U.S. TO TRY TO BAR ALIENS FROM SUPERCOMPUTERS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605800003-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 4, 2012
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: July 30, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/04: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605800003-3
ARTICLE AP~~EEAq1 J NEW. YORK TIMES
ON PAGEAI 30 July 1985
U.S. to Try to Bar Aliens
From Supercomputers
By DAVID E. SANGER
The Defense Department said yes-
terday that it would try to keep Soviet- A $7SFMWfon Project
bloc students and scholars from virtu_
ally all the supercomputers in the But late in February, the National
United States, inch four major. Science Foundation said it would spend
centers now being set up at universities $200 million to create supercomputer
by the National Gien.ro WMI"Ant;- . centers to help academics solve a wide
Officials of the Defense Department
sal the move sev rn-- Ed by tell igence agencies, was intended to as_
sure that the Soviet military d d not
make use of the American machines
for weapons design or code-breaking. e superfast computers are among
the equipment most sought by the
Soviet bloc, and officials say they as-
sume many of the foreigners involved
in academic exchanges are spies.
The move has prompted protests
from officials at three of the universi-
ties involved in the science founda-
tion's project on the ground that the re-
strictions could violate academic free.
dom. In the past two weeks those three,
Cornell University, Princeton Univer-
sity and the University of Illinois, have
each refused to endorse a provision in
their Government contracts that would
restrict the access of some foreign na-
tionals to the facilities.
Directive Is Being Drafted
But Government officials said yes-
terday that the universities might have
to yield if President Reagan signed a
national security directive now being
drafted by a group of officials of the De-
fense Department, the State Depart-
ment and the National Security Agen-
cy, among other agencies.
Dr. Stephen D. Bryen, a deputy;
assistant secretary of defense, said in a
telephone interview yesterday that any
Soviet access to such machines would
pose a "serious threat" to the United
States. Dr. Bryen, who directs the Pen-
tagon's efforts to regulate the flow of
strategically important high-tech-
nology products, added, "If you are not
willing to sell the computers but give
them access to the machines on your
own soil, you have lost the whole ex-
port-control battle in one swoop."
Supercomputers, which cost more
than $10 million each, are the most ad-
vanced computer systems currently
manufactured, and there are fewer
than 150 of them installed around the
world. Because of their tremendous
processing speed, they can solve in a
day complex mathematical problems
that take the largest conventional com-
puters months or years.
Experts generally agree that the
Soviet Union has no supercomputers.
Until recently, neither have most aca-
demic or industrial researchers.
the universities awarded the centers
would control access to the machines,
which are not intended for any classi-
fied Governnt work.
Allen J. Sinisgalli, ' director of re-
search and project administration at
Princeton, said officials there "were
very, very surprised" by the actual
contract. The document, he said, stipu-
lated that the consortium of universi-
ties running the Princeton center would
deny access to foreign nationals from
the Soviet bloc, China or other coun-
tries that fell under the high-technology
export control laws.
"We feel it is a tremendous infringe-
ment on academic freedom," said Mr.
Sinisgalli, who negotiated for the con-
sortium, which includes the Massachu-
setts Institute of Technology, Harvard
Univerity, the University of Pennsyl-
vania and Rutgers, among others.
"Foreign scholars are in the country
for legitimate purposes," Mr. Sinis-
galli said. "To restrict them would be
to deny their rights. And for the first
time, we are seeing the Government
try to impose controls on a facility
where there is absolutely no classified
work going on."
In the end, Mr. Sinisgalli said, com-
promise language was reached as
knowleging that a "national policy" on
access to supercomputers was being
drafted and that the center would abide
by that policy. But officials at Prince-
ton and Cornell' said yesterday that if
the national policy infringed on aca-
demic freedom they might have to
withdraw from the project.
Among the four universities direct-
ing the computer centers, only the Uni-
versity of California at San Diego ac-
cepted the wording suggested to the
science foundation by the Defense De-
partment, according to foundation offi-
cials. Administrators at the university
could not be reached for comment yes-
terday, but National Science Founda-
tion officials said the San Diego con-
tract was negotiated by a private com-
pany that will operate the facility for
the university.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/04: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605800003-3