[time-nuts] Atomic clocks and Wassenaar agreement

Poul-Henning Kamp phk at phk.freebsd.dk
Sun Aug 20 07:28:17 EDT 2017


--------
In message <20170820120742.c48c69758cc9fa4856ab059f at kinali.ch>, Attila Kinali writes:
>On Sun, 20 Aug 2017 08:50:59 +0000
>"Poul-Henning Kamp" <phk at phk.freebsd.dk> wrote:
>
>> >Bob your right its interesting that the sales locations are in China and
>> >India. Perhaps a larger opportunity for a RB reference today.
>> 
>> Could be because hydrogen masers are dual-use under the Waasenaar Arrangement ?
>
>As far as I can tell, there is no explicit mention of atomic
>clocks.

There very much is:

    3. A. 2. g. Atomic frequency standards being any of the following:

	1. "Space-qualified";

	2. Non-rubidium and having a long-term stability less (better) than
	   1 x 10 -11 /month; or

	3. Non-"space-qualified" and having all of the following:

	   a. Being a rubidium standard;

	   b. Long-term stability less (better) than 1 x 10 -11 /month; and

	   c. Total power consumption of less than 1 Watt;

The product in question drives directly through the loophole in point 2[1]

>But the list of dual use electronics is long and broad.
>E.g. Section 3. A. 1. b. 10. covers basically all low noise
>frequency sources. Including just a simple low-noise XO.
>Does anyone have more specific knowledge?

Knowledge ?  No.  Some Experience ?  Yes.

The people who wrote the list very much know why they put things
onto it, and in the process of narrowly tailoring the restrictions
often give more away than they probably should.

Depending on your hobbies, you can get some pretty interesting
project ideas by reading the list[2].  (3.A.3 anyone ? or
how about 9.B.6 ?)

The civil servants who administer the lists in the foreign ministries
are seldom rocket engineers and will usually administer the list
strictly to the letter, rather than talk to one.

Poul-Henning

[1] I've always wondered about that rule and I suspect it is a
    mistake.  Knowing who is on this list, I imagine that the next
    revision will read the far more sensible: "Non-rubidium *or*
    having ..."

[2] http://www.wassenaar.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/List-of-Dual-Use-Goods-and-Technologies-and-Munitions-List-Corr.pdf

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk at FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe    
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.


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