bcw (06/23/82)
Re: Microprocessors and so forth From: Bruce C. Wright @ Duke University The recent excitement about the microprocessors for the Russian space shuttle (and for the "security leak" of the chess machine) is much overblown. It would not be at all difficult to smuggle something like that out, as the following example should illustrate. During the Vietnam war, the North Vietnamese directed their defense of Hanoi with some *Americen-made* computers. Now this was some 10 years ago and computer technology wasn't quite as compact as it is today. Not only that, but we were effectively *at war* with the North Vietnamese and would have all the more incentive to stop the flow of such things to Hanoi. I understand they used IBM-1130's which as anyone who's seen one knows are not exactly things you can hide in a suitcase like one of the modern microcomputers (although its processing power was probably a fraction of a 68000). It's just not possible to stop *all* of the flow of such things to countries considered less than desirable; the most that the authorities can do is to make it harder and consequently *reduce* the flow. Bruce C. Wright @ Duke University