Secession Study Is Falling Behind

The White House said it was easing export controls on U.S. high-performance computers, after determining the United States could no longer control their acquisition by other countries. The U.S. will collapse its four-tier country system for controlling high-performance computer exports into three tiers, eliminating special export licensing requirements for shipments to a long list of countries, White House Chief of Staff John Podesta said. U.S. computer companies hailed the decision, which they said would ease sales to countries such as Brazil, Chile and South Africa. Eliminating Tier 2 licensing requirements should also boost sales to Asian markets, where there is growing demand for high-performance computers. Sales to Tier 3 countries such as India, Pakistan, Russia, China, Vietnam and nations in the Middle East and Central Europe will not need special export licenses if the computers perform below 85,000 million theoretical operations per second, Podesta said.