Benjamin Gilman: “I remain troubled by the high performance computer provisions in the conference report that penalize Israel, imposes…”

“I remain troubled by the high performance computer provisions in the conference report that penalize Israel, imposes unadministerable burdens on the administration, fails to protect business proprietary information, and requires a one-size-fits-all approach to post-shipment verifications that the authors of the legislation acknowledge cannot be fully implemented. This is an important issue that deserves more oversight and research by the GAO before we take legislative action with significant foreign policy implications. The Senate approach remains a much preferable alternative to this mandatory and inflexible set of provisions which will clog the export control process with little prospect of advancing our long-range interests. As presently drafted, countries such as Israel, Russia and China cannot be removed from the Tier III list of affected countries even if they take every action we request of them in monitoring the use of these high performance computers. Clearly, this is an unwise and self-defeating policy. In the case of Israel, let's not penalize an ally when it has done nothing wrong.”