National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2005

NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2005 -- (Extensions of Remarks - June 14, 2004)

SPEECH OF
HON. ZOE LOFGREN
OF CALIFORNIA
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
MONDAY, JUNE 14, 2004

Ms. LOFGREN. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the great work done by Chairman HUNTER and Ranking Member SKELTON on this legislation, but I must reluctantly rise to highlight a major problem that I hope will be fixed before this bill reaches the President's desk.

There is an obscure provision of the bill that I want to make sure Members know about, and that is Section 1404, which would require U.S. companies to get a license before they export any goods listed on the Military Critical Technologies List. According to a copy of that list I found on the Defense Technical Information Center Web site, computers that exceed 1500 MTOPS are considered to be military critical.

So under this bill, exports of desktop computers, laptops and Sony PlayStations would require a license. Making matters worse, the license requirement would apply to all exports, even those headed to our allies. If you want to sell a Sony PlayStation to England, you would need a license. I think that is a major problem.

Our current laws allow exports up to 190,000 MTOPS to Tier III countries like China and Russia. I personally think that 190,000 MTOPS is an outdated metric. But to go down to a 1500 MTOPS metric is literally the stone age of computing.

If there are specific military critical technologies that are not sufficiently controlled under existing export regulations, like night vision or surveillance devices, then let us draft something that controls those technologies. But to say that we cannot freely sell a laptop to someone in London, that the Sony PlayStations cannot be exported to Canada, I think is wrong.

I know that this is about war, but it shouldn't be about war on the American economy.