its industry, may also prove painful for some 
     American companies that have seen Chinese rockets as a 
     relatively inexpensive way to place their satellites into 
     orbit.
       The Bush administration has said it is worried about recent 
     reports that China was providing sensitive missile technology 
     to Pakistan. Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), Chairman of 
     the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, pressed Beijing 
     during a recent visit there to end these transfers and called 
     for sanctions to be place on Chinese companies that are shown 
     to be helping Pakistan's missile program.
       U.S. officials have at the same time expressed concern 
     about what they say are Pakistani attempts to develop a 
     nuclear missile program. The United States imposed sanctions 
     on Pakistan and India after both countries tested nuclear 
     weapons in 1998. India and Pakistan have a long-standing 
     border conflict over Kashmir and their development of nuclear 
     weapons, security analysts say, has made South Asia 
     potentially the most dangerous place in the world.
       While Sino-American relations have been complex and often 
     difficult for decades, the United States long has close 
     relations with Pakistan, especially when it was a crucial 
     Cold War ally. But those ties have grown estranged in recent 
     years and not only because of Pakistan's nuclear program. 
     U.S. officials have also expressed dissatisfaction with the 
     1999 military coup by Gen. Pervez Musharraf that ousted 
     democratically elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and with 
     Pakistan's ties to the Taliban movement ruling much of 
     Afghanistan.

  Mr. KYL. This mentality that enforcing the law could further fray 
relations with countries such as China, for example, lies at the core 
of much of what we are debating with respect to the legislation before 
the Senate. It is the continued relevance of robust export controls on 
the one hand versus legislation that is explicitly designed to weaken 
those controls in order to enhance trade on the other.
  While the case that the Washington Post article discussed involves 
Chinese technology transfers to Pakistan, these actions on the part of 
foreign countries with records of proliferating militarily sensitive 
technologies are central to the overall debate over U.S. controls on 
exports to countries that in turn transfer knowledge and hardware to 
third countries to which the United States would not currently export 
such items or knowhow. In other words, it is the transfer of this 
technology through a middleman, so to speak.
  In addition to this most recent China-related proliferation 
development, the U.S. Customs Service last week arrested two United 
States-based Chinese nationals involved in smuggling, and smuggling 
extremely sensitive military encryption technology to China--another 
violation of the Arms Export Control Act.
  While the encryption case does involve the Arms Export Control Act 
and not the export administration regulations which are the issue 
today, it does nevertheless significantly highlight the scale of the 
problem that confronts the United States in preventing certain 
countries from either legally or illegally obtaining militarily 
sensitive technologies that could most assuredly be used against the 
United States or our allies in a future conflict.
  There exists a mistaken notion that the end of the cold war 
eliminated the

[[Page 16345]]

national security justification for controlling exports in technologies 
with both civilian and military applications, but nothing could be 
further from the truth.
  The President, in April, announced his decision to sell to Taiwan $4 
billion worth of weaponry to better defend itself against the growing 
military threat from China. That threat, already considerable, involves 
primarily conventional arms, including the 300 missiles currently 
targeted against Taiwan, a number that is projected to grow in the 
future.
  A decision to liberalize controls on dual-use technologies, every one 
of which by definition have military applications, while acknowledging, 
as we all do, the very real threat posed by China to Taiwan and to U.S. 
interests in the Far East, is therefore inconsistent with and clearly 
contrary to our national interest.
  Make no mistake, much of this debate is about China. The so-called 
rogue nations are at issue here only to the degree that other nations 
such as China, and at times even the United States, end up selling 
military-sensitive items to those countries, either directly or, as I 
said before, through third parties. So this is just one example of the 
fact that the end of the cold war has not ended the necessity of 
keeping an eye on the kind of dual-use technologies sold abroad because 
in the end those technologies could be used against the United States 
or our allies.
  Let me just give some examples of things that have happened with 
exports in the not too distant past that illustrate this point.
  In July of 1998, IBM's east Europe/Asia subsidiary entered a guilty 
plea for the unlawful export of computers to Arzamas-16, a Russian 
nuclear weapons laboratory.
  Silicon Graphics similarly illegally sold high-performance computers 
to Russia's Chelyabinsk-70 nuclear laboratory.
  This past July a company in my home State, Arizona, settled charges 
that it had illegally exported diode lasers to Israel, 16 times between 
1995 and 1997.
  And, of course, there is the 1994 sale by McDonnell to China National 
Aero-Technology Import-Export Corporation of an entire warehouse full 
of machine tools for the production of modern military aircraft and 
missiles continues to represent not just a highly inappropriate export 
but the problem of diversion of exported dual-use technologies to the 
noncommercial side of the equation. Some of the machine tools in 
question were diverted to a factory that manufactures Silkworm 
missiles--the very missiles that now line Iran's coastal waters on the 
Persian Gulf.
  These are just a few examples of what can happen.
  When the post-World War II export control regime was established in 
1949, there was an explicit recognition of the difficulties that would 
be faced in regulating militarily sensitive items that also had benign 
commercial applications and that should not necessarily be denied to 
all potential customers. It is a problem.
  The principal country at issue then, of course, was the Soviet Union, 
with China a secondary concern. The success of United States 
unilateral, as well as COCOM multilateral export controls in keeping 
many vitally important dual-use technologies out of the hands of the 
Soviet Army was an important component in the national strategy that 
ultimately resulted in the Soviet Union's demise.
  There is no denying the gravity of the problems we faced after the 
cold war when sensitive technologies exported by western countries to 
Iraq were suddenly threatening United States and allied troops in the 
Persian Gulf war. The lack of a more far-sighted export control 
policy--and I would be remiss were I to ignore the geopolitical context 
in which legal if questionable sales to Iraq occurred during the Iran-
Iraq war--was instructive as to the nature of the problem we face 
today.
  It must be assumed that nondemocratic regimes will exploit dual-use 
technologies for military purposes. So the end of the cold war has not 
reduced the need for us to continue to be concerned about the export of 
these dual-use items.
  I would like to take a couple of minutes to review a classic case of 
dual-use technologies being permitted to be sold a nondemocratic regime 
known to be interested in developing weapons of mass destruction and 
the means to deliver them: the case of Gerald Bull's Supergun. The 
British author James Adams back in 1992 wrote about Iraq's covert 
efforts at acquiring the components with which Canadian ballistics 
expert Bull was to assemble a cannon capable of firing large nuclear 
payloads to Israel. We can discuss the military utility of that gun, 
had it not been destroyed during the Persian Gulf war, all we want. 
What we can't ignore is the manner in which it was being built. It is 
also indicative of the type of problem the Customs Service recently 
uncovered with regard to Chinese efforts at attaining United States 
military encryption technology. This Adams described in his book on the 
life of Gerald Bull:

       British intelligence knew that . . . the Iraqis had already 
     established a vast international procurement effort . . . 
     [I]n information was discovered in Europe that suggested two 
     British companies, Walter Somers and Sheffield Forgemasters, 
     were also implicated in the scheme [in addition to a Spanish 
     company].
       At the beginning of April, a few weeks after Jerry Bull had 
     been killed, SIS (British intelligence) was tipped off that a 
     shipment of parts destined for the supergun was about to be 
     sent to Iraq . . . On Tuesday, April 10, 1990, customs 
     officers examined a number of crates stored in the warehouse 
     on Quay Seven of Tees Dock . . . Eight wooden cylinders, each 
     twenty-five feet long by three feet wide, were marked 
     ``Republic of Iraq, Ministry of Industry and Minerals, 
     Petrochemical Project, Baghdad, Iraq.'' The crates were about 
     to be loaded onto the Gur Mariner, a ten-thousand-ton 
     Bermudian-registered cargo ship that was due to sail for the 
     Iraqi port of Umm Qasr. The ship had been chartered by the 
     Iraqi Maritime Organization.
       Inside each crate was a smoothbore barrel that had been 
     carefully machined so that it fit perfectly into the next 
     barrel, with the tube tapering toward one end.

  Adams goes on to write:

       ``We are considering the possibility that the gun was 
     manufactured in Britain for the Iraqis,'' said a spokesman. 
     ``It is capable of firing a nuclear shell, or anything else 
     you wanted to put on top of a one-meter shell, and could 
     easily hit Iran or any other Middle East spot.'' [Note: The 
     gun was, in fact, immobile and constructed against a mountain 
     pointing directly at Israel]

  To conclude the item from the book:

       After the raid on the company premises of Sheffield 
     Forgemasters, customs officials raided another company, 
     Walter Somers . . . the maker of high-technology heavy 
     forgings. They also claimed they had been supplying forgings 
     to an Iraqi petrochemical project. Both companies claimed 
     that the forgings were steel pipes and had no military 
     application . . . The company that had made the pipes, 
     Sheffield Forgemasters, claimed not only that the pipes were 
     for the oil industry but that the company had received 
     permission to export them from the Department of Trade and 
     Industry.

  Finally, on this case, Adams notes that:

       In fairness the DTI (Department of Trade and Industry) was 
     not familiar with the latest intelligence, and neither the 
     intelligence community nor the MOD (Ministry of Defense) was 
     made aware of the petrochemical contract. In addition, the 
     DTI employs ninety-four staff members to vet seventy thousand 
     export applications a year . . . It was precisely this kind 
     of bureaucratic fumbling that had allowed Iraq to build up 
     such an effective military machine in the face of 
     international arms embargoes.

  Forgive the digression onto an 11-year-old case, but it is highly 
relevant to our discussions on S. 149, the Gramm-Enzi export 
facilitation bill. S. 149 places inordinate control over dual-use 
exports in the hands of the Federal agency least capable of making 
informed decisions on the military applications of dual-use 
technologies and most interested in increasing U.S. exports, namely the 
Department of Commerce.
  So the point of discussing the case is to illustrate that if you do 
not have the involvement of the intelligence community, which knows 
what is going on, or of the Department of Defense, that if you only 
have the Department of Commerce approving the export of these items, 
they are going to look at the face value of the application and

[[Page 16346]]

assume it is for a benign commercial purpose. Without the knowledge of 
the intelligence community or the defense community, it will not 
necessarily know that in point of fact there is an ongoing specific 
effort to use that technology for very aggressive military purposes.
  That is why you need an export regime which enables all of the 
communities of interest to be able to be a part of the decisionmaking 
process: To put the items on the list that need to be reviewed, to 
review the items that are subject to review, and to grant whatever 
licenses are appropriate to grant.
  It is a big mistake to simply assume the department that is in charge 
of commerce is going to be able to make those decisions using all of 
the criteria that should inform the decision.
  I go back, then, to this past weekend's stories on the sanctioning of 
the Chinese company for transferring missile technology to Pakistan, 
bringing this full circle. That simply illustrates the continued 
relevance of cases such as the one that I described in the story of 
Gerald Bull and the Iraqi supergun.
  Take a look at the web site of the China Metallurgical Equipment 
Corporation (MECC), the company sanctioned. This was the subject of a 
Washington Post story. On the surface, this is a legitimate company 
with legitimate customers. As its web site states, ``. . . the core 
enterprise of the China Metallurgical Equipment Group, MECC is involved 
in sectors of metallurgy, nonferrous metals, building materials, 
environmental protection and light industry.'' It does business around 
the world and considers itself a private enterprise.
  While I support trade with China and certainly encourage 
privatization of its industries, we cannot let this hope that China 
will privatize industry and that we can expand trade with China get in 
the way of our national security interests. China Metallurgical may 
qualify as a private-sector company. It operates, however, under the 
thumb of an autocratic regime that is the single worst proliferator of 
technologies associated with nuclear weapons and ballistic and cruise 
missiles, and which as violated numerous agreements that ban such 
proliferation.
  There should also be no mistaking the fact that we are not talking 
about technologies that anyone can purchase today at Radio Shack, which 
is something that sometimes you hear. We are talking about technologies 
with applications for the design and construction of weapons of mass 
destruction and their means of delivery. Cavalier assertions about the 
availability of these items in your neighborhood electronics store 
trivialize the gravity of this issue.
  The case of the Iraqi supergun involved pipe sections forged with 
highly advanced machine tools for extreme precision. At the end of the 
day, though, they were still something as otherwise seemingly innocuous 
as pipe sections. If supporters of S. 149 have their way, the kinds of 
technologies that will be available for export will be far more 
threatening than the Iraqi supergun.
  For example, the Commerce Control List, which is maintained by the 
Department of Commerce and which lists dual-use items for which a 
license may be needed, has 2,400 items on it. The military applications 
of most of them would, in the wrong hands, directly threaten the 
security of the United States.
  For example, thiodiglycol, which admittedly now falls under the 
Chemical Weapons Convention and its production is being phased out, is 
nevertheless a dual-use item. An industrial solvent, 500 tons were sold 
by the Belgian company Phillips Petroleum to the Iraqi State Enterprise 
for Pesticide Production. In 1988, the United States company Alcolac 
International exported over 300 tons of it to Iraq. It is believed that 
these shipments were diverted for use in the manufacture of mustard 
gas.
  Aluminum alloy, which has a number of legitimate commercial 
industrial applications, is also used in the manufacture of rocket 
casings. China developed a welded aluminum alloy for use in its Yu-3 
torpedo.
  Ceramic composite materials are used in commercial electronics, but 
are also used in the construction of ballistic missile reentry vehicle 
antenna windows.
  Side-looking airborne radars are on the CCL, yet have a very obvious 
application for foreign military aircraft against which we may find 
ourselves fighting some day.
  Something as simple as wind tunnels, used in measuring the 
aerodynamic performance of airframe designs, are routinely used in the 
design of military fighter jets and missiles.
  The Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control has noted, with respect 
to arguments that we should ``build higher walls around fewer goods,'' 
that ``Saddam Hussein's scientists were masters at upgrading medium-
tech items to `chokepoint' level. The Iraqis imported equipment that 
was dual-use . . . The Iraqis bought dual-use isostatic presses to 
shape A-bomb parts, dual-use mass spectrometers to sample A-bomb fuel, 
and dual-use electron beam welders to increase the range of Scud 
missiles. One of those Scuds killed U.S. troops sleeping in Saudi 
Arabia.'' That was the largest loss of life in any single attack in the 
Persian Gulf war.
  There are many more examples.
  A United States company headquartered in Rockville, Maryland, 
American Type Culture Collection, was the most prominent of a long list 
of United States biological laboratories that exported pathogens to 
Iraq during the 1980s.
  Biological pathogens represent the penultimate ``dual-use'' item. 
Even the Biological Weapons Convention permits the possession of 
otherwise banned pathogens for the purpose of developing vaccines.
  We have just seen on the news this morning the breaking news about 
the work the United States is doing on certain strains of anthrax for 
purely defensive purposes because we understand those were developed 
for offensive purposes by countries. Without some kind of antidote to 
them, their use against other people would, of course, be devastating. 
That is why we need to develop the technology to find a defense 
against--a way of inoculating against--these particular pathogens.
  But common sense should have indicated that the regime of Saddam 
Hussein would use the dozens of shipments he received from American 
commercial laboratories for the development of biological weapons, 
which is precisely what happened. Such biological agents as anthrax and 
botulinum toxin were sold to Iraq by American firms.
  Gary Milhollin of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control has 
noted another example of this kind of dual-use proliferation to Iraq. 
It involved the component of what we refer to as the lithotriptor, 
which is a medical device that is used in destroying kidney stones by 
blasting high-energy beams. There are high-precision electronic 
switches which are part of the lithotriptor. These kinds of switches 
are also needed to detonate nuclear weapons. They would be decontrolled 
here because they are part of the lithotriptor, a medical device.
  It is interesting also because of their foreign availability. You can 
buy them elsewhere, but they would be decontrolled in effect under this 
legislation. Iraq purchases these lithotriptors. The amount of 
lithotriptors they purchase is interesting.
  Milhollin has also noted the suspicious nature of the Iraqi purchases 
of lithotriptors, state-of-the-art machines used in breaking up kidney 
stones. Iraq's purchases of the lithotriptors, and far more spare parts 
than should ever be required, is suspicious because these devises are 
also used as triggers for nuclear weapons and the number purchased is 
consistent with the number of assembled weapons--minus the requisite 
fissile material--Iraq is believed to have by former members of UNSCOM.
  So the point is that we should be highly suspicious of the import of 
these dual-use technologies by Iraq when they appear to be directly 
related to Iraq's nuclear program. Yet under the legislation before us, 
this shipment would be liberalized, and there is virtually no way to 
stop that kind of export to Iraq.

[[Page 16347]]

  Another case is glass and carbon fibers used in ballistic and cruise 
missile construction as well as the enrichment of uranium. This would 
be decontrolled because of their use in the manufacture of items such 
as skis, tennis rackets, boats, and golf clubs. These fibers would also 
fall under the mass market of foreign availability criteria of S. 149.
  Maraging steel used in the manufacture of solid rocket motor cases, 
propellant tanks, and interstage for missiles, as well as the 
enrichment of uranium, would also be decontrolled because of their 
application in the commercial rocketry and their availability in other 
countries.
  Another example listed is corrosion-resistant valves used in the 
enrichment of uranium for nuclear weapons, yet also used in commercial 
energy, paper, and cryogenic industries.
  The list of deadly serious military applications for items this 
legislation would decontrol is long and sobering. I will later ask 
unanimous consent to put in the Record a list that further illustrates 
this point.
  Let's focus on the case that has been discussed in the past about 
fiberoptic cables. All of us know about the situation in which the 
United States actually had to destroy Iraqi air defenses because of the 
development of these air defenses as a threat to the United States and 
British aircraft carrying out their mission in Iraq. The systems were 
being upgraded through the installation of fiberoptic cable provided 
and installed by the Chinese.
  Fiberoptic cable is clearly a dual-use item, but it also clearly has 
significant strategic importance. And its export to China again would 
be permissible under S. 149.
  Allow me to talk for just a moment about the cost of business of 
these export controls, because the argument is frequently used that the 
reason we have to do this is because there is such a drag on the United 
States economy from the existence of export controls today, and that is 
why we have to liberalize the export of these dual-use technologies. 
Many major corporations are lobbying hard for this legislation based on 
this argument.
  While I support free trade and support these appropriations normally, 
I disagree with them on this description of the sense of urgency. The 
fact is that the effect is only negligible from the export controls 
because they represent such a minor part of our overall economy. 
According to the Department of Commerce figures, the total value of all 
the goods exported to the control destinations represents less than 3 
percent of all U.S. exports. We would be talking here about a very 
small percentage--less than 3 percent--of all of our exports.
  Of just over 1,200 applications filed with the Commerce Department in 
1999, for example, for licenses to export control dual-use items to 
China, the total value of those applications of sales was less than 
$1.5 billion, which is obviously a minuscule number as a percentage of 
our gross domestic product.
  In short, I don't think we should judge this legislation on the basis 
that the U.S. economy is going to suffer if we continue to maintain a 
sensible export control regime worthy of the values we represent and 
the interests we seek to defend. In fact, there is really a critical 
argument being made by some here.
  On the one hand, they argue there is such a dramatic negative impact 
on the American economy that we have to loosen up these exports. On the 
other hand, they assure us nothing much is going to change, that the 
same kind of items that have been controlled in the past that we 
believe are necessary to control will continue to be controlled, so 
don't worry about national security implications. One of those two 
assertions cannot be true.
  Now let me discuss for a moment why I think Senate bill S. 149 
actually makes the problem worse. There is one advantage to the 
legislation: It increases some penalties for violation by U.S. 
companies. That is an important advantage, but it is about the only 
thing that is better than current law.
  I have spent a long time discussing some of the complexity of dealing 
with dual-use technologies because it is a complex subject. But that 
fact should not require us to throw up our hands and say we give up; 
that because some of these things can be mass marketed in the United 
States and because they are available abroad, we have to throw our 
hands up in the air and forget controlling these items.
  The question is whether the United States wants to be part of the 
proliferation of technologies that could come back to haunt us in the 
future simply because somebody else in the world might do the same.
  Let me just illustrate the point. I say this with all due respect to 
the members of these committees. The issue of export controls falls 
under the jurisdiction of the Banking Committee. This creates a 
situation analogous to that at the executive branch level. The 
Department of Commerce, under the provisions of S. 149, would be given 
most of the influence in the definition of what is on the control list 
and the subsequent regulation and licensing of those items. That is 
essentially at the expense of the involvement of the Department of 
State and the Department of Defense, who heretofore have been much more 
directly involved in the decisions made with respect to the export of 
these items.
  Remember the case I cited, on which I took some pains to get into 
detail, of the gun sold to Iraq that could deliver a nuclear weapon. 
The point was that the Commerce Department of Great Britain did not 
know what the intelligence community and the defense community knew 
about the potential use of the item that was being exported, which 
calls into question a regime which only involves the agency of our 
Government which is most interested in seeing that exports are 
increased.
  So it should come as no surprise that the Banking Committee, which 
has this jurisdiction, has produced this bill which gives the Commerce 
Department most of the jurisdiction and gives, frankly, what I consider 
short shrift to the agencies of the Department of Defense, the State 
Department, and our intelligence agencies that should have more of a 
role to play.
  The House version of this bill, on the other hand, interestingly, 
originates with the International Relations Committee and will next go 
before the Armed Services Committee, and it, of course, is much more 
heavily tilted toward the involvement of the State Department and the 
Defense Department, I would suggest, as a result.
  So it seems to me we have to be a little more careful in the Senate 
to recognize that there are other committees, that there are other 
departments, and that we need to reconcile these differences between 
the House version and the Senate version of this legislation in the 
interest of national security.
  Of course, it is true that the White House has endorsed S. 149. But I 
think it is also recognized that there is the potential for some 
improvements. They have indicated that in the administration of this 
legislation, with an Executive order that will implement it, some of 
the issues we have raised with them will be addressed. I very much 
appreciate their willingness to address these concerns.
  I must say, I have the highest confidence in the current 
administration and in the officials who would have the obligation to 
administer this legislation. So hopefully there will be some 
improvements made at that time in the execution of the law.
  It is also my hope--and I will echo what Senator Thompson said a 
moment ago--that before we conclude the discussion on this legislation, 
it will be possible for us to agree on at least some provisions that 
would improve the bill from our standpoint.
  So I will be participating in those negotiations. I hope we can come 
to some conclusions on this matter. I will discuss a couple of the 
items I think we should address in just a moment. But to move forward 
with the description of the bill itself and why I think it is 
problematic, the primary concern is the fact that it will seriously 
weaken controls on literally thousands of items that have a dual-use 
capability--again, items that have some commercial application but also 
have some specific military capability.

[[Page 16348]]

  For example, its provision establishing a National Security Control 
List would continue the unfortunate trend of marginalizing those 
agencies that are most responsible for national security--the 
Department of Defense, the Department of State, as well as the 
intelligence organizations that possess vital knowledge about the 
military significance of some of these items.
  Specifically, the bill diminishes the role of the Department of 
Defense, the Department of Energy, the State Department, and the 
intelligence community in the license review process. Even the Clinton 
administration Executive order regulating dual-use exports in the 
absence of a permanent Export Administration Act authorized the 
Departments of Defense, State, and Energy to review any license 
application submitted to Commerce. But S. 149 would leave to the 
Secretary of Commerce the discretion to refer to the national security 
agencies those applications the Secretary of Commerce deems 
appropriate.
  The bill would also repeal the requirement in the fiscal year 1998 
National Defense Authorization Act that computers with certain 
capabilities be controlled. This is important because this represents 
the work of the Congress and the signature of the President on 
important legislation just 2 years ago, in response, primarily, to the 
breaking news of the technology transfers to countries such as China 
and the work that different groups did to evaluate the way that was 
happening, especially the work of the Cox committee which made, in 
addition, a variety of recommendations of how we could tighten up the 
process for exporting these kinds of items.
  This National Defense Authorization Act had a very specific provision 
about the export of computers. But President Clinton, as he was leaving 
the White House, loosened significantly the export controls on high-
performance computers significantly. Under President Clinton's 
guidelines, computers with a processing speed of fewer than 85,000 
million theoretical operations per second--or MTOPS--no longer require 
a license for export to military organizations in so-called tier III 
countries, countries such as Russia, China, India, and Pakistan. By 
contrast, in 1997, computers with processing speeds above 2,000 MTOPS 
were barred from export for military end-users or users in tier III 
countries.
  Now, to contrast: 85,000 MTOPS computers are extremely powerful. As a 
comparison, in 1997, some of the initial computers developed in the 
United States under our Stockpile Stewardship Program's Accelerated 
Strategic Computing Initiative, the so-called ASCI--and the specific 
project was called ASCI Red and ASCI Red/1024; very sophisticated 
computing programs--these programs had processing speeds of 46,000 and 
76,000 MTOPS, respectively. These computers were used for 3D modeling 
and shock physics simulation for nuclear weapons applications; in other 
words, the best we had just 3 years ago, used in the most sophisticated 
analysis in which our country is involved right now, and these are 
computers with less capability than those that are now off the list for 
control with respect to export to countries such as China.
  Under this bill, there are two major exemptions created that permit 
this to happen. One is the so-called foreign availability, and the 
other is the mass market status exception. Both of these would 
effectively prevent the Federal Government from regulating the export 
of many sensitive technologies that could be used to threaten U.S. 
security. Under these provisions, if a product is available from a 
foreign supplier or is widely available in the United States, it is 
very unlikely that the President could meet the standards in the bill 
necessary to maintain export controls on the item.
  We all know trade is vital to the United States, but I hope that most 
of us would agree that national security concerns do trump trade if 
there is an irreconcilable conflict; at least it should. U.S. national 
security interests dictate that there are some goods which should not 
be sold in some markets. Again, I think all of us would agree to that 
proposition, hypothetically at least. The fact that some Western 
European firms, for example, helped Libya construct a chemical weapons 
production complex should not justify the involvement of United States 
companies in similar ventures. If we don't want that complex to be 
built, then the United States should not sanction the export of U.S. 
products which help to develop that chemical weapons production 
complex. Nations which threaten our security interests should not be 
armed by the United States. The fight against proliferation and rogue 
regimes must include some degree of self-discipline within our own 
borders.
  The bill also weakens current export controls by making it very 
difficult to control the export of a sensitive item if it is 
incorporated or embedded into a larger product.
  (Mr. CARPER assumed the chair.)
  Mr. KYL. For example, the bill prohibits export controls on items 
that contain controlled components comprising less than 25 percent of 
the total value of an item and sets an extremely high standard for the 
President to meet in order to control such items. Nations such as Iran 
and Iraq spend millions of dollars to establish elaborate procurement 
companies with front companies and shadowy middlemen in order to obtain 
items that in some cases really only cost a few thousand dollars. These 
nations could easily take advantage of this by purchasing the larger 
items that contain the desired part.
  There are a lot of examples of this, where you purchase the larger 
item, and all you want is the little piece embedded in it. That is what 
you need for your particular nuclear program or missile program. We all 
know that the particular item is highly sensitive, that it has military 
application. But in the bill, if it is only 25 percent of the total 
value of the overall item, then it goes, notwithstanding the fact that 
it can be easily taken apart, that the sensitive item can be pulled out 
and put onto a missile or a nuclear weapon or whatever the use of it 
might be. That doesn't make sense.
  Finally, the current bill weakens current controls by treating export 
controls adopted for foreign policy reasons as a sanction. The bill's 
provisions in this area subject such export controls to a process that 
is intended to make it as difficult as possible for either the 
President or the Congress to impose or maintain sanctions. And it 
requires that all such export controls sunset every 2 years.
  Let me describe a little bit further the problems with the foreign 
availability and market exemptions. As I said, the bill calls for the 
creation of an office at the Commerce Department charged with 
performing studies of whether products controlled for export by the 
Federal Government are available from foreign suppliers or are widely 
available in the United States. At least at first blush it would make 
some sense that if you can get this thing anywhere, then why should the 
United States punish its own people for exporting the item, but there 
is more here than meets the eye.
  The President may only maintain export controls on an item if he 
certifies--and I am going through the bill--one, that the absence of an 
export control on the item would be detrimental to the United States 
national security and, two, there is a high probability that the 
foreign availability of an item will be eliminated through multilateral 
negotiations within a reasonable period of time. Furthermore, the 
President may only maintain controls on an item for 6 months at a time, 
up to a total of 18 months, if he has not reached some agreement with 
the foreign suppliers to limit availability of the item.
  The President of the United States, the ultimate person in our 
country charged with our national security responsibility, is limited 
by this legislation to only provide three 6-month extensions of a 
limitation on the export of an item under this provision of the law. 
Otherwise, after that, it goes.
  The bill has a provision that says the President has an opportunity 
to try to negotiate with the foreign supplier a limitation on the 
export of the item to

[[Page 16349]]

a third country. Why would any country have any incentive to negotiate 
that when they know that after 18 months the lid is off? It seems to me 
that it is very important for us to try to change provisions such as 
this in the legislation to try to tighten up the situation in which 
there is a finding of foreign availability but there is an important 
reason for the United States to restrict the transfer of an American 
component.
  One example of this has to do with comparable quality. There is 
nothing in the legislation as it is written right now that requires 
there be comparable quality between the products. You can easily have 
something called a computer that is available from two or three 
countries on the foreign market and a computer that is available in the 
United States. They may be roughly the same price and they may have 
roughly the same capacity, but that doesn't mean they are equal in 
quality in the least.
  There are many qualitative factors that differentiate products. One 
reason why people want to buy American products is because of that 
built-in quality. Maybe the United States product is less prone to 
break down. Maybe it has better service contracts. Maybe it is more 
robust, it can stand more hustle and jostle.
  The fact is, there are a lot of different reasons why two roughly 
comparable products may be of substantially different quality. When we 
go to the auto dealer to buy a car, some of the things we look at are: 
how will it stand up? What is its service record? How much do the 
repairs cost? All of these different things have to do with quality. 
Yet there is nothing in this legislation that permits anybody to look 
at the quality aspect. So a company in the United States says: Look, 
one of our foreign competitors is beating us out here; they are selling 
a product that is roughly comparable to ours in price and capability so 
lift the restriction on us. There is a matter of foreign availability 
involved.
  Somebody in the United States needs to say: Yes, there is a matter of 
foreign availability. But the reason you are being undercut is because 
that is a product they can sell cheaper that countries will buy because 
it is of lesser quality, but the fact is, they would rather have your 
product because they know the quality is better.
  We can deny them the quality of the United States product for their 
military use if we have serious export controls. If we have nothing but 
this test of foreign availability, then the sky is the limit.
  The standards in the bill for maintaining controls on a product are 
also very difficult to reach. The President may only maintain export 
controls if ``decontrolling or failing to control an item constitutes a 
serious threat to the national security of the United States, and 
export controls on the item would be likely to diminish the threat to, 
and advance the national security interests of the United States.'' 
There are a lot of items on the list. For the President to have to go 
through every one and try to justify meeting a standard such as that is 
unrealistic.
  By incorporating into law the foreign availability and mass market 
criteria that ignore both our moral responsibilities and our vital if, 
for proprietary reasons, difficult to articulate technological 
advantages, this legislation would open the floodgates to an outpouring 
of highly sensitive goods. Foreign countries want American technology. 
The fact that they can purchase roughly comparable items elsewhere does 
not detract from the fact that we are the world leader in most key 
technologies and that the United States and its corporations should not 
be in the business of advancing the military capabilities of potential 
enemies of the United States.
  This matter of foreign availability is going to be forever subject to 
interpretation. It is my view that the Department of Defense should 
have a lot more in the way of a seat at the table to influence this 
process.
  The best example--at least one good example--of this situation is the 
export of high-performance computers. Our technology exceeds that of 
all foreign competitors. Yet our companies are asking for more liberal 
controls on this basis of foreign availability. As I said before, the 
Clinton administration, for all practical purposes, eliminated 
restrictions on the sale of these computers. But because of the 18-
month limitation I cited before, the reality is there is almost no way 
to control, at least after 18 months, the export of these items. It is 
a very dangerous situation.
  The Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control to which I referred 
before addressed this issue. Let me quote one paragraph:

       This [foreign availability] pushes export control down to 
     the level of the worst abuser.

  Let me restate that:

       This [foreign availability] pushes export control down to 
     the level of the worst abuser. Germany sold Iraq more pieces 
     of dangerous equipment before the Gulf War than all other 
     countries combined. If American policy had been as lax as 
     Germany's, Saddam's bomb program would have advanced much 
     faster. And for exports to Iran, U.S. policy would now have 
     to be relaxed because of sales by Germany, Japan and 
     Switzerland. Moreover, U.S. officials acknowledge that 
     estimates of foreign availability are too imprecise to 
     dictate export policy.

  That is from the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control. They are 
interested in trying to limit the export of this kind of technology 
that would spread nuclear technology around the world, nuclear weapons 
technology. Their point is that the United States should not be dragged 
down to the least common denominator. Simply because a country in the 
world is willing to sell a rogue nation whatever it wants doesn't mean 
that the United States should permit that same kind of export.
  More important is the fact that under this bill if Iraq or Iran or 
North Korea, for example, seek to sell China high-technology items that 
can be used in constructing weapons of mass destruction and their means 
of delivery, then U.S. companies would be similarly free to sell such 
items to China.
  The bill does nothing to prevent such a situation from occurring. So 
here you have a case where it is not one of our allies such as Germany; 
it is North Korea, Iran, or Iraq. If they are willing to sell an item 
to a country such as China, the provisions will say the United States 
must be willing to do so, too. With Iraq and China's penchant for 
constructing these well-configured front operations to conceal their 
activities, it is not outside the realm of possibility that they could 
surreptitiously attain high-tech items to be ``sold'' to China. Indeed, 
countries such as Germany and France that have sold weapons of mass 
destruction capabilities to Libya and Iraq should not be setting the 
tone for U.S. export control policy either.
  If China sells dual-use items to Pakistan, does that qualify as 
``foreign availability'' under this bill? Yes, it does. Is that the 
test we want to apply here--if a country such as China sells a dual-use 
item to Pakistan, therefore it is available on the foreign market?
  China's record as perhaps the worst proliferator in the world does 
not detract from its value as a market. It will receive dual-use 
technologies under the export regime established by this bill. The risk 
of those technologies ending up in countries such as Iraq should not be 
ignored.
  The bill contains a provision, section 301, that would prohibit the 
President from placing controls on ``the export from a foreign country 
(whether or not by a United States person) of any item produced or 
originating in a foreign country that contains parts or components 
produced or originating in the United States.''
  Section 301, which is the principal foreign policy control provision 
of the bill, places unreasonable standards for controlling the item of 
technology for foreign policy purposes. By statutorily requiring a 
finding that a ``serious threat''--not just a ``threat''--would be 
posed to U.S. interests by the export of the item in question, the bar 
has been raised very high indeed.
  What to do, Mr. President? We are going to offer suggestions how to 
improve the bill. Some changes have been made based on suggestions we 
made, but there is far too much that has not

[[Page 16350]]

been done in response to the concerns we have raised. By ``we,'' I 
don't hesitate to note that we are talking about the chairmen, 
primarily, of the committees of jurisdiction with a concern of national 
security--chairman of the Armed Services Committee and Ranking Member 
Warner, the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, the ranking 
member of the Foreign Operations Committee, the ranking member of the 
Government Operations Committee, I chair a Subcommittee on Terrorism 
and am a member of the Intelligence Committee and Senator McCain, the 
ranking member on the Commerce Committee. These are people who have 
expressed concerns about provisions of the bill, as I have today.
  We have tried to get some changes made in the bill. We will continue 
to work with the sponsors of the bill and the administration to try to 
make some additional changes that are a little bit more in line with 
what we believe are true national security interests and closer to the 
version passed by the House of Representatives.
  Eventually, there is going to have to be a compromise between the 
House and Senate. We have amendments we would like to offer. One I will 
describe briefly. I will offer it later on, unless we can work this 
out. There is a possibility that we can work it out. It has to do with 
the question of how you verify an agreement with another country to 
inspect after the transfer has been made, to make sure that the 
shipment has gone to the place they said it would go. Remember, we are 
talking about dual-use technologies. They say: We want to buy item X to 
use in our commercial sector. And you say: If you use it in the 
commercial sector, that is OK, but it is not OK to use in your defense 
establishment. They agree, so the item is shipped. Somebody needs to go 
check to make sure the use is indeed in the commercial sector, that 
they haven't surreptitiously sent it across the street to the defense 
plant to be used for illicit purposes.
  Under regimes that exist with China today, there is very little 
postshipment verification permitted by China. If we are going to have a 
trusting set of export controls, as we have in this legislation, we 
need to have some way of enforcing the agreement these other countries 
make when a limitation is placed upon a license that it must be used 
for commercial, nondefense purposes.
  The bill, right now, doesn't provide an enforcement mechanism with 
respect to these countries. It does with respect to companies but not 
countries. But in the case of China, for example, which has permitted 
less than one-fourth of the transfers with respect to satellites to 
have postshipment verification, notwithstanding its agreement in 1998 
that it would do so, we need to have some kind of enforcement that, in 
fact, when we sell them something for commercial purposes, that is what 
it will be used for.
  The only way to do that is to change a provision of the law which 
would enable us to go in and inspect--not have the Chinese do it for 
us, which is sometimes what they do today. They insist on doing their 
own inspection. We need to verify postshipment that the item went where 
it was supposed to go. If a country such as China does not permit that, 
or we find they have violated the terms of the agreement, then we have 
to have the ability to say no to future licenses.
  Under the bill, the only thing you can say no to is that same kind of 
item. Clearly, the U.S. Government needs a broader authority. If the 
Chinese are cheating on satellites, for example, and then they want to 
buy nuclear components ostensibly for a powerplant, but we also know it 
has nuclear weapons capability, we want to have the ability to say no 
until they show us they are abiding by the agreement with respect to 
satellites; we are not going to export something that could be used 
militarily by their armed services for a nuclear program.
  I have suggested language to the proponents, and I hope they will be 
receptive to a change that would give the U.S. the ability with respect 
to subsequent license decisions to say no if, in fact, the U.S. 
believes there is a lack of cooperation by this country.
  There is so much detail one could get into here, and there are so 
many changes I think we should make. I hesitate to go further with the 
description. I have tried to generally describe some of the aspects we 
think are wrong. I think it is important for us to have the ability to 
offer some amendments, describe specifically the improvements we think 
should be made in the bill, and hopefully throughout the course of the 
proceedings we will be able to come to some agreement that will make 
the bill a little better so we can get on with the work of dealing with 
the House of Representatives so we can conclude work on this 
legislation.
  I know it is important to the administration. I don't want to hold it 
up because of that. If the President says he wants to have a bill on 
this subject, that is good enough for me. I am willing to try to have 
that happen. We hope we can get work done on improving the bill in the 
next day or two. Assuming that we can, my guess is that consideration 
of the legislation will go more quickly.
  I appreciate the indulgence of my colleagues. Later, I will discuss 
the specific amendments I think would be appropriate--not in detail, 
but by general subject matter--and that will enable us to decide how we 
can move forward on the legislation at this time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming is recognized.
  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Arizona for his 
comments. I feel compelled to comment on a couple of the items he 
raised. There were several mentions of jurisdiction in there. I know 
there has been some jurisdictional friction during this entire time 
that we have worked on the bill over the last 3 years. I hope the 
Senators feel they have been included in discussions. We have lists of 
a lot of meetings in which we participated. We mentioned the 59 changes 
that have been made in the bill as a result of those meetings, probably 
the most significant of which is the enhanced powers. We mentioned 
foreign availability.
  I have to tell you that the foreign availability in this bill was in 
the 1979 act, but it has gotten some attention because we put in mass 
market this time.
  Because of comments raised by the Senator from Arizona and several of 
his colleagues, we have a provision in here that provides for some 
Presidential enhanced powers that trump all of that. We hope the 
President won't trump all of that. We hope the President will work to 
have some multilateral controls over these foreign availability items 
instead of just the unilateral system that we are working now. 
``Unilateral'' means we are letting the rest of the world sell this 
stuff to anybody they want. ``Multilateral'' means we work together to 
make sure anybody who makes that item doesn't sell it to the bad guys.
  We have to have the multilateral control. Unilateral doesn't work. 
Unless we put the foreign availability in there with a suggestion--and 
it becomes a suggestion because of the paragraph we put in at your 
suggestion with the Presidential enhanced powers--it is only a 
suggestion because the President can trump that, but hopefully he will 
work with these other countries and see, if a product that ought to be 
controlled is made in a foreign country, if we can get the foreign 
country to agree on who the bad guys are and agree they will not sell 
it to them.
  I appreciate the Senator's suggestion on that. I think it is the most 
dramatic change that is in the entire bill.
  On the jurisdictional question, the 1979 act was written by the 
Banking Committee. It was their jurisdiction back then. It has been 
advanced a number of times since then, each time by the Banking 
Committee.
  Of course, everybody recognizes the world is considerably different 
now than it was in 1979. We do not have some of the same capability 
because COCOM, which was a multilateral agreement, no longer exists. It 
is now a voluntary agreement instead of an enforced agreement.
  Throughout that whole uncertain time from 1979 until the Iron Curtain 
came down, the Banking Committee

[[Page 16351]]

held the jurisdiction over export controls--not arms controls but 
export controls. Under the committee's oversight, the EAA and its 
predecessor, the Export Control Act, served as the key export control 
authority throughout the cold war and I think significantly contributed 
to its demise.
  In fact, the Banking Committee has long had broad national security 
jurisdiction which has been rivaled by few other committees. Among the 
laws within its jurisdiction are the Trading with the Enemy Act, the 
International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the Defense Production 
Act, the Exon-Florio amendment, the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act, the 
Export Administration Act.
  Rule XXV of the Standing Rules of the Senate makes clear that the 
Banking Committee has sole jurisdiction over dual-use export controls. 
Paragraph (d)(1) states explicitly that ``all proposed legislation, 
messages, petitions, memorials, and other matters relating to'' export 
controls shall be referred to the Banking Committee. Nowhere else in 
the rules is there any mention of export controls with regard to any 
other committee.
  The Banking Committee's jurisdiction over export controls is fully 
authorized and appropriate. That is why we have been doing the work on 
this bill.
  The act has expired a number of times. When it expires, the only 
action that can be taken is an Executive order by the President under 
the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. That just does not cut 
it, and I think everybody agrees that does not cut it. We need to do 
something a little more dramatic than that.
  We can go back to that act of 1979, but pretty much everybody agrees 
that is inadequate at this point in time and that there should be some 
differences made. There have been a number of studies done on that--one 
of them was quoted yesterday--that Secretary Rumsfeld participated in 
before he became the Secretary.
  Yesterday we presented a letter showing that Secretary Rumsfeld 
thinks this bill is an improved version of the 1979 act and will solve 
the problems about which we have been talking. There are things that 
need to be done in addition to this.
  I do think continual review of our export policy is necessary. I 
appreciate the suggestion of the blue ribbon panel. It has some 
capability to take a look at this in the interim while we operate under 
this new act so we have something substantial in place that will 
protect us beyond an Executive order or even beyond the extension of 
the 1979 act. I will have additional comments later. I did want to 
clear up those things because we debated them a bit yesterday. There is 
some foreign availability, but we have a Presidential trump done at the 
Senator's suggestion and, again, a number of other changes.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who seeks recognition? The Senator from 
Tennessee.
  Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, I will take a couple of minutes, if I 
may, to make brief remarks in response to my friend's statements.
  Foreign availability, one might say, was in the 1979 act, but foreign 
availability has been greatly expanded in this act. In the 1979 act, 
foreign availability was allowed to be considered as one of several 
factors in determining whether or not to issue a license. That is 
perfectly appropriate.
  In the current legislation, foreign availability is set up as a total 
distinct category of items, whereby if there is foreign availability, 
it is totally decontrolled as determined by the Department of Commerce. 
That is a major difference.
  Obviously, the proponents of this bill are going to prevail on the 
notion that this is a good idea, but let's not deceive ourselves into 
thinking we are just continuing on the 1979 policy. We are greatly 
expanding the 1979 policy on foreign availability.
  Secondly, I had not mentioned anything on jurisdiction. Apparently my 
friend from Arizona did and Senator Enzi just did. There is no question 
that the Banking Committee has jurisdiction. Since the subject has been 
brought up, I find it somewhat odd that we as a body have decided to 
take legislation whose purpose is to restrict the export of items that 
would contribute to the military potential of countries so as to prove 
detrimental to the national security of the United States, and 
legislation designed to stem the proliferation of weapons of mass 
destruction and place that in the Banking Committee. We have done it. 
There is no question about it.
  I find that kind of odd. The House did not do it. It is not in the 
Banking Committee on the House side, but it is in the Senate. I do not 
know whether anybody wants to take a look at that. They are welcome to, 
and it will be a fruitless exercise. But since the subject has been 
brought up, I find it somewhat odd that we would choose to take 
legislation designed to protect our country from proliferation of 
weapons of mass destruction and place that jurisdiction in the Banking 
Committee.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who seeks time? The Senator from Maryland.
  Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, I know the able Senator from Utah has 
been waiting to speak. If he will indulge me a couple minutes, I want 
to get something into the Record in light of the comments that were 
made by the Senator from Arizona.
  One of the difficulties I am having, as I hear the critics of this 
bill outline their concerns, I frequently find myself sharing their 
concerns but then not understanding why they fail to perceive the bill 
addresses their concerns. In other words, we have tried to cover this 
matter.
  The Senator from Arizona has spent a good deal of time talking about 
foreign availability but, in fact, the legislation specifically 
provides a whole procedure whereby the President can set aside a 
foreign availability status determination. That is in section 212. 
There is a detailed process by which he can set that aside.
  Furthermore, and much more importantly in a sense, in response to 
some of the points that were raised, we give the President in section 
201(d) enhanced control authority.
  Let me read that authority:

       Notwithstanding any other provisions of this title, the 
     President may determine that applying the provisions of 
     section 204 or 211--

  And 211 is the foreign availability mass marketing section--

     with respect to any item on the National Security Control 
     List would constitute a significant threat to the national 
     security of the United States and that such item requires 
     enhanced control. If the President determines that enhanced 
     control should apply to such item, the item may be excluded 
     from the provisions of section 204, section 211, or both, 
     until such time as the President shall determine that such 
     enhanced control should no longer apply to such item.

  No wonder the administration is supportive with that kind of blanket 
authority placed in the hands of the President. I wanted to underscore 
that.
  The other point was raised about ascertaining end users.
  On page 295 of the legislation, I am going to take a moment to read 
the provisions because the Secretary shall target postshipment 
verification to exports involving the greatest risk to national 
security. Refusal to allow postshipment verification, which the Senator 
from Arizona was just talking about, if an end user refuses to allow 
postshipment verification of a controlled item, the Secretary shall 
deny a license for the export of any controlled item to such end user 
until such postshipment verification occurs.
  Let me state that section again. If an end user refuses to allow 
postshipment verification of a controlled item, the Secretary shall 
deny a license for the export of any controlled item to such end user 
until such postshipment verification occurs.
  Furthermore, the point was raised, suppose the country refuses. 
Again, if the country in which the end user is located refuses to allow 
postshipment verification of a controlled item, the Secretary may deny 
a license for the export of that item or any substantially identical or 
directly competitive item or class of items to all end users in that 
country until such postshipment verification is allowed.
  So the problem was raised, but in my view the bill clearly addresses 
the

[[Page 16352]]

problem. Furthermore, the bill goes on to say on this specific issue--I 
could do a similar exercise with other points that were made or issues 
that were raised, but I am not going to take the time to do that, and 
the Senator from Utah is being very patient and generous in allowing me 
to proceed.
  Let me just close with again discussing the end-use verification 
because we recognize it is an important challenge, and we need to deal 
with it. We are not contending it does not need to be addressed. We are 
simply asserting there are ways we have addressed it in the bill, and 
we think these ways of addressing it deal with the problem.
  End-use verification authorization: There is authorized to be 
appropriated for the Department of Commerce $4.5 million and such sums 
as may be necessary to hire 10 additional overseas investigators to be 
posted in the People's Republic of China, the Russian Federation, the 
Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, the Republic of India, 
Singapore, Egypt, and Taiwan, or any other place the Secretary deems 
appropriate for the purpose of verifying the end use of high-risk, 
dual-use technology.
  Then there is a provision for a report to the Congress from the 
Secretary on the effectiveness of the end-user verification activities.
  There is a further provision, in addition to the authorization 
provided in paragraph 1--that is, the $4.5 million I just mentioned--
there is authorized to be appropriated for the Department of Commerce 
$5 million to enhance this program for verifying the end use of items 
subject to controls under this act. So there is an additional $10 
million we are putting into this specific purpose.
  Mr. THOMPSON. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. SARBANES. Yes.
  Mr. THOMPSON. Will the Senator agree the issue is whether or not it 
is good policy to require the Secretary to cut off an end user, if 
postshipment verification is not allowed, but would give the Secretary 
discretion to cut off or not cut off a country that denies postshipment 
verification? It seems that is the issue.
  The point my friend from Arizona was making was in some cases you 
have a country, such as China, where we have a situation with them 
where we request postshipment verifications for various sites, and they 
agree to a few and remain silent on the rest. They never say no; they 
just never say yes. This is a country decision.
  Under the legislation, the Secretary does have the discretion, and I 
can see an argument for giving him discretion, but I can also see a 
very good argument, and more persuasive, that as it makes good policy 
sense to require the Secretary to cut off, as a matter of national 
policy, an end user if they behave in such a way, that the same logic 
would make it good policy to cut off a country if they are, in fact, 
calling the shots, as is often the case.
  Mr. SARBANES. There is some weight to the point the Senator is 
making, but it seems to me cutting off the country has a broad range of 
implications and consequences. Those have to be taken into 
consideration and, therefore, giving the Secretary a ``may'' authority 
rather than a ``shall'' requirement probably makes sense in that 
instance. The counterargument can obviously be made that then you may 
confront a situation in which, because of the host of considerations 
that are involved, you do not want to actually exercise the authority, 
but the statute would require you to do so.
  The way it is worded, the authority is given, it is there to be 
exercised, but exercising is not compelled. We came down on that side 
of it. We are trying to give authority to the executive branch but give 
them a certain amount of flexibility to deal with the problem.
  The Senator himself yesterday referred to the unintended consequences 
of consideration. As I commented yesterday, that was a very apt 
perception and, again, we are trying to deal potentially with what 
might be an unintended consequence.
  Mr. President, the Senator from Utah has been extremely generous, and 
I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland yields the floor. 
The Senator from Utah is recognized.
  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I thank the Chair and I thank my 
colleagues for an illuminating debate. With some trepidation, I am 
going to take a page out of the book of the senior Senator from West 
Virginia and talk about Roman history for a moment because I think it 
is appropriate in this circumstance.
  The Roman Empire was the dominant military power for many centuries, 
and it was the dominant military power for two reasons: one was 
technology and the other was training.
  In order to become a Roman legionnaire, I understand it took 14 years 
of training to learn the technology. Now, it may sound strange in 
today's world to call ``technology'' what the Romans used in their 
military, but the Romans carefully studied the art of war and came up 
with a technology that was new and unique in their time.
  They had a large shield with which they could protect themselves 
against the initial blow of the enemy, and then they devised a short 
sword which could go around the shield and into the back of the soldier 
with whom they were involved in close combat. They found the short 
sword was technologically better than the long sword, and the 
combination of training with the shield and the short sword gave the 
Roman legions military dominance over all the world.
  Why is that relevant? We are talking about technology. We are not 
talking about training. We are not talking about the ability of the 
American military and the American planners to use the available 
technology better than other people can use it. It is a point which 
must be made as we go through this debate because we are having the 
debate as if the technology by itself constitutes military superiority, 
as if a single export of a single item of technology to a country that 
wishes us ill would automatically and immediately change the military 
balance between us and that country. That simply is not true.
  The American military is not at risk because of the potential export 
of computing power from American firms. The American military is as 
powerful as it is because of the combination of the technology that it 
employs plus the strategic expertise, the military doctrine and the 
training and implementing of that doctrine that goes on in the American 
military and that requires years to implement, just as it did back in 
the days of the Roman Empire and the training of a legionnaire.
  The barbarians in Roman times could easily duplicate a short sword. 
That was technology that they could reproduce in their own foundries. 
They didn't quite know how to use it. They didn't know how to use it in 
conjunction with the shield. The possession of the physical attributes 
of the shield and the sword did not create a military that could attack 
and destroy the Roman legions.
  The same is true of computer power today. The mere possession of 
computer power by a nation that wishes us ill does not automatically 
mean they have the power to take on the American military establishment 
and defeat it. The other factor here that is different from the Romans 
that we have to focus on has to do with the speed with which technology 
is changing. The Romans dominated the world for centuries with the 
shield and the short sword. But the Senator from Arizona has bemoaned 
the fact that computer power that would have been improper, indeed 
illegal, to export just 3 years ago, is today being exported all over 
the world. Three years constitutes two cycles in what is known as 
Moore's law. Computing power doubles every 18 months. That means that 
which was considered to be a supercomputer just 3 years ago has been 
replaced in the normal course of industrial technology by a computer 
that has doubled and then doubled again, four times as powerful, so 
that which is now being allowed to be exported without controls, which 
would have been controlled 3 years ago, is not only being exported, it 
is obsolete. Nobody wants it, except in a way I will describe in just a 
minute.
  This is the rate of the marketplace in which we are living today. It 
is not

[[Page 16353]]

slowing down. If anything, it is accelerating.
  I quote from President Bush: The existing export controls forbid the 
sales abroad of computers with more than a certain amount of computing 
power. With computer power doubling every 18 months, these controls 
have the shelf life of sliced bread. They don't work.
  It is interesting the most powerful computer available now in the 
standard marketplace--and even this statement is now obsolete; it was 
true maybe 6 or 9 months ago--the most powerful computer available to 
the general public came from Japan, not from America, and was available 
in a toy, PlayStation 2. The computing power of PlayStation 2 was 
sufficient to drive the entire missile control system of the Chinese 
military as it existed at the time of the Cox report.
  Are we going to say we would prohibit American firms from exporting 
computers that have the same power as the toy PlayStation 2, in an 
effort to deny that ability to the Chinese, when they can walk into 
Toys R Us, anywhere in the world, and pick it up for a few hundred 
dollars.
  That is what is happening in this world of technology. We turn our 
backs to that reality if we say somehow we must prevent the Americans 
from exporting this kind of thing even though the foreigners are 
producing it and selling it all over the world.
  John Hamre, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, said to me in a 
conversation about this, toward the end of his term with the Department 
of Defense, and I am paraphrasing: My realization that we are on the 
wrong side of this issue came when it suddenly occurred to me that if 
we continue to prevent Americans from being in the world market, we are 
hastening the day when the American military will have to go to foreign 
suppliers for the latest technology because American suppliers have 
been damaged.
  The Senator from Arizona said we must not arm our enemies or that our 
enemies should not be armed by the United States. I say we should not 
get ourselves into a position where the United States must go to 
foreign sources for the technology it needs to arm itself.
  But if we say to American manufacturers, you cannot play in the world 
market except on a time-delayed basis, you cannot compete with 
companies in Germany, Britain, Japan, and, yes, China because there are 
computer manufacturers that are making machines with high levels of 
MTOPS in China trying to get into the international market--if we say 
to the Americans, you cannot compete in the international market with 
these foreign firms except with a delayed time fuse created by the 
government, we are saying, ultimately, that the leadership of 
technology will go from the United States overseas, and the American 
military will be faced with a very difficult situation, a very serious 
Hobson's choice. They will have to decide either we use American 
technology that is behind the curve because the American firms have 
been damaged by their inability to compete in the international 
marketplace and thereby to sell in a larger marketplace and thereby to 
cut their costs by virtue of increased sales or we have to go overseas 
to buy that technology.
  That is not a choice I want the Secretary of Defense 5 or 10 years 
from now to have to make. I want the Secretary of Defense 5 to 10 years 
from now to be in the position he is now, to say the leading technology 
sources are American and that is where I will go to buy.
  The days are over when American technology companies manufacture 
solely for the Defense Department. They manufacture for dual use 
everywhere. I remember a time when the telephone system in the Pentagon 
was completely secure because it was run entirely by the Defense 
Department. Those days are over. When the Secretary of Defense picks up 
the telephone now he is connected to Verizon. Why is that the case? 
Because Verizon has developed better technology using the marketplace 
of both the military and the private sector. It is more reliable than 
the old defense system was, and it is cheaper.
  When the Defense Department goes out to buy computer chips, they 
don't buy them from a source solely dedicated to defense contracting. 
That was the norm in the 1950s and the 1960s. I remember giant 
corporations that produced nothing but defense technology. They did all 
of their research for the Defense Department. They had only one 
customer and that was the Defense Department and everything was focused 
there. It was also very expensive.
  Now when they develop a new chip or a new technology they offer it to 
the Defense Department the same time they offer it in the civilian 
market. It is the profits they make in the civilian market that 
subsidize the work they do for the defense market, bringing costs down 
for everybody, and increasing the technical ability of the products 
they make.
  If we say to them, artificially, you cannot sell these products 
anywhere but in the United States, even though your principle 
competitors in the borderless economies of the world are selling their 
products everywhere else, as well as in the United States, we are 
handicapping these American firms to a point that will ultimately 
become a national security issue for the United States, that will 
ultimately take us to the situation that Secretary Hamre was worried 
about where the Defense Department will have to choose between American 
manufacturers forced to be behind the curve internationally or foreign 
manufacturers located offshore.
  We may not like this situation but that is where we are and we are 
not going to go back. The borderless economy is a reality of the 
future. It cannot be turned back. We have to accept this new reality 
and say the best national security step we can take is to keep American 
technology firms absolutely in the forefront, and the best way to keep 
them in the forefront is to give them the opportunity to compete in the 
largest possible market that they can.
  That is why this bill is so important. That is why this bill has 
significant national security implications that cannot be ignored. But, 
once again, let us remember as we get concerned about the military 
applications of this technology in other countries, that the American 
military is as strong as it is not solely because of its technology but 
because of the entire structure of technology, strategy, and training 
that has been built around it.
  There are others who recognize that everything is changing in the way 
that I have described. We have the letter from Secretary Powell, from 
Secretary Rumsfeld, as well as Secretary Evans, all three of them 
saying this is the new reality and endorsing the bill.
  But let me describe how the new reality comes along to make these 
past controls obsolete. This information is available everywhere in the 
world. Once again, it is a borderless economy. We cannot keep it 
secret. This is published in Scientific American, an article of August 
of 2000. It is called ``The Do-It-Yourself Supercomputer.''

       Scientists have found a cheaper way to solve tremendously 
     difficult computational problems: connect ordinary PCs so 
     that they can work together.

  It is a wonderful story. The authors of the article describe how they 
created what they called the stone soupercomputer, only they spelled it 
S-O-U-P-E-R, after the old fable about stone soup. We all remember 
hearing that as children: two fellows come to town and they are going 
to have a big bowl of soup, and they get a big caldron, put water in it 
and then put stones in it. The villagers gather around and ask: How are 
you going to get soup out of stones?
  Oh, they say, this is wonderful. We will have the most wonderful soup 
in the world. Do you want to contribute something to it?
  Someone says: Is it really going to be that good?
  Oh, yes. We'll give you some of it.
  So someone puts in a little carrot to see if that will help the stone 
soup. And someone says I have a little bit of beef that I can put in. 
And at the end you have the wonderful soup that, frankly, didn't cost 
the makers of the soup anything.

[[Page 16354]]

  They talk about the stone soupercomputer because they were faced with 
a computing challenge that would require traditional supercomputers and 
they could not afford a supercomputer. So they thought, what if we took 
existing computers and linked them together, like the villagers 
bringing their various vegetables and linking them together? Could we 
create a supercomputer? If I can quote from the article:

       In 1996 two of us (Hargrove and Hoffman) encountered such a 
     problem in our work at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 
     Tennessee. We were trying to draw a national map of 
     ecoregions, which are defined by environmental conditions: 
     All areas with the same climate, landforms and soil 
     characteristics fall into the same ecoregion. To create a 
     high resolution map of the continental United States, we 
     divided the country into 7.8 million square cells, each with 
     an area of 1 square kilometer. For each cell we had to 
     consider as many as 25 variables, ranging from average 
     monthly precipitation to the nitrogen content of the soil. A 
     single PC or work station could not accomplish the task. We 
     needed a parallel-processing supercomputer--and one that we 
     could afford.

  So there is the problem. It is the kind of daunting problem that we 
have learned to solve with computers. What did they do? Going back to 
the article:

       Our solution was to construct a computing cluster--

  If I can interpolate, listen very carefully to what they used here, 
in view of the comments of the Senator from Arizona about the necessity 
of quality.
  Back to the quote:

     . . . using obsolete PCs . . . that would otherwise be 
     discarded. Dubbed the Stone SouperComputer because it was 
     built essentially at no cost, our cluster of PCs was powerful 
     enough to produce ecoregion region maps of unprecedented 
     detail. Other research groups have devised even more capable 
     clusters that rival the performance of the world's best 
     supercomputers at a mere fraction of their cost.

  So here is a situation where they not only used PCs rather than a 
supercomputer, they used PCs that were obsolete, that would otherwise 
have been discarded. But they were able to string them together in such 
a way as to duplicate the power of the supercomputer.
  I ask unanimous consent the entire article be printed in the Record 
at the conclusion of my remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See exhibit 1.)
  Mr. BENNETT. How would you feel if you were the manufacturer of a 
computer that could compete internationally with the best the Japanese, 
the Chinese, the Germans, the Dutch or the British could offer and you 
were told: No, you cannot export that until this long regime of 
analysis has gone on because it might be used to duplicate the outcome 
of a supercomputer, and you saw that people were using obsolete 
computers to produce the same result?
  The reality is, we find ourselves in an age that, as recently as 5 
years ago, and certainly as recently as 10 years ago, we could never 
have imagined.
  This bill before us is an attempt to bring the law into some kind of 
congruity with reality and say we have to make the opportunity for 
American computer and high-tech firms to compete in the world 
marketplace and thereby prosper as friendly as possible.
  We have a national security obligation to see to it that the American 
firms retain their lead, the lead that has been established at great 
expense and great effort by American research firms, by American 
universities, by the inventiveness of American entrepreneurs and 
American programmers. We must not deny them the opportunity to compete 
in the world market on the same basis as every other country's 
entrepreneurs can compete because, if we do, we run the risk of having 
them fall behind to the point that America will ultimately end up being 
as dependent on foreign technology as we are currently dependent on 
foreign oil.
  That is not something we want to have happen. That is something that 
has been driving me, at least, in my analysis and sponsorship of this 
kind of effort.
  I congratulate my friend from Wyoming, Senator Enzi, for the 
leadership he has taken in the Banking Committee to pull together the 
concepts that are involved in this into a piece of legislation that 
will do the job.
  I have no doubt that we are going to have to visit this again, maybe 
within 3, 5, certainly 10 years. Because the technological landscape is 
going to change just as dramatically in the next 10 as it has in the 
last 10. But I listen to those who are opposed to this bill recite 
circumstances that are 3 years old, 5 years old, 8 years old. I do not 
challenge their motives, their patriotism, or their determination to do 
the right thing. They are as determined to do the right thing as I hope 
I am. But I do think that the world is changing so rapidly around us 
and this portion of the economy is changing so rapidly that we must 
recognize that and respond appropriately and accordingly.
  Finally, in the report from the General Accounting Office that came 
in December of 2000, which was stimulated by the concerns of the 
Senator from Tennessee, with whom I worked to see that the GAO would 
give us this report, we read the following:

       The current system of controlling the export of individual 
     machines is ineffective in limiting countries of concern from 
     obtaining high performance computing capabilities for 
     military applications. In addition, . . . using MTOPS to 
     establish export control thresholds is outdated and no longer 
     a valid means for controlling computing capabilities.

  That summarizes my position.
  We are ineffective with the controls that exist now in limiting rogue 
countries from getting the technologies they would need. Our security 
is dependent not on this ineffective kind of control; our security is 
dependent upon the overall expertise of the American military, which, 
as the Roman legions, is dependent on training and strategy every bit 
as much as the technology they have.
  For that reason, I will support this bill as it stands and resist 
amendments to it. I appreciate the efforts on the part of the Senator 
from Wyoming and the Senator from Maryland as they work to see that 
this bill becomes law.
  I yield the floor.

                               Exhibit 1

                 [From Scientific American, Aug. 2001]

                    The Do-It-Yourself Supercomputer


  scientists have found a cheaper way to solve tremendously difficult 
  computational problems: connect ordinary pcs so that they can work 
                                together

    (By William W. Hargrove, Forrest M. Hoffman and Thomas Sterling)

       In the well-known stone soup fable, a wandering soldier 
     stops at a poor village and says he will make soup by boiling 
     a cauldron of water containing only a shiny stone. The 
     townspeople are skeptical at first but soon bring small 
     offerings: a head of cabbage, a bunch of carrots, a bit of 
     beef. In the end, the cauldron is filled with enough hearty 
     soup to feed everyone. The moral: cooperation can produce 
     significant achievements, even from meager, seemingly 
     insignificant contributions.
       Researchers are now using a similar cooperative strategy to 
     build supercomputers, the powerful machines that can perform 
     billions of calculations in a second. Most conventional 
     supercomputers employ parallel processing: they contain 
     arrays of ultrafast microprocessors that work in tandem to 
     solve complex problems such as forecasting the weather or 
     simulating a nuclear explosion. Made by IBM, Cray and other 
     computer vendors, the machines typically cost tens of 
     millions of dollars--far too much for a research team with a 
     modest budget. So over the past few years, scientists at 
     national laboratories and universities have learned how to 
     construct their own supercomputers by linking inexpensive PCs 
     and writing software that allows these ordinary computers to 
     tackle extraordinary problems.
       In 1996 two of us (Hargrove and Hoffman) encountered such a 
     problem in our work at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) 
     in Tennessee. We were trying to draw a national map of 
     ecoregions, which are defined by environmental conditions: 
     all areas with the same climate, landforms and soil 
     characteristics fall into the same ecoregion. To create a 
     high-resolution map of the continental U.S., we divided the 
     country into 7.8 million square cells, each with an area of 
     one square kilometer. For each cell we had to consider as 
     many as 25 variables, ranging from average monthly 
     precipitation to the nitrogen content of the soil. A single 
     PC or workstation could not accomplish the task. We needed a 
     parallel-processing supercomputer--and one that we could 
     afford!
       Our solution was to construct a computing cluster using 
     obsolete PCs that ORNL would have otherwise discarded. Dubbed 
     the Stone SouperComputer because it was build essentially at 
     no cost, our cluster of PCs was powerful enough to produce 
     ecoregion maps of unprecedented detail. Other research groups

[[Page 16355]]

     have devised even more capable clusters that rival the 
     performance of the world's best supercomputers at a mere 
     fraction of their cost. This advantageous price-to-
     performance ratio has already attracted the attention of some 
     corporations, which plan to use the clusters for such complex 
     tasks as deciphering the human genome. In fact, the cluster 
     concept promises to revolutionize the computing field by 
     offering tremendous processing power to any research group, 
     school or business that wants it.


                          beowulf and grendel

       The notion of linking computers together is not new. In the 
     1950s and 1960s the U.S. Air Force established a network of 
     vacuum-tube computers called SAGE to guard against a Soviet 
     nuclear attack. In the mid-1980s Digital Equipment 
     Corporation coined the term ``cluster'' when it integrated 
     its mid-range VAX minicomputers into larger systems. Networks 
     of workstations--generally less powerful than minicomputers 
     but faster than PCs--soon became common at research 
     institutions. By the early 1990s scientists began to consider 
     building clusters of PCs, partly because their mass-produced 
     microprocessors had become so inexpensive. What made the idea 
     even more appealing was the falling cost of Ethernet, the 
     dominant technology for connecting computers in local-area 
     networks.
       Advances in software also paved the way for PC clusters. In 
     the 1980s Unix emerged as the dominant operating system for 
     scientific and technical computing. Unfortunately, the 
     operating systems for PCs lacked the power and flexibility of 
     Unix. But in 1991 Finnish college student Linus Torvalds 
     created Linux, a Unix-like operating system that ran on a PC. 
     Torvalds made Linux available free of charge on the Internet, 
     and soon hundreds of programmers began contributing 
     improvements. Now wildly popular as an operating system for 
     stand-alone computers, Linux is also ideal for clustered PCs.
       The first PC cluster was born in 1994 at the NASA Goddard 
     Space Flight Center. NASA had been searching for a cheaper 
     way to solve the knotty computational problems typically 
     encountered in earth and space science. The space agency 
     needed a machine that could achieve one gigaflops--that is, 
     perform a billion floating-point operations per second. (A 
     floating-point operation is equivalent to a simple 
     calculation such as addition or multiplication.) At the time, 
     however, commercial supercomputers with that level of 
     performance cost about $1 million, which was too expensive to 
     be dedicated to a single group of researchers.
       One of us (Sterling) decided to pursue the then radical 
     concept of building a computing cluster from PCs. Sterling 
     and his Goddard colleague Donald J. Becker connected 16 PCs, 
     each containing an Intel 486 microprocessor, using Linux and 
     a standard Ethernet network. For scientific applications, the 
     PC cluster delivered sustained performance of 70 megaflops--
     that is, 70 million floating-point operations per second. 
     Though modest by today's standards, this speed was not much 
     lower than that of some smaller commercial supercomputers 
     available at the time. And the cluster was built for only 
     $40,000, or about one tenth the price of a comparable 
     commercial machine in 1994.
       NASA researchers named their cluster Beowulf, after the 
     lean, mean hero of medieval legend who defeated the giant 
     monster Grendel by ripping off one of the creature's arms. 
     Since then, the name has been widely adopted to refer to any 
     low-cost cluster constructed from commercially available PCs. 
     In 1996 two successors to the original Beowulf cluster 
     appeared: Hyglac (built by researchers at the California 
     Institute of Technology and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory) 
     and Loki (constructed at Los Alamos National Laboratory). 
     Each cluster integrated 16 Intel Pentium Pro microprocessors 
     and showed sustained performance of over one gigaflops at a 
     cost of less than $50,000, thus satisfying NASA's original 
     goal.
       The Beowulf approach seemed to be the perfect computational 
     solution to our problem of mapping the ecoregions of the U.S. 
     A single workstation could handle the data for only a few 
     states at most, and we couldn't assign different regions of 
     the country to separate workstations--the environmental data 
     for every section of the country had to be compared and 
     processed simultaneously. In other words, we needed a 
     parallel-processing system. So in 1996 we wrote a proposal to 
     buy 64 new PCs containing Pentium II microprocessors and 
     construct a Beowulf-class supercomputer. Alas, this idea 
     sounded implausible to the reviewers at ORNL, who turned down 
     our proposal.
       Undeterred, we devised an alternative plan. We knew that 
     obsolete PCs at the U.S. Department of Energy complex at Oak 
     Ridge were frequently replaced with newer models. The old PCs 
     were advertised on an internal Web site and auctioned off as 
     surplus equipment. A quick check revealed hundreds of 
     outdated computers waiting to be discarded this way. Perhaps 
     we could build our Beowulf cluster from machines that we 
     could collect and recycle free of charge. We commandeered a 
     room at ORNL that had previously housed an ancient mainframe 
     computer. Then we began collecting surplus PCs to create the 
     Stone SouperComputer.


                          a digital chop shop

       The strategy behind parallel computing is ``divide and 
     conquer.'' A parallel-processing system divides a complex 
     problem into smaller component tasks. The tasks are then 
     assigned to the system's nodes--for example, the PCs in a 
     Beowulf cluster--which tackle the components simultaneously. 
     The efficiency of parallel processing depends largely on the 
     nature of the problem. An important consideration is how 
     often the nodes must communicate to coordinate their work and 
     to share intermediate results. Some problems must be divided 
     into myraid minuscule tasks; because these fine-grained 
     problems require frequent internode communication, they are 
     not well suited for parallel processing. Coarse-grained 
     problems, in contrast, can be divided into relatively large 
     chunks. These problems do not require much communication 
     among the nodes and therefore can be solved very quickly by 
     parallel-processing systems.
       Anyone building a Beowulf cluster must make several 
     decisions in designing the system. To connect the PCs, 
     researchers can use either standard Ethernet networks or 
     faster, specialized networks, such as Myrinet. Our lack of a 
     budget dictated that we use Ethernet, which is free. We chose 
     one PC to be the front-end node of the cluster and installed 
     two Ethernet cards into the machine. One card was for 
     communicating with outside users, and the other was for 
     talking with the rest of the nodes, which would be linked in 
     their own private network. The PCs coordinate their tasks by 
     sending messages to one another. The two most popular 
     message-passing libraries are message-passing interface (MPI) 
     and parallel virtual machine (PVM), which are both available 
     at no cost on the Internet. We use both systems in the Stone 
     SouperComputer.
       Many Beowulf clusters are homogeneous, with all the PCs 
     containing identical components and microprocessors. This 
     uniformity simplifies the management and use of the cluster 
     but is not an absolute requirement. Our Stone SouperComputer 
     would have a mix of processor types and speeds because we 
     intended to use whatever surplus equipment we could find. We 
     began with PCs containing Intel 486 processors but later 
     added only Pentium-based machines with at least 32 megabytes 
     of hard-disk storage.
       It was rare that machines met our minimum criteria on 
     arrival; usually we had to combine the best components from 
     several PCs. We set up the digital equivalent of an 
     automobile thief's chop shop for converting surplus computers 
     into nodes for our cluster. Whenever we opened a machine, we 
     felt the same anticipation that a child feels when opening a 
     birthday present: Would the computer have a big disk, lots of 
     memory or (best of all) an upgraded motherboard donated to us 
     by accident? Often all we found was a tired old veteran with 
     a fan choked with dust.
       Our room at Oak Ridge turned into a morgue filled with the 
     picked-over carcasses of dead PCs. Once we opened a machine, 
     we recorded its contents on a ``toe tag'' to facilitate the 
     extraction of its parts later on. We developed favorite and 
     least favorite brands, models and cases and became adept at 
     thwarting passwords left by previous owners. On average, we 
     had to collect and process about five PCs to make one good 
     node.
       As each new node joined the cluster, we loaded the Linux 
     operating system onto the machine. We soon figured out how to 
     eliminate the need to install a keyboard or monitor for each 
     node. We created mobile ``crash carts'' that could be wheeled 
     over and plugged into an ailing node to determine what was 
     wrong with it. Eventually someone who wanted space in our 
     room bought us shelves to consolidate our collection of 
     hardware. The Stone SouperComputer ran its first code in 
     early 1997, and by May 2001 it contained 133 nodes, including 
     75 PCs with Intel 486 microprocessors, 53 faster Pentium-
     based machines and five still faster Alpha workstations, made 
     by Compaq.
       Upgrades to the Stone SouperComputer are straightforward: 
     we replace the slowest nodes first. Each node runs a simple 
     speed test every hour as part of the cluster's routine 
     housekeeping tasks. The ranking of the nodes by speed helps 
     us to fine-tune our cluster. Unlike commercial machines, the 
     performance of the stone SouperComputer continually improves, 
     because we have an endless supply of free upgrades.


                        parallel problem solving

       Parallel programming requires skill and creativity and may 
     be more challenging than assembling the hardware of a Beowulf 
     system. The most common model for programming Beowulf 
     clusters is a master-slave arrangement. In this model, one 
     node acts as the master, directing the computations performed 
     by one or more tiers of slave nodes. We run the same software 
     on all the machines in the Stone SouperComputer, with 
     separate sections of code devoted to the master and slave 
     nodes. Each microprocessor in the cluster executes only the 
     appropriate section. Programming errors can have dramatic 
     effects, resulting in a digital train wreck as the crash of 
     one node derails the others. Sorting through the wreckage to 
     find the error can be difficult.
       Another challenge is balancing the processing workload 
     among the cluster's PCs. Because the Stone SouperComputer 
     contains a

[[Page 16356]]

     variety of microprocessors with very different speeds, we 
     cannot divide the workload evenly among the nodes: if we did 
     so, the faster machines would sit idle for long periods as 
     they waited for the slower machines to finish processing. 
     Instead we developed a programming algorithm that allows the 
     master node to send more data to the faster slave nodes as 
     they complete their tasks. In this load-balancing 
     arrangement, the faster PCs do most of the work, but the 
     slower machines still contribute to the system's performance.
       Our first step in solving the ecoregion mapping problem was 
     to organize the enormous amount of data--the 25 environmental 
     characteristics of the 7.8 million cells of the continental 
     U.S. We created a 25-dimensional data space in which each 
     dimension represented one of the variables (average 
     temperature, precipitiation, soil characteristics and so on). 
     Then we identified each cell with the appropriate point in 
     the data space. Two points close to each other in this data 
     space have, by definition, similar characteristics and thus 
     are classified in the same ecoregion. Geographic proximity is 
     not a factor in this kind of classification; for example, if 
     two mountaintops have very similar environments, their points 
     in the data space are very close to each other, even if the 
     mountaintops are actually thousands of miles apart.
       Once we organized the data, we had to specify the number of 
     ecoregions that would be shown on the national map. The 
     cluster of PCs gives each ecoregion an initial ``seed 
     position'' in the data space. For each of the 7.8 million 
     data points, the system determines the closest seed position 
     and assigns the point to the corresponding ecoregion. Then 
     the cluster finds the centroid for each ecoregion--the 
     average position of all the points assigned to the region. 
     This centroid replaces the seed position as the defining 
     point for the ecoregion. The cluster then repeats the 
     procedure, reassigning the data points to ecoregions 
     depending on their distances from the centroids. At the end 
     of each iteration, new centroid positions are calculated for 
     each ecoregion. The process continues until fewer than a 
     specified number of data points change their ecoregion 
     assignments. Then the classification is complete.
       The mapping task is well suited for parallel processing 
     because different nodes in the cluster can work independently 
     on subsets of the 7.8 million data points. After each 
     iteration the slave nodes send the results of their 
     calculations to the master node, which averages the numbers 
     from all the subsets to determine the new centroid positions 
     for each ecoregion. The master node then sends this 
     information back to the slave nodes for the next round of 
     calculations. Parallel processing is also useful for 
     selecting the best seed positions for the ecoregions at the 
     very beginning of the procedure. We devised an algorithm that 
     allows the nodes in the Stone SouperComputer to determine 
     collectively the most widely dispersed data points, which are 
     then chosen as the seed positions. If the cluster starts with 
     well-dispersed seed positions, fewer iterations are needed to 
     map the ecoregions.
       The result of all our work was a series of maps of the 
     continental U.S. showing each ecoregion in a different color. 
     We produced maps showing the country divided into as few as 
     four ecoregions and as many as 5,000. The maps with fewer 
     ecoregions divided the country into recognizable zones--for 
     example, the Rocky Mountain states and the desert Southwest. 
     In contrast, the maps with thousands of ecoregions are far 
     more complex than any previous classification of the 
     country's environments. Because many plants and animals live 
     in only one or two ecoregions, our maps may be useful to 
     ecologists who study endangered species.
       In our first maps the colors of the ecoregions were 
     randomly assigned, but we later produced maps in which the 
     colors of the ecoregions reflect the similarly of their 
     respective environments. We statistically combined nine of 
     the environmental variables into three composite 
     characteristics, which we represented on the map with varying 
     levels of red, green and blue. When the map is drawn this 
     way, it shows graduations of color instead of sharp borders: 
     the lush Southeast is mostly green, the cold Northeast is 
     mainly blue, and the arid West is primarily red.
       Moreover, the Stone SouperComputer was able to show how the 
     ecoregions in the U.S. would shift if there were nationwide 
     changes in environmental conditions as a result of global 
     warming. Using two projected climate scenarios developed by 
     other research groups, we compared the current ecoregion map 
     with the maps predicted for the year 2099. According to these 
     projections, by the end of this century the environment in 
     Pittsburgh will be more like that of present-day Atlanta, and 
     conditions in Minneapolis will resemble those in present-day 
     St. Louis. [see Stone SouperComputer's Global Warming 
     Forecast]


                         the future of clusters

       The traditional measure of supercomputer performance is 
     benchmark speed: how fast the system runs a standard program. 
     As scientists, however, we prefer to focus on how well the 
     system can handle practical applications. To evaluate the 
     Stone SouperComputer, we fed the same ecoregion mapping 
     problem to ORNL's Intel Paragon supercomputer shortly before 
     it was retired. At one time, this machine was the 
     laboratory's fastest, with a peak performance of 150 
     gigaflops. On a per-processor basis, the run time on the 
     Paragon was essentially the same as that on the Stone Souper- 
     Computer. We have never officially clocked our cluster (we 
     are loath to steal computing cycles from real work), but the 
     system has a theoretical peak performance of about 1.2 
     gigaflops. Ingenuity in parallel algorithm design is more 
     important than raw speed or capacity: in this young science, 
     David and Goliath (or Beowulf and Grendel!) still compete on 
     a level playing field.
       The Beowulf trend has accelerated since we built the Stone 
     SouperComputer. New clusters with exotic names--Grendel, 
     Naegling, Megalon, Brahma, Avalon, Medusa and the Hive, to 
     mention just a few--have steadily raised the performance 
     curve by delivering higher speeds at lower costs. As of last 
     November, 28 clusters of PCs, workstations or servers were on 
     the list of the world's 500 fastest computers. The LosLobos 
     cluster at the University of New Mexico has 512 Intel Pentium 
     III processors and is the 80th-fastest system in the world, 
     with a performance of 237 gigaflops. The Cplant cluster at 
     Sandia National Laboratories has 580 Compaq Alpha processors 
     and is ranked 84th. The National Science Foundation and the 
     U.S. Department of Energy are planning to build even more 
     advanced clusters that could operate in the teraflops range 
     (one trillion floating-point operations per second), rivaling 
     the speed of the fastest supercomputers on the planet.
       Beowulf systems are also muscling their way into the 
     corporate world. Major computer vendors are now selling 
     clusters to businesses with large computational needs. IBM, 
     for instance, is building a cluster of 1,250 servers for 
     NuTec Sciences, a biotechnology firm that plans to use the 
     system to identify disease-causing genes. An equally 
     important trend is the development of networks of PCs that 
     contribute their processing power to a collective task. An 
     example is SETI@home, a project launched by researchers at 
     the University of California at Berkeley who are analyzing 
     deep-space radio signals for signs of intelligent life. 
     SETI@home sends chunks of data over the Internet to more than 
     three million PCs, which process the radio-signal data in 
     their idle time. Some experts in the computer industry 
     predict that researchers will eventually be able to tap into 
     a ``computational grid'' that will work like a power grid: 
     users will be able to obtain processing power just as easily 
     as they now get electricity.
       Above all, the Beowulf concept is an empowering force. It 
     wrests high-level computing away from the privileged few and 
     makes low-cost parallel-processing systems available to those 
     with modest resources. Research groups, high schools, 
     colleges or small businesses can build or buy their own 
     Beowulf clusters, realizing the promise of a supercomputer in 
     every basement. Should you decide to join the parallel-
     processing proletariat, please contact us through our Web 
     site (http://extremelinux.esd.ornl.gov/) and tell us about 
     your Beowulf-building experiences. We have found the Stone 
     Soup to be hearty indeed.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Lincoln). The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. THOMPSON. Madam President, let me make one thing clear. Those of 
us who are concerned about certain provisions of this legislation are 
not denying anyone the right to export. Those of us who have concerns 
about the direction in which we are going are not advocating that we in 
any way lessen the overall quantity of our exports in this country. The 
Senator from Utah very effectively constructed an elaborate straw man 
and has now beaten him to pieces.
  We cannot take ourselves out of the world market. We cannot allow our 
exporters, the people who are producing high technology in this 
country, to be frozen out of the market and become insular. No one is 
advocating that. That is not the case now, and that would not be the 
case of every amendment we thought would be a good one and which 
passed.
  The people who are advocating this legislation tell us--I am not sure 
these figures are precisely accurate--that something like 98 percent of 
all of these export applications are approved. It is not as if we are 
holding up anything, except in rare circumstances where there are 
national security considerations. The problem is not that our exporters 
are being frozen out of the market or that in some way they are victims 
of 19th century thinking; it is that they don't want to have to wait a 
few days to get a license.
  We are not saying we need to shut down computer exports or even 
supercomputer exports. We are just saying

[[Page 16357]]

that before they go out the door, somebody ought to take a look at it 
and make sure it is a good idea in terms of the nature of the equipment 
that is being sent, in terms of the end user, or in terms of the 
potential use of the entity to which it is being shipped.
  This is not a matter of export versus nonexport or export opposition. 
As I say, the overwhelming number of applications have been approved, 
or will be approved, under any circumstance. The question is, Does the 
Department of Commerce predetermine broad categories of things that 
might prove to be dangerous without even going through a licensing 
process where somebody can take a look at it? That is what this is all 
about.
  We heard yesterday in broad categories of items that I think the 
average time it took before the approval was made was 13 days. I have 
read otherwise where there are categories of items that required 40 
days for the process to go through. I am sure the exporters would 
rather not wait 24 hours. But we are talking about matters of national 
security.
  Why do we even have an export law? If in fact everything is out the 
door, the genie is totally out of the bottle, and we don't even need 
licenses for anything to anybody, why do we still restrict exports to 
Iraq? Why do we still restrict exports to Iran and Libya and North 
Korea? Wouldn't that be the logical conclusion of the position that 
everything is out there now and no one can restrict anything?
  Our policy has been, and still is, and will be I think implicit based 
on the supposition and the assumption that in some ways, for some 
things, to some end users, we should and we must and we can exercise 
some degree of control. The question is, Where do you draw the line? 
You don't do it foolishly. You don't try to control things that are 
uncontrollable. You don't try to control things to your friends the way 
you would someone who is a potential enemy. But surely we are not 
saying that there is no degree of control, and no degree of 
supervision, where we ought to have somebody in our Government take a 
look at it for national security purposes. Otherwise, why have any 
restrictions to Saddam Hussein if he can go next door and get the same 
thing from somebody else? The answer is because we know that is not 
true. What this is all about is we have some exporters who are in 
business and who need to be in business. We are all for them. They 
don't want to have to go through a licensing process. That is what this 
is all about.
  I think it is true that the key to our success in the future is not 
going to be totally reliant on some kind of export control. The more 
important part is going to be our ability, as they say in the business, 
to run faster. We must keep our technology at a level that outstrips 
all the rest. We should stay ahead. In order to do that, we need 
vibrant industries. I agree with all of that. But it doesn't totally 
answer the question. The rest of the question is whether or not we are 
doing what we need to do to help others run faster in significant ways.
  Pick a country of concern--a country that is on the upswing 
economically, a country that is rapidly building up their military, a 
country that has already been known to use our technology for its 
military purposes. Is it wise policy to have no consideration for how 
rapidly they may be able to use our technology for their purposes? I am 
not saying that is an easy question. Do you slow them down by an hour 
or do you slow them down by a year?
  Those are important answers that I don't have. It would depend on the 
circumstances that would hopefully be considered by our Government when 
a license is on the table and people are sitting around the table 
asking, Is this a good idea or not?
  Under this bill, if they are foreign available as determined by a 
technician over in the Department of Commerce, or if they are mass-
marketed under the same determination, you don't have to go through 
that process; I don't have to wait for 13 days, or the 40 days, or in 
some cases longer, I am sure, but an average of numbers that we have 
used here. That is the question.
  It is true that nowadays you can cluster computers to boost the MTOPS 
power. I, for one, have changed my view somewhat about the efficacy of 
regulating, controlling computers based on MTOPS. The GAO report also 
said there are possible other ways of controlling computing power that 
might be questionable, that have never been explored, and that have 
never been tried. And goodness knows, there is no one outside of 
Government who has any motivation to explore or try those other 
methods.
  They also demonstrated that while you can cluster computers to reach 
high MTOPS levels, those clustered computers cannot be used in the same 
way that another, shall we say, unclustered computer could be used with 
the same MTOPS level. If you want to use a clustered computer situation 
for research, or something like that, it is perfectly suitable. If you 
want to use it for military purposes, it is much more questionable.
  So these are complex issues that have complex answers. And I don't 
think anybody has all the answers. But we do know that technology is 
expanding, it is more accessible. That is not the issue; everyone 
understands that. But I hope everything we are doing--and the purpose 
of this legislation; it is in the bill --is premised on the notion that 
we can, by legislation, do something to assist in curbing the 
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. That is what this is all 
about. If we do not believe we can do that, if technology is such and 
the world has changed as such that we can have no control over anything 
at any time for any period of appreciable time, then we might as well 
do away with the legislation altogether.
  Our legislation, our policy, is premised on the contrary. So it is 
not black and white. It is: Where is the balance? And who decides? That 
is the issue. Where is the balance between, we can't do anything, so 
let's eat, drink, and be happy, and make our money while we are arming 
our adversaries, or that we need to build a wall around the country and 
not give anything out? Where is the balance? And who decides?
  Well, we have decided, so far, in this country that the people whose 
business it is to promote commerce essentially decide. In some ways, in 
some instances, they have to get the approval of or consult with 
others, but in many important respects we have decided--I think 
mistakenly in this legislation and as a matter of policy--that the 
Department of Commerce makes these important national security 
decisions.
  Now we are going to be deciding, when we pass this bill, that the 
Department of Commerce will not even get to take a look at things that 
have been deemed to be mass marketed or foreign available. So be it. 
But let's not fool ourselves into thinking that this is an all-or-
nothing situation or that someone is suggesting that we not export 
computers or that we isolate ourselves in that regard or that we blind 
ourselves to the technology revolution. That is not the case at all. We 
are just trying to reach some kind of a reasonable, measured way in 
which we can do what is doable.
  My basic problem with all this is that we do not know to what extent 
we may be making a mistake. We do not know to what extent some of this 
is controllable, as the GAO has pointed out. The GAO listed in its 
report, I think, about a dozen potential ways supercomputers can be 
limited in ways that other people did not have them and also pointed 
out that they have not been tried, they have not been attempted.
  Our law required, in the 1998 Defense authorization bill, that there 
be a national security assessment, as we were in the process of totally 
decontrolling computers. I would not cite the Clinton administration as 
having good policy in that regard, but I must confess, this 
administration is picking up where the Clinton administration left off 
in that respect. The law required that we have a national security 
assessment. It has never been done.
  So I have one opinion and my colleagues--a clear majority of them--
have another opinion about the effect

[[Page 16358]]

of what we are doing with this legislation, but the fact of the matter 
is, nobody knows. And that concerns me. It concerns me greatly because 
it is going to be some time now before we know the effect of this. We 
should have been studying this issue. We should have had a blue ribbon 
commission. We should have had a group of objective people who are 
unaffiliated with people who are in the export business--which is hard 
to come by on this subject, by the way--to make an objective 
assessment.
  I am hoping before this debate is over with we can, at least after 
the fact, move in that direction. I may be wrong about some of my 
concerns, but I can afford to be wrong. As to those who say there is no 
problem, we cannot afford for them to be wrong because that would mean 
matters of national security would be implicated.
  So I am hopeful we will be able to move in that direction, the 
direction of really doing an objective assessment as to where this 
balance is and to who ought to be making the decisions.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. ENZI. Madam President, I thank my colleague from Tennessee for 
his concern and his consideration and, again, for all of the effort he 
has put into this bill. He has been responsible, along with several 
others, for a number of the changes that have been made in this bill.
  But there are a couple of things I need to emphasize based on the 
comments he just made. One of them is in relation to the comment that 
there should have been somebody studying the issue. There have been 
people studying the issue. There have been a lot of people studying the 
issue, not to mention all of the Senate and House hearings that have 
been held, particularly since 1994.
  When the Export Administration Act expired, we began a study. And one 
of the things this town is not short on is documentation. We document 
everything. That gives you a chance to go back and look at what 
everybody thought in the history of this country, but particularly on 
the history of this issue. It was an opportunity to go back and see 
what kinds of problems there were and what the pitfalls were that kept 
the reauthorization from happening again, what kept the updates from 
happening. We have been very close, throughout this whole process, of 
having it happen again.
  We talked about balance. One of the balance things that happens in 
this bill is that the Department of Defense, the Department of State, 
and the intelligence community get a greater say through this bill than 
they had under the Export Act of 1979, that got reapproved through 
1994. There is more balance in this bill if you want Defense, State, 
and intelligence to have more of a say. They have more say under this 
bill than they had before.
  There is a continuation of a lot of the things they had before, but 
that is because they all agreed on them. But what we have is an 
endorsement from State and Defense on this particular bill saying this 
is a better situation than what we are operating under now. So we are 
trying to get that done.
  In relation to the applications, actually, 99.4 percent of the 
applications get approved, only .6 percent get denied. So what does 
that tell you? A thing that it does not exactly say is that on the 99.4 
percent that get approved, a lot of those have conditions. What this 
committee gets to do is put conditions on the application. But there is 
still a vast number that are readily approved.
  Why are we making the licensing application folks take all of their 
time on items that will be approved that are routinely, regularly 
approved at the present time? Without this bill, we are forcing them to 
concentrate the bulk of their effort--probably about 90 percent of 
their time--on items that do not need to be considered, where all of 
these agencies say: This is an automatic for us, but there is no way 
for us to kick this automatic out of the process. We have to spend the 
bulk of our time working on things that are absolutely routine. 
Wouldn't it be nice if we could concentrate on the 10 percent of the 
things that really need some conditions, that really need some 
concentration, that perhaps need to be denied?
  During this process, I had an enforcement officer on exports assigned 
to my office because I wanted a greater understanding of how the 
enforcement process worked. That includes the postshipment 
verifications. I have had people assigned to my office who worked with 
the applications, and we went to the different agencies to see how they 
participated, how they wanted to be able to participate, and whether 
their rights and abilities were being stomped on by the old process.
  I think we have arrived at a bill that the agencies agree they have a 
say and that they can do a better job of enforcing those things that 
need to be enforced.
  Senator Kyl mentioned there were some arms control problems, probably 
a nuclear gun. That sounds like arms control which is not export 
control. Maybe somebody was trying to fudge it in there.
  I have to mention that there is a very small provision in this bill--
actually a big provision--where we provide additional resources to 
people doing the enforcement. One of the specific things we put in 
there is some training for freight forwarders. These are the people who 
look at those 30-foot long cylinders and say: What the heck is in here; 
could it be something damaging to the United States? That is going to 
be some enforcement that we haven't had before that will help solve the 
situation.
  When we are talking about who ought to be looking at these things, we 
are assuming that we ought to be looking at them from the worst 
possible standpoint. That is probably true. So maybe what we ought to 
have is the IRS auditors checking the capability on all of these 
licenses.
  The reason Commerce gets the main say in this situation is that we 
are talking about commerce. We are talking about the economy and what 
we export. The Department of Defense and the Department of State handle 
the arms export. That is the really dangerous stuff. There is some 
stuff that can be dangerous. There is always a secondary use for 
anything. You can pick up a brick and you can hit somebody over the 
head. That makes it a weapon. But it is primarily a brick.
  The factory that designed that brick probably used a computer to 
design the factory, but that doesn't make them an arms designer. That 
makes them a computer designing brick factory.
  One of the reasons that Commerce has the main control is that it is 
commerce, and it is kind of the old story: If all you have is a hammer, 
everything looks like a nail. If you give it to Defense, then it all 
looks like weapons. Commerce gets to have a say in this, but with this 
bill we give greater authority to Defense, State, and the intelligence 
community.
  We are not just talking about computers in this legislation. We are 
talking about a lot of small companies in this country that could 
compete more effectively if they could get contracts more readily. 
During that process of getting the 99.4 percent licensure, people lose 
contracts or they are not asked to participate in a bigger contract at 
all. From Wyoming, I have some of those folks.
  There is an outfit called Hi Q technology. They make tachometers. I 
love this little success story. This guy used to have the parts 
manufactured in Taiwan and the parts assembled in Taiwan. He said: Wait 
a minute. Wyoming has some great folks who could put these things 
together. I bet they could put them together more carefully, make a 
better machine that would have less errors than the Taiwanese. So he 
started to have the parts shipped back to the United States and made in 
Powell, WY. He now makes the best tachometers in the world and ships 
them around the world in competition with Taiwan.
  Do you know what he is going to do next? He is going to start having 
the parts manufactured in Powell, WY, too, because he can do that 
better with American labor. He can compete on the world market.

[[Page 16359]]

  Now he can't, if every tachometer has to go through this licensing 
process. You can buy tachometers all over the world. You can't buy as 
good a quality tachometer as he has, but you can buy them anywhere in 
the world. They would like to have his, and he would like to sell them. 
If this licensing process stops him, he can't do that.
  We have a another fellow in Cody, WY, who invented a chest seal. If 
you get your chest punctured, if you get shot, fall on rebar or 
something like that, your lung will collapse unless somebody puts, in 
the old method, a credit card over it, which allows you, when you 
inhale, to inflate your lungs. Then they take it off when you exhale 
and it allows the blood and other stuff to come out. A Navy SEAL who 
now lives in Cody, WY, thought he could improve on that system.
  He came up with a chest seal that is a Band-Aid about that big. You 
wipe off the chest and you apply the Band-Aid. The secret is right in 
the middle of it there is a thing that looks like the end of a balloon. 
When you breathe in, it pinches shut. When you breathe out, everything 
comes out. That is in military kits around the world now. It has saved 
a lot of lives on farms, ranches, and a lot of other places.
  Sun screens and planes: There is a guy in Wyoming who figured out if 
these things work in cars, maybe they would work in planes. And he 
started putting them in planes, specialized for the windows and stuff. 
During Desert Storm, one of our big problems was a recognition that 
instruments in Saudi Arabia in the planes were being damaged by the 
intense heat. Somebody said: Wait a minute, I know this guy in Wyoming. 
He makes this simple stuff that goes inside planes and keeps all of the 
instruments from deteriorating. And it saves about $16,000 a year per 
airplane. It is used militarily, but it is not a military piece of 
equipment. It can be duplicated other places in the world. He kind of 
has the corner on the market, like Kleenex, because he thought of it 
and he does it better.
  If he is prohibited from selling this, except to the military of the 
United States, he can't be in business or he would have to sell it for 
a lot more.
  Another guy, in Sheridan, WY, a guy who has the Big Horn Valve 
Company, found a new way to do valves so that you don't have to have a 
T that will leak. It is always internal. The valve twists half a turn 
and shuts off. Any area in between gives some capability. How is it 
used? NASA uses part of this now. It is a disconnect on a missile. They 
can keep the fuel going into the missile the last possible moment. When 
that missile takes off, the valve separates and closes. Refineries use 
it because it doesn't leak like the old-fashioned valves.
  Again, if he has to go through this licensing process, he can lose 
his international opportunity.
  The times are changing, and I have to say, it is the young people who 
are changing it. Eight years ago my son was at South Dakota School of 
Mines. He played a little basketball there. And after the basketball 
game, I went back to his dorm to pick something up. By the time we had 
driven halfway across South Dakota to get back to his dorm, it was 
about 3 in the morning. We went into the dorm; the lights were on 
everywhere. There were kids, young engineers, taking computers apart. 
They were borrowing pieces of computers from each other, and they were 
making supercomputers. That was 8 years ago.
  I have no idea what they are up to now, but I did read that these 
computers' best activity is math. The first thing they will do, because 
it is the best activity, is solve math problems. One of the new 
Internet problems this last week was people feeding math problems into 
the system and all of the computers concentrated on that. And the 
messages would not go through.
  It is technology. We have to keep the technology going. I apologize 
for running over here in my excitement of being able to share a few 
Wyoming examples with everybody. I did that. I did want to emphasize 
why it is important that we streamline the licensing process, not to 
the point where it hurts our national security but where we can include 
some things that will enhance the national security by allowing some 
concentration.
  I yield the floor.

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