Does A Pentium 4 Need A Weapons License?

WindBourne writes "It appears to be that the U.S. house of Reps. want to classify Pentium 4 and above CPUs as weapons. This would mean that all these will require export licenses. Apparently, they have not heard about that the far east has developed large CPUs as well that are used in beowulf clusters." According to the article, this clause is unlikely to appear in the final version -- but stranger things have happened.

Comments

Re:Tech required for building a nuke

[AKAImBatman]

Generally there are two barriers to building a nuke:

1. Obtaining the materials. Uranium is very difficult and expensive to refine. The US has done their best to keep their process for refining out of foreign hands, but someone with a large enough industrial infrastructure could figure it out. One reason why third world countries have to steal U235 is because they lack the necessary infrastructure.

2. The only way to know if a bomb will fission properly (i.e. it will blow up and not just very hot) is to test it. This tends to show up on lots of spy satellites, seismic detection equipment, and radiation monitors. Thus enemies are generally prevented from completing any bomb they might be developing. The only known shortcut to this procedure is to use a computer to simulate the bomb. If the simulator results look good, they know they have a good chance that their bomb would work correctly during a live conflict.

Remember, the biggest trick for third world and terrorists parties is to keep the weapon secret. It's somewhat difficult to stop after you've used it, but if people hear of it ahead of time you're program (and possibly you) is dead.