IBM Corp was given US government approval to export a supercomputer to an Indian research center involved in work on the nuclear bombs which were tested last week. According to the current issue of High Performance Computing & Communications Week, a 32-processor IBM RS/6000 SP2 was delivered to India’s Supercomputing Education and Research Center (SERC) in Bangalore. Approval was given by US Department of Commerce officials, acting under the Clinton administration’s relaxed high-performance computer export policy. The magazine claims that the RS/6000, which has a capacity of more than 11,000 million theoretical operations per second MTOPS, can now be used to run simulations of future weapons based on data provided by last week’s tests. While the RS/6000 SP2 is far less powerful than those now made by IBM, angry non-proliferation campaigners pointed out that it is more powerful than those used to design the US’s own nuclear arsenal. A decision to grant an export license was based the fact that the Indian research center is not listed on the Bureau of Export Control’s published list of entities of proliferation concern. However, according to the Wisconsin Project On Nuclear Arms Control, the British government in February identified the organization as having procured goods and/or technology for weapons of mass destruction programs in addition to doing nonproliferation-related business.
