Mike Thompson: “As the Cox committee points out, no threat assessment was ever conducted. As we have seen the rapid decontrol of…”

“As the Cox committee points out, no threat assessment was ever conducted. As we have seen the rapid decontrol of supercomputers in this country to countries such as China, under the notion that, well, MTOP is not a valid criteria anymore and they will get it from somebody else anyway, the defense authorization bill in 1998 required that if we are going to do this rapid decontrol of our computers, that we do a national security assessment as a part of that, because the real bottom line is, we don't know what the effects of this rapid decontrol are. We don't know what the significance to national security is. We operated for a long time under the notion that it was very important--and the Cox committee will bear this out--to try to keep the supercomputers at a certain level out of the hands of Russia and China and countries such as that because they use them for nuclear simulation, their stockpile enhancement programs, things of that nature. We have totally changed our view about that based on no study, based on anecdotal comments by people who come and testify before these committees who have a direct or indirect interest in companies or represent companies that are interested in exporting in many cases--not all of them, but many--time after time. We have not really had any in-depth study or analysis by this Government as to what the effect of this substantial change in our policy is to our national security. I am not saying I know the answer.…”