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Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Dreier-Lofgren amendment, which would repeal the requirement to use MTOPS as the metric for restricting exports of high-powered computers and authorize the President to devise a new approach that is both more effective at protecting national security and less injurious to U.S. commercial interests. When Congress imposed the MTOPS requirements as part of the National Defense Authorization Act back in 1998, we made a terrible mistake by mandating a metric that was poorly matched to the threat it was designed to address. At the same time, we handicapped U.S. high tech companies trying to break into the world's fastest growing markets--and gave an artificial advantage to all the companies abroad who would like to move the leading edge in high-powered computing to other nations. The MTOPS metric has been ineffective at controlling the diffusion of technology primarily because computing power has advanced at such a furious pace over the past decade and a half. In 1991 when the MTOPS metric was first devised, the fastest supercomputer in the world was the Cray C90, which was the size of two refrigerators and cost about $10 million. Do you realize that today a Dell Pentium 4 laptop computer, which costs about $1,000, has more computing power than the Cray C90? What's more, ``clustering'' technology allows a foreign government whose technological capabilities we are trying to limit to buy mass market PCs off the shelves of Radio Shack or Wal-Mart and achieve the same computing power by harnessing them together. The most important point I want to make today is that this amendment repealing the MTOPS mandate will not injure national security. To that end, I want to cite just a few sources: A May 2001 report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) concluded that the MTOPS system is ``ineffective, given the global diffusion of information technology and the rapid increases in performance'' and ``irrelevant'' because it ``cannot accurately measure performance of current microprocessors or alternative sources of supercomputing like clustering.'' A February 2001 study by DOD's Office of Science and Technology similarly concluded that ``MTOPS has lost its effectiveness *.*.* due to rapid technology advances.'' President George W. Bush commented in March 2001 that ``With computing power doubling every 18 months, these controls have the shelf life of sliced bread. They don't work.'' Mr. Chairman, passing this amendment will give the President the power to devise a better system to protect national security. Let's do the right thing and approve the Dreier-Lofgren amendment. Home | Lobby | Congresswoman Harman's Office | Press | Issues | Casework | District Office | Library | Webmaster | Privacy Policy | Contact
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