CURB ON CAMPUS COMPUTERS: PENTAGON VS. ACADEMIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000100030071-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 2, 2010
• Sequence Number: 71
• Publication Date: August 17, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/02 : CIA-RDP90-00806R000100030071-9
EARED
NEW YORK TIMES
17 August 1985
Curb on Campus Computers:
Pentagon vs. Academia
By DAVID E. SANGER
The Defense Department's plan to
prevent the use of supercomputers at
American universities by students and
scholars from the Soviet bloc marks a
sharp new turn in the Reagan Adminis.
tration's crackdown on the leakage of
high technology, univer-
sity officials say.
News. The Plan, which may re-
Analysis quire a national security
ddiirrective signed by Presi
Reagan, has touched
off a barrage of criticism from univer.
sity officials, who contend that the
move would undermine academic free.
dom and the quality of American aca-
demic science.
"I don't think we've ever seen a curb
on scientific interchange quite like it,"
Robert M. Rosenzweig, president of the
Association of American Universities,
said in an interview. ,it is bad policy to
turn open institutions into closed ones.
It is even worse to make university fac-
ulties become the policemen of ad-
vanced technology."
Officials in the Pentagon and the
State Department have periodically
placed restrictions on the activities of
individual Soviet and Chinese scien-
tists visiting American universities.
But Administration officials concede
that never before has the Government
tried to set broad rules restricting for-
eigners' access to nonclassified re-
search or equipment.
The officials say such rules are nec-
essary now because supercomputers
are being placed on campuses for the
first time. Their concern is not that
Soviet scholars would steal supercom-
puter technology itself but that they
would make use of the computers, the,
world's fastest, to solve key problems
in aerodynamics, nuclear weaponry
and code-breaking.
"It simply doesn't make sense to
allow foreign nationals access here to
militarily sensitive machines that we
won't export to their home country,"
said Stephen D. Bryen, Deputy Assist-,
ant Secretary of Defense for interna-
tional economic, trade and security
policy.
The dispute comes at a particularly
unstable time in the always uneasy
relationship between the Pentagon and
academia. After a series of conflicts
over the publication of sensitive re-
search papers, the Defense Depart-
ment late last year tried to appease
academics' concerns by saying it
would intervene only to protect classi-
fied or potentially classified research.
But the four supercomputers now being
installed at separate university centers
by the National Science Foundation are
specifically intended for nonclassified
basic research.
Soviet Maintains Tight Curb@
No one doubts that the Soviet union
covets technology used on many lead-
ing American campuses. Without ques-
tion, experts say, Soviet scientists have
benefited tremendously in recent years
from the Western tradition of freely ex-
changing and publishing scientific
data. Relatively little Soviet research
is published, and the Soviet Union
maintains tight curbs on visiting Amer-
ican scholars. In any case, American
scholars say Soviet computer tech-
nology is so backward that they would
learn little even with greater access.
In recent years, Pentagon officials
say, Soviet scientists have made pri-
vate advances to several American col-
leagues, asking for time on supercom-
puters to develop, among other things, I
a model of the atmospheric disaster
many scientists believe would follow a
major nuclear explosion.
"There is an obvious spillover be-
tween a hypothetical study and the ef-
fects of a nuclear explosion on a target
in the U.S.," said Donald J. Goldstein,
the Defense Department's principal di-
rector of trade security policy. "I'm
not sure I want to assist them in an-
swering those questions."
Limits Seen as Logical
Other Pentagon officials, while
conceding that the plan regarding su-
percomputers goes considerably be-
yond the export controls designed to
keep key technologies out of Soviet
hands, say restricting access to super-
computers is indisputably logical. So
far, they maintain, the Soviet Union
has obtained none of the 125 or so super-
computers in existence.
"Don't you think there is a certain
irony, asked Mr. Goldstein, "in allow-
ing the Soviets access to computers
here that we won't sell them?"
what
thewo Providing , access
f however, oispreci ely around
American scientists, and some in the
Government, have been racing to ac-
complish. The National'Science Foun-
dation's 2W million supercomputer
initiative, announced last February,
seeks to make the technology available
to top scientists whose work in such
fields as chemistry, physics and aero-
dynamics depend on the machines.
Much of that work will be done by
foreigners. Several recent studies show
that more than half the engineering
students now pursuing doctoral de-
grees in the United States are citizens
of foreign countries, and mast major
research universities have "visiting
scholar" programs, often involving
scientists from the Soviet bloc. Ace-
demics say it would be c ounterproduc-
tive to put limits on the research those
foreigners conduct.
"From a national security perspec-
tive," Mr. Rosenzweig said, "I think
we are far better to devote our energies
to getting as good as we can in these
areas, and not waste our time keeping
others from eating little morsels of
corn that fall off the table."
Other academics contend that the
Pentagon's premise that Soviet
scholars would use the machines for
critical military applications is ridicu-
lous. They doubt the Soviet scientists
would risk tipping their hands on key
military projects by using computers
in the United States. And they doubt
that Soviet scholars could get the com-
puting time it would take to conduct
truly extensive research.
"The idea that any university is
somehow going to allow unrestricted
access by unknown persons for un-
known activitives is laughable," said
Michael Levine, a physics professor at
Carnegie-Mellon University in Pitts-
burgh-
Moreover, university officials con-
tend the task of policing the activities
of a select group of scholars and stu-
dents is repugnant to academic free-
dom. In early 1982, for example, Stan.
ford University refused to enforce
State Department restrictions on Niko.
lay V. Umnov, a Soviet robotics expert.
The university canceled his visit, say-
ing that once the State Department de
cided to let him in the country it could
not expect Stanford to follow him
around.
"Very simply, we are not about to
have someone tell us who we can or
cannot have as students or to deny
them access to some of our facilities,"
said Thomas R. Rogers of Cornell Uni-
versity, site of one of the tour super-
computer centers. "In the worst case,
we might have to withdraw from the
project. I hope it won't came to that."
Caught in the middle in the dispute is
the National Science Foundation, a
Federal agency. "It's a very, very
tricky issue," said Charles Herz, the
foundation's general counsel. "The
flow of ideas can't be controlled like the
flow of hardware. And as universities
get into more and more high technolo.
gy, it's going to be hard to avoid the
recognition that campus research
could have a very real effect on na-
tional security."
STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/02 : CIA-RDP90-00806R000100030071-9