President Announces "New Notification Level" for High Performance Computer Exports
On March 16, 2012, President Obama announced his decision to establish a new level for digital high performance computers (HPCs) that are subject to the notification procedure provided by section 1211 of the 1998 National Defense Authorization Act (Public Law 105-85). The new level will be 3.0 Weighted TeraFLOPS.
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The President stated that he is making this change based on the recommendation of the Departments of State, Defense, Commerce, and Energy, and has submitted the required report to Congress.
(Section 1211(a) of this 1998 law states that the President shall require that no digital computer with a composite theoretical performance level of more than 2,000 millions of theoretical operations per second (MTOPS) or with such other composite theoretical performance level as may be established subsequently by the President under subsection (d), may be exported or reexported without a license to a Computer Tier 3 country if the Secretary of Commerce, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Energy, the Secretary of State, or the Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency objects, in writing, to such export or reexport. Any person proposing to export or reexport such a digital computer shall so notify the Secretary of Commerce, who, within 24 hours after receiving the notification, shall transmit the notification to the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Energy, the Secretary of State, and the Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.
Section 1211(d) allows the President, in consultation with the Secretary of Commerce, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Energy, the Secretary of State, and the Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, to establish a new composite theoretical performance level for purposes of subsection (a). Such new level shall not take effect until 180 days after the President submits to the congressional committees designated in section 1215 a report setting forth the new composite theoretical performance level and the justification for such new level. PL 105-85 available here.
The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) lists the Computer Tier 3 countries as:
Afghanistan, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Belarus, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Cambodia, China (People's Republic of), Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Georgia, India, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Macau, Macedonia (The Former Yugoslav Republic of), Mauritania, Moldova, Mongolia, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia and Montenegro, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Vietnam, and Yemen. List available here.)