Commerce Department Blasted For Assisting Soviet Military’s Acquisition Of Computers

(Washington, D.C.): The Center for Security Policy issued today a highly critical assessment of the Commerce Department’s recent decision to decontrol an entire class of computers to the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. The report, entitled A Formula for Disaster: Computers for the Soviet Military, takes issue with the Commerce Department’s contention that these computers are readily available to the Soviet bloc.

"The foreign availability assessment made by the Department of Commerce is not simply overstated, nor is it just exaggerated — it is demonstrably false," said Frank Gaffney, the Center’s director. "It is utterly untrue that the high-end computers at stake in the decontrol decision are available from sources beyond U.S. and COCOM control," said Gaffney. For the computers in question with high-end performance parameters, all of the critical components are made either in the United States, by U.S. subsidiary firms, or in countries in compliance with the COCOM framework.

"If the decision to decontrol these computers is permitted to stand, the military sector of the Soviet Union will have the ability to acquire PCs with greater capabilities than even those planned for DOD procurement," said Gaffney. "The more sophisticated of these have real military potential; they can be used — and are — for strategic purposes."

Present export control regulations prohibit the transfer of computers to the Soviet bloc which can process more than 6.5 million instructions per second (mips). The new Commerce decontrol proposal would allow the transfer of personal computers capable of processing 68 million mips. By contrast, future DoD procurement plans only call for acquisition of PCs capable of 45 million.

Estimates cited in the Center report are that the Soviet Union has around 50,000 personal computers (compared with 30 million in the United States) most of which are of questionable reliability. "Clearly, given the tremendous short supply of computers which now exists, the main beneficiary of the Commerce Department’s decision will be the Soviet military, intelligence and police sectors. For the average Soviet citizen, personal computers will remain even harder to come by than soap, milk and sugar." noted Gaffney.