Although the CoCom export restrictions on high technology were relaxed at the beginning of this month, one of the changes that occurred made licences mandatory for all exports of RISC workstations – and now the US Department of Defense is proposing a new set of export restrictions that has the major workstation manufacturers up in arms. The moves were sparked off by a hold-up of 15 licence applications for RISC exports to the Soviet Union and China. Workstation vendors including IBM Corp, Digital Equipment Corp, Silicon Graphics Inc and Sun Microsystems Inc have been lobbying the Pentagon with the help of the Washington-based American Electronics Association, and have apparently already won some concessions over the original safeguards. But now people at the Pentagon have raised the idea of some sort of hardware and software restrictions that would prevent the use of computers for such defence applications as anti-submarine and nuclear chemical warfare. According to the New York Times, this would restrict the applications that could be run, audit the programs and limit communications capability. But industry executives are sceptical about the practicality of achieving this, and worried about what it would do to their competitiveness with non-US vendors. A spokesman for DEC said that the company was concerned about any unilateral action that the US Government would consider at this stage. In the personal computer industry, clonemakers are prevalant all over the world, and that trend is now rising in RISC. New controls or regulations would not keep the technology out of unwelcome hands, the Maynarder said. Hewlett-Packard Co said it was unilaterally opposed to export controls, which it believes have been ineffective in the past. Further meetings on the issure are planned over the next few weeks.
