Some of Our Chips Are Missing

Trying to keep U.S. high-tech exports from Moscow

When experts at the Pentagon recently examined a Soviet ocean buoy obtained by American intelligence agencies through unspecified means, they were not surprised at what they found. The printed circuit boards inside the buoy, which was designed to help track U.S. submarines, were pin-for-pin compatible with those produced by Texas Instruments Inc. of Dallas. T.I., needless to say, had not sold them to Moscow or indeed to any Communist bloc enterprises. Similarly, the Soviets feigned innocence a year ago, when they tried to buy sophisticated U.S. equipment that tests the strength of concrete, claiming that they needed it to check out their bridges and apartment buildings. The Pentagon blocked the sale on the ground that the more likely use would be to test the hardening of ICBM silos.

The Soviet Union can acquire such items of American high technology through industrial espionage, outright theft, or by purchasing them secondhand from companies in nations that are either allied with the U.S. or neutral and that got them from U.S. firms. The problem for the U.S., says Lionel Olmer, Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade, is "finding a way of assuring our national security with minimal damage to the American business community."

As the matter now stands, American exporting companies are required by the Export Administration Act of 1979 to insist in contracts with the buyers of their defense-sensitive products that the items cannot be re-exported to any East bloc nations. That law, which will expire in September, has already prompted an intense backstage battle between the Commerce and Defense departments on future methods of tightening controls over such exports.

The battle lines could not be more sharply drawn. In general, the Commerce Department argues that U.S. business suffers when the rules are too stringent, when items with potential military application are readily available to the Soviet Union from other nations, or when the line between an innocent use of technology and a military use is so vague as to be indistinguishable in practice. The Pentagon, on the other hand, would like veto power over the export from the U.S. of any technology that some day could conceivably endanger U.S. security.

The current practice leaves the authority and responsibility almost wholly with Commerce. Officials there review all applications for export licenses and invite Pentagon recommendation only when they need a second opinion on whether the item might have military value to a Communist nation. Last year, out of 85,000 applications it reviewed, Commerce concluded that about 8,000 involved national-security considerations. Of those, Commerce asked the Pentagon to take a good long look at 2,000. In the end, Commerce denied only 5% of the sensitive applications. For another 10%, it asked the U.S. firms involved to reduce the sophistication of their high-tech exports, presumably so that the merchandise would be less useful if it did find its way to the Soviet Union.