We’re Hurting Ourselves

For several years now the nation’s scientific community has been battling with the federal government over Washington’s efforts to restrict the flow of science and technology to the Soviet Union. The Reagan Administration has argued that the openness of American society allows the Russians to get the benefits of militarily useful research and technology for free. Similarly, the Administration has slapped export controls on a wide range of high-technology items produced in this country to prevent their winding up in Russia.

The scientists have argued persuasively that the very openness of American research is a primary factor in its strength. Open publication of unclassified research and open discussion of new ideas enable scientists to build on each other’s work--with serendipitous results. According to this view, Soviet research lags precisely because it is hamstrung by secrecy and controls.

To be sure, the problem of technology transfer is real, but, as several studies and reports have concluded, it is much more limited than the Administration contends. Except in specific cases in which the threat is palpable, the large benefits of openness outweigh the dangers of secrecy.

Now comes the draft of a new report from a panel of the National Academy of Sciences chaired by Lew Allen Jr., former Air Force chief of staff who is director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Pasadena. The Allen panel concludes that the efforts to deny American technology to communist countries have not improved U.S. security but have cost this country substantial numbers of jobs and amounts of money. Our trading partners prefer to buy from non-American suppliers who are not stymied by export controls and other red tape.

Just as restrictions on the free exchange of ideas hurt us more than help us, export restrictions on high-technology items “have greater potential to damage the U.S. economy than . . . reduce exports to the East Bloc,” the draft report says. The panel estimates the cost so far at 188,000 jobs and $9 billion a year.

This is so because there are few technologies over which the United States maintains hegemony. People who want computers, state-of-the-art optical devices, gas and oil equipment and the like can buy them elsewhere, which is what they have been doing. What’s more, the panel concludes, despite access to American know-how, the Russians “in general have not succeeded in matching the West’s technology edge.” These conclusions get extra credence from the membership of the panel, which includes, in addition to Allen, Melvin R. Laird, former defense secretary, and Bobby Ray Inman, former deputy director of the CIA who played a large role in sounding the alarm about technology transfer in the first place.

So here’s where things stand: The Administration’s efforts are harmful to research, to the American economy and to our relations with our allies, and they don’t work. Moreover, technology transfer may not be as much of a danger as it was cracked up to be. The Administration should relax its ideological opposition to the free flow of ideas and developments.