Trading Places: NATO May Lose Technological Edge To Warsaw Pact As Commerce Decontrols Key Technologies

In July, the Commerce Department decided to completely eliminate export controls that previously prevented the sale of a wide array of sophisticated "personal" computers by Western industrialized nations to Soviet bloc nations.(1) Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney strenuously objected to this decontrol action on the grounds that it would give the Soviet Union and its allies access to very sensitive, militarily relevant technology. Indeed, the United States’ principal adversary is now able to purchase without an export licence more powerful personal computers than the U.S. military plans to purchase to meet its own future needs.

At the time, it was hoped that this computer decontrol fiasco would be an isolated and aberrant incident. Despite calls by Congress for greater attention to the national security concerns of the Defense Department and intelligence community in deciding on future adjustments to the U.S. and multilateral export control regimes, however, the interagency process has yet to be corrected to ensure that all relevant U.S. government departments are given ample opportunity to coordinate on proposed decontrol actions. This is the same type of procedural crisis that legitimately inflamed Congress over the recent FSX fighter issue.

Fifty-Three Pending Decontrol Decisions: System Overload

Unfortunately, it has recently become apparent that the Commerce Department is likely to repeat the practice that brought about the disastrous computer decontrol action. It has currently initiated some fifty-three different actions intended to lead to the decontrol of militarily sensitive, "dual-use" technology. Most of these stem from assertions that foreign availability of such technologies makes their control by the United States and other Western nations an exercise in futility.

For example, these actions propose to facilitate greatly Soviet bloc access to the following:

• machine tools — used in manufacturing of advanced military and other equipment;

 

• wire bonders — vital to the assembly of miniaturized electronic componentry;

 

• optical fiber cable — state of the art in communications technology: its widespread use in the USSR will greatly increase the quality, speed, resiliency and security of Soviet military communications;

 

• polysilicon — essential ingredient for the manufacture of microchips;

 

• various composite processes — composite materials processes with diverse military applications, including providing aircraft with high structural strength at relatively modest weight penalties;

 

• side-scan sonars — devices with great utility for anti-submarine warfare purposes;

 

• anti-friction bearings — precision bearings used in numerous weapon systems (e.g., sophisticated inertial guidance systems for ballistic missiles);

 

• gallium-arsenide chip technology — chips whose inherent resistance to the non-blast effects of nuclear weapons make them very attractive for use in a wide variety of military systems;

 

• 32-bit personal computers — high speed computers with direct applicability to design and manufacturing techniques necessary for modern weapons;

 

• ion-implanters — a key component of micro-electronic manufacturing; and

 

• Winchester disk drives — highly capable computer components.

The sheer volume of these initiatives ensures that few (if any) of them can be subjected to the kind of detailed analysis they require. In fact, it would appear that the Commerce Department may be overloading the interagency review system so as to minimize the chances that other agencies will be able to develop the necessary information on a timely basis to challenge Commerce’s findings of foreign availability or assessments of the dangerous impact such actions would have on national security.

A Seriously Deficient Interagency Process

This concern appears all the more justified when one considers the circumstances under which this interagency review is occurring:

• The Commerce Department is routinely failing to provide the Defense Department or the intelligence community with timely notification that it is initiating foreign availability studies.
  • Such agencies, in many cases, are only being advised of these assessments after they have been essentially completed by the Department of Commerce.

   

  • They are then given a wholly inadequate period to respond (often no more than 5-10 days).

   

  • This is inconsistent with the intent of Congress in enacting the legislation governing foreign availability assessments: Congress expected the Defense Department and the intelligence community’s inputs to be incorporated from the outset of these studies.

 

 

• In the absence of formal, thoroughly vetted intelligence data, Commerce has relied heavily on circumstantial evidence of foreign availability (e.g., that utilized in the personal computer case which included highly suspect information about Hungarian computer manufacturing capabilities supplied by the Hungarian government).
  • Indeed, where U.S. intelligence assessments differ from those developed by the Commerce Department, the former have been given short shrift.

 

 

• For the purposes of these assessments, Commerce is including countries with whom the United States has export control arrangements (e.g., Switzerland) as sources of foreign availability.
  • In other words — despite the fact that Country X is bound by multilateral and bilateral agreements to prevent the export of a given technology to the Soviet bloc — that country is being listed as a foreign source for such technology and, therefore, as grounds for the decontrol of U.S. technology.

 

 

• When Defense Department and intelligence community reactions to Commerce’s foreign availability assessments are submitted to Commerce, the former have great difficulty determining what — if any — impact their views have had or will have on the assessment.

 

• The result is often that, due to insufficient notice by the Commerce Department to other concerned agencies that a positive foreign availability finding is being made, the latter are obliged frantically to elevate their objections to higher levels.
  • This invites repetition in the future of the slap-dash process that forced Secretary of Defense Cheney to object publicly to the personal computer decontrol decision after it was made.

 

A Case Study: The Proposed Decontrol of Highly Accurate Machine Tools

A particularly egregious — and strategically significant –example of the Commerce Department’s misguided actions can be found in the effort it is now making to decontrol extremely accurate machine tools. Such tools are essential to the efficient manufacture of advanced aircraft and other militarily relevant systems.

At present, COCOM (the Coordinating Committee on Multilateral Export Controls) precludes the transfer to Soviet bloc countries of machine tools with an accuracy of plus-or-minus 10 microns (or four ten-thousandths of an inch). This level already exceeds the accuracy of the machine tools used by over 95% of the United States’ defense industries.

The Commerce Department, with support from the State and Energy Departments, is currently seeking to relax the control of machine tools to those with an accuracy of plus-or-minus fivein excess of 98% of the capabilities possessed by the U.S. industrial base. What is more, it is in excess of 100% of that currently utilized by America’s largest defense contractors. The same can be said of the major European (British, French and West German) defense industrial bases, as well. Incredible as it may seem, the Federal Republic of Germany has been pressing for the standard to be relaxed so as to permit machines with accuracies of plus-or-minus 3 microns to be sold to the Soviet Union and its allies. microns (two ten-thousandths of an inch). This is a level that is

In Soviet hands, these highly accurate machine tools will enable the USSR to produce military guidance systems, fire control mechanisms, reconnaissance devices and other equipment literally at the cutting edge of technology. For this reason, the Defense Department has expressed profound reservations about their decontrol.

Despite such concerns, the Commerce Department is poised to proceed with this decontrol action. Senior interagency meetings are scheduled this week to provide a last minute opportunity for the Defense Department and intelligence community to present data rebutting Commerce’s assertions that comparable machines are available to the Soviet bloc either from foreign sources or through indigenous production.

Time for a Rigorous Interagency Review

Such meetings are of the utmost importance, both in terms of the necessity for a "sanity check" on the advisability of releasing these sophisticated machine tools and as a first step toward restoring a modicum of discipline and responsibility to the process whereby decontrol decisions are made by the U.S. government. The following are among the questions that should be addressed in the course of these deliberations:

• Is there solid data to support the contention that the Soviet Union can obtain plus-or-minus 5 micron machine tools from either foreign sources or domestic suppliers?

 

• What assessment has been performed of the adverse strategic consequences likely to result from the decontrol of machine tools of this quality?

 

• Under what circumstances should other COCOM members or countries having bilateral agreements with the United States (i.e., so-called "5(k)" countries) limiting technology transfers to the Soviet bloc be considered sources of foreign availability for the purposes of decontrol decisions pursuant to the Export Administration Act? Although Commerce is required by law to consider all non-U.S. sources of supply, distinctions are necessary if it is accurately to portray the actual availability of technologies to proscribed destinations.

 

• What mechanisms will be utilized to ensure that the Defense Department and the intelligence community are given an appropriate role in fully developing assessments and coordinating on decisions involving the decontrol of militarily relevant technologies?

 

• As a first step toward introducing such mechanisms, should an immediate moratorium be imposed on the torrent of decontrol actions now being proposed?

Conclusion

In an important speech last May to the U.S.-USSR Trade and Economic Council (USTEC) — a group notorious for its disregard for U.S. security interests in East-West trade and financial relations — Secretary of Commerce Robert Mosbacher took what appeared to be a principled and courageous stand. He said that in such transactions, America’s national security needs will remain paramount and that, as a result, export controls are not on the table for negotiations. Secretary Mosbacher also expressed his discomfort with expanding trade with the USSR while a massive effort by Moscow to acquire illegally thousands of militarily-useful technologies from the West continues. In fact, there is a multibillion dollar annual cost to U.S. taxpayers in the form of higher defense spending which results from Soviet technology theft and espionage which has increased markedly under Gorbachev.

The Center for Security Policy welcomed Secretary Mosbacher’s sensible approach at the time.(2) It strongly urges that such principles now be translated from rhetoric to practice — starting with a decision not to decontrol highly accurate machine tools and other advanced, dual-use technology.

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1. See A Formula for Disaster: Computers for the Soviet Military, Center for Security Policy, 24 July 1989, Vol. 2, No. 89-42.

2. See Center for Security Policy Commends "Mosbacher Principles" on East-West Trade, Center for Security Policy, 18 May 1989, No. 89-P25.