Air University Review, November-December 1984
IN NOVEMBER 1983 West German and Swedish customs agents, working with the United States Customs Service, seized thirty tons of advanced U.S. computer equipment being illegally diverted to the Soviet Union. Soviet agents had routed this shipment through a half-dozen Western countries in a well-organized and technically sophisticated operation. The shipment included most components of a VAX 11/782 computer manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation. That computer far exceeds the capabilities of computers produced within the Soviet bloc. Its military uses include weapons fire direction, signal processing and analysis, and design and manufacturing of integrated circuits for the most advanced U.S. weapon systems. Several other large containers with similar equipment reached the Soviet Union.1
The VAX case dramatizes how the Soviet Union tries to gain Western high technology to strengthen Soviet military power. This Soviet effort poses increasing danger to the West in view of the deterioration of détente and the use of military force in Afghanistan and Poland.
Two specific trends heighten the urgency of tightening up on technology transfer. First, NATO has lost much of the technological edge needed to offset Warsaw Pact superiority in numbers of weapons and troops. The Soviet Union has made such great qualitative improvements in its forces that significant Soviet gains of Western technology could destabilize the military balance. Second, because technologies of commercial origin now provide the Western advantage in many kinds of military equipment and weapons, it is difficult for the free-market Western societies to control the technologies necessary to their national survival.
The Soviet government consistently has sought Western technology to modernize its national economy and military system. The Soviet Union (like its predecessor, the Russian Empire) has a large population, abundant natural resources, and a highly centralized government committed to rapid economic growth. The Soviets also have heavily emphasized military strength. They have done so to maintain autocratic government within their own country and to project Soviet power in Europe and, more recently, globally. This military focus now blurs the distinction between civilian and military authority and programs.2
In contrast, Western nations have had more diversified and productive economies, more rapid technical innovation, and more highly skilled work forces. Because of the greater role of private enterprise and more pluralistic societies, Western governments have tended to separate East-West trade from strategic considerations. They have been less sensitive than the Soviets as to how trade might strengthen a potential enemy.
Several historical examples show how Russian leaders have tried to reduce the Western technology edge. More than two centuries ago, Emperor Peter the Great (1682-1725) used Western experts plus his own personal familiarity with European factories and shipyards to reform the Russian army and to build the first Russian navy. Peter's victory over Sweden at Poltava in 1721 guaranteed Russia's "window on the West" on the Baltic Sea and made Russia a European military power. More recently, Russia's first major drive for industrialization, which began in the 1890s, relied heavily on Western investment and Western construction.
Following the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the Soviet government offered large financial incentives to gain advanced Western know-how and equipment. During Stalin's First Five-Year Plan (1928-33), for example, American firms built, or helped to build, the steelworks art Magnitogorsk in the Ural Mountains, the largest steel complex in the world and a replica of the United States Steel plant in Gary, Indiana; the Dnieper River Dam in the Ukraine, the keystone in the development of Soviet hydroelectric power; the automobile plant at Gorki, east of Moscow, modeled after Ford Motor Company's River Rouge plant; and several large chemical plants.
The West helped to arm Soviet Russia as well as to industrialize it. In the case of aviation, the German aircraft manufacturer Junkers modernized a prerevolutionary plant at Fili, near Moscow. At an air base at Lipetsk, south of Moscow, German and Russian engineers collaborated, and German and Russian pilots trained together. During this period between the two world wars, the Soviet Union also imported military aircraft from Britain, France, Holland, Italy, and Sweden.3
Western nations also transferred "dual use" technologies, that is, those with military as well as commercial applications. The Soviet Union used fertilizer plants supplied by the West to produce explosives, machine plants to produce gun barrels, and tractor and automobile factories to produce tanks and armored vehicles. In 1933, the American who served as chief engineer of the Soviet All-Union Construction Trust stated that every tractor plant "is, of course, a tank factory and [every] automobile plant a factory which may at any time produce mobile artillery." Another American engineer reported that in all of the Soviet plants that he visited, at least one department was closed; he noted that he would periodically discover "parts, materials, shells, and acids" with no relation to normal production.4 According to recent émigrés, the Soviet Union still maintains separate military sections in major manufacturing plants.5
Through most of this period, Western governments tolerated or even promoted extensive transfer of technology to Russia. While Western leaders recognized that they were strengthening a state with the population and natural resources to become the dominant military power in Europe, this strategic insight was outweighed by more immediate economic, political, and military calculations. Governments and businesses alike profited from trading Western equipment and technology for Russian raw materials and energy resources. Moreover, the shifting system of alliances associated with balance-of -power politics kept Russia an actual or potential ally of one or more Western states.
Because Europeans assumed that Russia would always lag behind them technologically, they saw the Russian army as a horde of brave but poorly equipped peasant soldiers rather than as a potentially modern military force. Even after 1917, European governments feared Communist-inspired revolutions more than the Red Army. Such attitudes help explain why most European military observers believed that Germany would defeat Russia after the June 1941 German invasion.
The rapid growth of Soviet military power after World War II shattered Western complacency about the transfer of strategic technology. The United States and its European allies reversed their earlier policies and prohibited the sale of military equipment to the Soviet Union. They also embargoed certain commercial goods and technologies that would strengthen Soviet war-making capabilities. To administer this embargo, they established the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (COCOM), located in Paris and now consisting of most NATO members (all except Iceland and Spain) and Japan.
During the détente of the 1970s, COCOM and individual Western countries loosened controls on dual-use (commercial/military) technologies. U.S. and West European political leaders hoped that an expanding East-West trade would strengthen those groups in Soviet politics associated with consumer goods and foreign trade and, in so doing, weaken the military-heavy industry complex.
These hopes were misplaced. Instead, recent information suggests, increased trade between East and West helped to fortify the position of the Soviet military establishment. The Soviets continued to increase their military spending at an annual rate of 4 percent, while their economic growth declined to 3 percent per year during the second half of the 1970s and, still further, to 1 to 2 percent in the 1980s. Today, high technology goes overwhelmingly to the military and space sectors. This Soviet choice of priorities suggests that strategic and political competition, rather than commercial cooperation, will govern Soviet-Western relations for at least the rest of the 1980s.6 Thus, Western nations must exercise caution in releasing advanced Western technology with possible military applications.
Two specific trends of the past decade strengthen the case for closer control of technology transfer to the East.
First, the Soviet Union has structured and modernized its military forces so that for the first time Soviet acquisition of Western high technology could tilt the military balance in the Soviet favor. During the past fifteen years, the Soviet bloc has improved its military position greatly vis-à-vis the West. The Warsaw Pact now outnumbers NATO by at least a 2:1 ratio in most major categories of tactical ground and air power. The Soviet Union deploys more land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMS) than the United States.
More disturbingly, the Soviets have reduced NATO's traditional lead in military technology, in part by outspending the United States on military research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E) every year since 1972. Currently, the Soviet Union spends nearly twice as much in this area as the United States. Soviet RDT&E is growing more rapidly than other Soviet military investment.7 The Soviet Union frees its nine defense-industrial ministries from bottlenecks that can throttle production in other ministries. It also allocates more and better laboratory equipment to military related than to nonmilitary research.8
Soviet investment in military technology is paying off. The Soviets now deploy tanks, artillery, attack helicopters, and ICBMs that equal those of the United States in technological sophistication. They are cutting the U.S. lead in various deployed weapon systems, such as fighter/attack aircraft, precision-guided munitions, antisubmarine warfare, and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). They are superior in strategic surface-to-air missiles ballistic missile defense, and antisatellite warfare. They are equal in directed-energy (laser) technology and are spending much more than the United States in this field.9 According to Department of Defense studies, Warsaw Pact forces in the Central Region of Europe have improved their potential combat effectiveness by more than 90 percent from 1965 to the present, while NATO forces have improved theirs by less than 40 percent.10
This technological surge increases Soviet capabilities for a rapid offensive, or preemptive, attack. Improvements in tanks, self-propelled artillery, attack helicopters, and heavylift vehicles support a blitzkrieg ground force strategy in Europe. Moreover, the present generation of Soviet tactical aircraft is designed and equipped for offensive operations. While not as capable as the best Western fighters, their numbers and quality invalidate earlier assumptions of automatic NATO air superiority.
At the strategic level, the startling improvement in Soviet ICBM capabilities since the signing of the SALT I agreement in 1972 has made a successful preemptive strike against U.S. Minuteman ICBMs at least theoretically possible. The deployment of SS-18s and SS-19s virtually destroyed the strategic arms control process of the 1970s, which depended on the tenet of mutual assured destruction that neither superpower could develop a first-strike capacity. The increased accuracy of Soviet ICBMs has pushed the United States to plan deployment of the MX ICBM. It also has increased the responsibilities of the other weapons in the U.S. deterrent--penetrating bombers, long-range cruise missiles launched from stand-off aircraft, and SLBMs.
Finally, a Soviet breakthrough in directed-energy weapons could give the Soviets meaningful superiority in strategic defense and military use of space. Such a breakthrough would build on existing Soviet advantages in strategic surface-to-air missiles, ballistic missile defense, and antisatellite warfare.
These trends in theater and strategic weapons particularly affect Air Force missions. Western air superiority would be necessary to block a Warsaw Pact blitzkrieg attack. NATO's antiarmor doctrine requires the freedom to target air- and ground-launched precision-guided munitions against the first and second echelons of a Pact offensive. Furthermore, the Air Force provides two legs of the Triad of U.S. strategic offensive forces (ICBMS, as well as penetrating bombers and air-launched cruise missiles) and most space and strategic defensive systems.
The second trend calling for tighter control of Western technology is the rapidly growing military importance of dual-use technologies. Increasingly, commercially focused advances in computers, microelectronics, composite materials, and other high technologies drive military modernization.
The Defense Science Board identified this problem nearly a decade ago. The influential 1976 Bucy Report on export of U.S. technology highlighted the potential military role of commercial computers. According to that report, the "mere presence" of large computer installations "transfers know-how in software" and "develops trained programmers" and other personnel. All of this can be "redirected to strategic applications."11
Microelectronics offers the best example of how commercial-origin technology can improve military performance radically. British Air Vice-Marshal Michael Armitage considers solid-state electronics one of four "real breakthroughs" in military technology during the past half century (the others being radar, nuclear weapons, and lasers). Air Vice-Marshal Armitage states that solid-state electronics is having a "revolutionary" impact on warfare of an "unusually pervasive and incremental kind." In his view, transistors and integrated circuits will make possible "entirely new efficiencies" in "almost all weapons systems."12
Former Under Secretary of Defense (Research and Engineering) William Perry argues that the technologies of microelectronics and computers that were developed "primarily for commercial application" have shifted the focus of military planning from "delivery vehicles and explosive devices" to "improvements in sensors, control, and accuracy."13 Perry notes that the U.S. semiconductor industry finances nearly all of its research and development from commercial sales, yet it has provided much of the West's lead in computer- and microelectronics related military systems. Perry cites the microprocessor as "essentially a commercial development," which, nonetheless, plays a "key role in the new generation of precision-guided munitions."14
Another example is the strategic cruise missile, now critical to NATO's theater and intercontinental nuclear deterrents. That weapon dates back to the 1950s (Navaho, Snark, and Regulus) but was too large and inaccurate for major missions until it incorporated guidance and control systems using modern microelectronics.15
This blurring of the commercial/military distinction makes it difficult to protect militarily significant technologies. Often such technologies appear on the civilian market before the government understands their full military implications, let alone how to control them effectively. Moreover, military products have a much longer expected service life than commercial products. Hence, the business community may press for decontrol of technologies that still give the West important military advantages over the Warsaw Pact.
The spread of high technology through the Free World complicates control even further. In the 1950s and 1960s, American supremacy in both commercial and military technology was unchallenged. Now the United States worries that it may lose the supercomputer race to Japan. Moreover, U.S., Japanese, and European firms transfer advanced technologies to newly industrializing countries whose export controls and industrial security are weaker than those in most Western nations.
The commercial availability of dual-use technologies having increased military importance offers new tempting and vulnerable targets to the Soviet Union. Predictably, the Soviets have mounted an intensive effort to obtain these technologies legally or illegally. Soviet intelligence services assign several thousand officers to collect Western technology throughout the world; they work under cover titles ranging from diplomat to journalist to trade official. The specialized "foreign trade organizations" within the Ministry of Foreign Trade arrange legal purchases of Western technology and plan for major Western investments in the Soviet Union. They also help the intelligence services carry out illegal diversions of controlled technology, as in the VAX 11/782 case. The State Committee for Science and Technology and the Soviet Academy of Sciences negotiate exchanges with Western governments and maintain contacts between Soviet and Western scientists, universities, and research centers.16
The results of this effort have been encouraging to the Soviet Union but disturbing to the West. In 1972, the Soviets legally purchased more than 150 precision grinding machines from an American company. They used these machines to produce large volumes of high-precision bearings for their intercontinental missiles sooner than would have been possible with their own precision grinders. Those bearings helped to improve the missiles' inertial guidance systems, which, in turn, contributed to the major increase in Soviet ICBM accuracy that has threatened Minuteman survivability, undercut strategic arms control negotiations, and added the cost of MX missiles to the U.S. defense budget.17
In 1976 and 1977, the Soviet Union illegally obtained more than fifty high-energy laser mirrors from Spawr Optical Research, Inc. The California-based firm had performed laser optics polishing work for such companies as TRW and Rocketdyne and for various government organizations, such as Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, Redstone Arsenal, and the Naval Weapons Laboratory. Moreover, Spawr had furnished high-energy laser mirrors to the Air Force Weapons Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico. When the government rejected Spawr's application to sell the Soviet Union fifty mirrors identical to the Air Force mirrors, the firm shipped the mirrors anyway. Spawr and its German agent falsified export documents to conceal the contents and destination of the shipments. The commander of the Air Force Weapons Laboratory estimated that the mirrors saved the Soviet Union millions of dollars and nearly 100 man-years of research and development (R&D) effort. The mirrors probably have helped the Soviet Union maintain its lead over the United States in ballistic missile defense and antisatellite capabilities.18
In a third case, a U.S.-based Polish import-export firm served as the cover for a successful effort to gain technical information on two critical Air Force systems. A Polish intelligence officer paid William H. Bell, a veteran radar project engineer at Hughes Aircraft Company, $110,000 during the late 1970s to photograph classified documents on a wide range of Air Force, Army, and Navy systems. Among these was the look-down, shoot-down radar system of the F-15 fighter. The data that Bell furnished on this radar will help the Soviets develop capabilities to identify and destroy low-flying U.S. cruise missiles. Bell also turned over documents on the radar system for the B-1 and Stealth bombers. This material has helped the Soviet Union plan its defenses against the next generation of U.S. penetrating bombers even before they have been deployed.19
The Soviet Union strengthened its oceanic naval capabilities through legal purchases of two huge floating dry docks from Japan and Sweden. Although the Soviets stated that these docks would service merchant vessels only, the docks were soon diverted to military use, one in 1978 to the Soviet Pacific Fleet and the other in 1981 to the Soviet Northern Fleet. They are the only two dry docks in either of the two major Soviet fleet areas capable of servicing Kiev-class vertical/short takeoff and landing (V/STOL) aircraft carriers. These carriers are important to Soviet naval operations against NATO's sea lines of communications and to projection of Soviet power in the Third World.20
Finally, the diversion of the VAX 11/782 computer system provides dramatic evidence of a long-term push to acquire computer and microelectronic equipment and technology. Over the past decade, the Soviets have bought or stolen hundreds of pieces of U.S., Japanese, and European microelectronic equipment worth hundreds of millions of dollars. This has made possible a modern microelectronics industry that could meet all Soviet military requirements. The Soviets also have used IBM computers to help them design the Ryad series of computers that are used throughout their military.21
The United States has recognized the historic shift caused by the decline in NATO's technological edge and the growing military importance of commercial-origin technologies. In his first annual report to Congress, Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger stated that if the Soviet Union continued "to obtain advanced technology from the West," it could later "threaten us with the advanced weaponry" which that technology would help produce. Secretary Weinberger concluded that U.S. trade policies toward the Soviet bloc should not be determined by "private market forces" alone but should take into account "our larger strategic interests."22
Top military officers acknowledge that technology transfer can affect the military balance in their areas of responsibility. For example, General James Hartinger, Chief of Air Force Space Command, began a recent assessment of the military competition in space by stating that the U.S. technology base "exceeds" the Soviet base. However, General Hartinger also said that the Soviets are outspending the United States, that their space program is "dominated by the military," and that they benefit from the "inherent technology transfer from our open society to theirs."23
The Reagan administration has given technology transfer control greater emphasis and broader application than détente-era presidencies had.24 Tighter procedures for reviewing export license applications now make it much less likely than before that the government will approve the sale of commercial goods with military applications to recipients in the Soviet bloc. The President has extended the Department of Defense's authority to review license applications for exports to Communist nations so that it now includes exports to Free World countries where there is a significant risk of diversion to the Soviet bloc.25 Such programs as the Customs Service's Operation Exodus have increased substantially the government's ability to stop illegal exports. This new sense of urgency has brought greater cooperation from U.S. exporters. At times, private companies have been more alert than the government to potential losses of technology.26
Abroad, the United States has led in updating the multilateral COCOM control list on dual-use commercial/military items. This updated list now includes computer hardware and software, printed circuit boards, electronic-grade silicon (needed for high-density microelectronic circuits), telephone switching equipment, aeroengines, and floating dry docks. The United States also has encouraged greater international cooperation in enforcing export controls through negotiations in COCOM and with individual allied and nonaligned nations.
U.S. initiatives have provided a good start in protecting the West's technological edge. Unless the momentum is maintained, however, the two historical trends we have examined still could combine to tilt the military balance toward the Soviets.
We do not know how fully NATO will reverse its decline of the 1970s and reassert its supremacy in military technology. The present U.S. rearmament program will bring on line several major new weapon systems and launch important initiatives in space and strategic defenses. But the United States still cannot develop and deploy advanced military systems expeditiously. Furthermore, some U.S. allies object to the cost of modernizing NATO's conventional defenses with emerging technologies.
Meanwhile, the Soviet Union is unlikely to slacken either its own R&D program or its efforts to acquire Western technology. The Soviets may well believe that they have hit on a winning combination in their military competition with the capitalist world. Possibly they have. A thoughtful American observer asks how long one can count on "superior U.S. innovative capacity" in military technology. He believes that the Soviet "technical establishment" may be on the "threshold of a takeoff" like that which the United States experienced during and after World War II.27
Continuing Soviet technological advances require that the Western nations develop a long-term strategy for coping with the increasing military importance of commercial-origin technologies. It is not clear how soon these nations will do so. While military officers and national security specialists see the 1970s as a period of Soviet military gains vis-à-vis the West, businessmen and economists look back on it as a decade of expansion in U.S. foreign trade and in world trade. Many of them balk at the prospect of national or COCOM controls that might threaten that expansion in anyway. Their arguments carry considerable political weight at a time of large deficits in the U.S. balance of trade. In Europe, persisting economic troubles hamper attempts to modernize export controls.
It is obvious that the West will need time to adjust its technology transfer policy fully from the hopes of the 1970s to the realities of the 1980s. In the meantime, the Air Force can help to minimize strategic losses. Among the military services, the Air Force has probably the greatest stake in the outcome of the technological competition. It receives more than 40 percent of the Department of Defense budget for RDT&E.28 Moreover, aerospace is a particularly volatile and critical element of the overall U.S.-Soviet military competition. U.S. Air Force officers legitimately can point out that such impressive Soviet advances as Sputnik, the SS-18 and SS-19 ICBMS, and antisatellite systems have challenged U.S. security in a way far transcending one military service or mission.
Because the Soviets are likely to pursue further aerospace capabilities in the years ahead, Air Force personnel have a special responsibility to protect America's lead in military technology. In the case of technology transfer, that responsibility means identifying those areas where loss of Western technology could give the Soviets superiority and alerting the national security establishment to any prospect for such a loss.
Office of the Secretary of Defense
Washington, D.C.
Notes
1. Edward C. Burks, "Moscow-Bound Computer Is Seized," New York Times, 21 November 1983, p. 3; Eduardo Lachica, "Advanced U.S. Missile Gear Was Shipped to Soviet Union by Smugglers, Aides Say," Wall Street Journal, 3 April 1984, p. 4.
2. For powerful arguments that socialist ideology and Imperial Russian traditions combine to give a distinctive military cast to Soviet politics and society, see William E. Odom, "The 'Militariution' of Soviet Society," Problems of Communism, September/ October 1976 pp. 34-51, especially pp. 34-35, 40-41, and 49-51; and Rebecca V. Strode and Colin S. Gray, "The Imperial Dimension of Soviet Military Power," Problems of Communism, November/December 1981, pp. 1-15. Lieutenant General William Odom is now Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Department of the Army.
3. Robert A. Kilmarx, A History of Soviet Air Power (New York: Praeger, 1962), pp. 68-74, 83-86, 99-115; Antony C. Sutton, Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development, 1917 to 1930 (Stanford, California: Hoover Institution, 1968), pp. 258-64; Alexander Boyd, The Soviet Air Force since 1918 (New York: Stein and Day, 1977), pp. 7-29.
4. Antony C. Sutton, Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development, 1930 to 1945 (Stanford, California: Hoover Institution, 1971), pp. 238, 256. See also pp. 185-86 and 236-48.
5. Discussion at Conference on Soviet Science and Technology: Eyewitness Accounts, Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, 24-25 February 1984.
6. For recent arguments that strategic considerations take priority over commercial considerations in Soviet economic policy, see Jock Finlayson and Paul Marantz, "Interdependence and East-West Relations," Orbis, Spring 1982, pp. 173-94; and Sumner Benson, "Soviet Gas, Arab Oil and Western Security," Washington Quarterly, Winter 1984, pp. 129-37.
7. U.S. Department of Defense, The Fiscal Year 1985 Program for Research, Development, and Acquisition, 27 February 1984 (Washington: Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, 1984), p. II-10.
8. Arthur J. Alexander, "Decision-Making in Soviet Weapons Procurement," Adelphi Papers Nos. 147 and 148 (double issue) (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, Winter 1978/1979), pp. 21-24. On page 22, Alexander lists the following nine core ministries responsible for defense production: Defense Industry (conventional weapons), Aviation Industry (aircraft, engines, parts, airbreathing missiles), Shipbuilding Industry (ships and submarines), Electronics Industry (electronic components), Radio Industry (electronic products), Medium Machine Building (nuclear weapons), General Machine Building (ballistic missiles), Machine Building (ammunition), and Means of Communication (telecommunications equipment).
9. U.S. Department of Defense, The Fiscal Year 1985 Program for Research, Development, and Acquisition, pp. II-32-33.
10. U.S. Department of Defense, Annual Report to the Congress by Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger, Fiscal Year 1985, 1 February 1984, p. 24.
11. An Analysis of Export Control of U.S. Technology-A DOD Perspective: A Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Export of U.S. Technology, 4 February 1976 (Washington; Office of the Director of Defense for Research and Engineering, 1976), p. 25.
12. Air Vice-Marshal M. J. Armitage, "Air Concepts Today and Tomorrow," The Hawk (The Independent Journal of the Royal Air Force Staff College), February 1981, p. 15.
13. William J. Perry, "Strategic Weapons Exploit Electronics," IEEE Spectrum, October 1982, p. 94.
14. William J. Perry and Cynthia A. Roberts, "Winning through Sophistication: How to Meet the Soviet Military Challenge," Technology Review, July 1982, p. 28.
15. Alexander H. Flax, "The Influence of the Civilian Sector on Military R&D," in Franklin A. Long and Judith Reppy, editors, The Genesis of New Weapons: Decision Making for Military R&D (New York: Pergamon, 1980), pp. 120, 122, 124.
16. U.S. Government, Soviet Acquisition of Western Technology (Washington: Central Intelligence Agency, 1982), pp. 1-3. This report is reproduced in U.S. Congress, Senate, Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Governmental Affairs, Transfer of United States High Technology to the Soviet Union and Soviet Bloc Nations, Hearings, 97th Cong., 2d sess. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1982), pp. 7-23.
17. Ibid., pp. 6-7.
18. Theodore Wai Wu, Assistant United States Attorney, Criminal Division, Central District of California, statement before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, 5 May 1982, in Transfer of United States High Technology, pp. 510, 517-24.
19. Soviet Acquisition of Western Technology, p. 6; William Holden Bell, prisoner, testimony before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Transfer of United States High Technology, pp. 37-54.
20. Soviet Acquisition of Western Technology, p. 8.
21. Ibid., pp. 9-10.
22. U.S. Department of Defense, Annual Report to the Congress by Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger, Fiscal Year 1983, 8 February 1982 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1982), pp. I-23,II-30.
23. "Nuclear War by Accident--Is It Impossible?" Interview with General James Hartinger, Chief, Air Force Space Command, U.S. News and World Report, 19 December 1983, p. 28.
24. For statements of administration policy, see James L. Buckley, Under Secretary of State for Security Assistance, Science and Technology, and Dr. Stephen D. Bryen, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, International Economic, Trade and Security Policy, testimony to senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, in Transfer of United States High Technology, pp. 155-68 and 249-60, respectively. For Department of Defense and other programs, U.S. Department of Defense, The Technology Transfer Control Program: A Report to the 98th Congress by Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger, February 1983 Washington: Department of Defense, 1983); U.S. Department of Defense, The Technology Transfer Control Program. A Report to the 98th Congress, Second Session, by the Secretary of Defense, February 1984 (Washington: Department of Defense, 1984).
25. Clyde H. Farnsworth, "Pentagon's Wide Role on Exports," New York Times, 21 March 1984, pp. D1, D23. Michael Schrage, "High-Tech Rules Urged for Asians: U.S. Is Seeking Export Controls for Pacific Rim," Washington Post, 15 August 1984, pp. D8, D18.
26. See, for example, Fred Hiatt, "U.S. Firm, Suspecting Soviet Connection, Cancels Computer Deal,"Washington Post, 28 January 1984, p. A6.
27. Harvey Brooks, "Notes on Some Issues on Technology and National Defense," Daedalus, Winter 1981, p. 131.
28. U.S. Department of Defense, The Fiscal Year 1983 Program for Research, Development, and Acquisition, p. A-2.
Contributor
Sumner Benson
(B.A., Claremont McKenna College, California; M.A., Ph.D., Harvard University) is Deputy Director for Technology Security in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy and an Army reserve officer. Dr. Benson has worked on Soviet military and economic issues at the Central Intelligence Agency, taught at Harvard and the University of Chicago, and written various articles on Russian history and U.S. national security policy.Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.
Air & Space Power Home Page | Feedback? Email the Editor