Obama Is Urged to Open High-Tech Exports

When Barack Obama takes office as president, he should immediately change or even scrap many cold-war-era regulations on high-tech exports and on immigration by foreign scientists and engineers, an expert panel said Thursday. Restricting foreigners' access to strategically important technology might have been useful decades ago, when the United States was the undisputed world leader across the technological spectrum, the panel said in a report issued by the National Academy of Sciences. But today, it said, the nation is losing scientific and engineering dominance even as militarily useful advances come increasingly from civilian research. The regulations do little for the nation's security, the panel said, while significantly hampering economic growth and innovation.