Crays vs <?>

There has been a lot of type of what kind of resources the US (in
particluar the NSA) has in defeating various encryption schemes.  I've read
that they have 100+ Crays scattered throughout the country.
	My question is this, what kind of systems is the "other" side using?
The US has export restrictions on super computers, such as the Cray.  I know
for a fact that the US .gov wouldn't allow the sale of a Cray to India,
because .gov thought that it could be used in the manufacture of weapons.  

-- 
Signature?  I don't need no *stinking* signature!
Confucius say "Clinton Happens"
Touch me for 'the key (2.3)'

Jason Plonk writes:

> 	There has been a lot of type of what kind of resources the US (in
> particluar the NSA) has in defeating various encryption schemes.  I've read
> that they have 100+ Crays scattered throughout the country.
> 	My question is this, what kind of systems is the "other" side using?
> The US has export restrictions on super computers, such as the Cray.  I know
> for a fact that the US .gov wouldn't allow the sale of a Cray to India,
> because .gov thought that it could be used in the manufacture of weapons.  

The "other" side? I don't think the Cypherpunks have _any_ Crays all
for themselves, though some Cypherpunks work in rooms full of Crays
and at least several of them work with networks of many hundreds of
workstations.

Or by "other" side did you mean the Medellin Cartel and the importers
for illegal and politically incorrect novels?

Surely you didn't mean our new trading partners in Russia?

On a more serious note, strong crypto will allow "foreigners" to send
computing jobs to sites nearly anywhere in the world and have them run
on compute servers. So much for export controls on the physical
hardware!

(And the "computing with encrypted instances" work of Joan Feigenbaum
and others means in principle that the site doing the computing may
not even be able to tell if they're computing bomb yields or crop
watering schedules.)

--Tim

-- 
..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
tcmay@netcom.com       | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
408-688-5409           | knowledge, reputations, information markets, 
W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA  | black markets, collapse of governments.
Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.
Note: I put time and money into writing this posting. I hope you enjoy it.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----


writes Timothy C. May:
>
>On a more serious note, strong crypto will allow "foreigners" to send
>computing jobs to sites nearly anywhere in the world and have them run
>on compute servers. So much for export controls on the physical
>hardware!
>

I tend to disagree strongly with this statement.  The physical export of
supercomputers will still be controlled, although it may be relaxed.  I think
that supercomputers have been technically raised to 2000 MFLOPS, but that's
another story.  Getting time on crays, CMs, Paragons, KSRs, nCubes, whatever
is not extremely difficult, but it's pretty improbable that you'll get time
on the new Cray EL at the Pittsburg Supercomputing Center if you're a 
scientist living in North Korea (for example).  I suppose it's possible that
some very rich person (new, fully configured Cray T3D computers are $75M!)
you could set up a Center that took digicash for CPU time... not really
probable considering the upkeep on a Cray.

Anyway, I don't see the unrestricted use of true supercomputers in the 
near future... very powerful desktop/deskside machines are another
story.  (afterall, if you buy up a bunck of 2GFLOP machines (not considered
supercomputers for export) and string them together adequately, that's a hell
of a machine!)

- -nate

- -- 
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Nate Sammons  nate@VIS.ColoState.Edu  (303) 491-1578                  |
|   Colorado State University -- Computer Visualization Laboratory      |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

Jason Plank writes:

> -- 
> Signature?  I don't need no *stinking* signature!
> Confucius say "Clinton Happens"
> Touch me for 'the key (2.3)'


In my last message I called him "Jason Plonk." This was not meant as
an insult ("*plonk*"), but reflected the fact that once I was in my
editor, I couldn't see his name and I misremembered it.

My friend Perry Metzger has long argued that sigs should not be
present at all in the body of a message, that the header conveys
adequate information.

Well, I disagree, and I always include my name and whatnot in the body
of my messages. Heads off confusion like we just saw.

--Tim May

-- 
..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
tcmay@netcom.com       | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
408-688-5409           | knowledge, reputations, information markets, 
W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA  | black markets, collapse of governments.
Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.
Note: I put time and money into writing this posting. I hope you enjoy it.