Lowering The Bar On Computer ExportsLowering The Bar On Computer Exports

President Bush last week cleared the way for U.S. computer vendors to sell systems capable of up to 190,000 millions of theoretical operations per second to countries on a restricted export list, without notifying authorities. That's an increase from the previous limit of 85,000 MTOPS. Countries on the list include China, India, Pakistan, and Russia. The export restrictions, imposed years ago, were meant to prevent certain countries from using U.S.-made computers for military purposes. But Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff says export restrictions on high-end computers no longer serve a purpose, given that a cluster of PCs now can perform complex military simulations.