"T-Platforms" were on the list of US enemies

According to the decision of the US Department of Commerce dated March 8, 2013 , the Russian company T-Platforms was included in the “List of organizations and individuals acting contrary to US national security and US foreign policy interests” ( Supplement No. 4 to Part 744 ). The decision argues that the US Bureau of Industry and Security has reason to believe that the activities of the T-Platform are related to the development of computer systems for military purposes and the production of computers for nuclear research (who the hell would think).

In practice, this means that, in accordance with the Export Administration Regulations, from March 8, the T-Platforms will have a presumption of a ban on the export and re-export of processors with a capacity of more than 5 GFlops, as well as any goods and products manufactured in the United States or according to American technologies countries of the world. To export or re-export, T-Platforms are required to obtain licenses from the Industry and Security Bureau.

The Expert magazine quotes the general director and co-owner of the company Vsevolod Opanasenko: “Roughly speaking, we [now] cannot buy sunflower oil if the field on which the sunflower grows is pollinated by American pesticides.” “The imposed restrictions close the possibilities not only for purchasing electronic components in the States, but also for ordering chips independently developed by T-Platforms specialists at any factory in the world, since all the factories use American technologies. For T-Platform, this means an actual “ban on the profession,” reports Valery Fadeyev, the editor-in-chief of Expert.
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Among the well-known achievements of T-Platforms, it is possible to note the construction for the Moscow State University of the supercomputer Lomonosov , which occupied the 26th place in the Top500 list as of November 2012, as well as the delivery of the supercomputer to New York State University in October 2012. At the tender conducted by the American educational institution, T-Platforms managed to circumvent Dell and HP.

As Ivan Pokrovsky, Director General of the Information and Analytical Center of Modern Electronics, explains, the American regulatory authorities act very formally, and T-Platforms, as an end-user of electronic components, could be affected by the use of some other blacklisted structures. However, according to Valery Fadeev , T-Platforms came to the attention of the US government in 2011, and in 2012, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in conversation with Angela Merkel, stressed that cooperation with Russia in such sensitive areas as high-performance computing is undesirable.

The American government is not the first time restricting the export of high technology. Everyone knows the happy ending story of Phil Zimmerman and his brainchild PGP . However, the processor, unlike the source code, does not fall under the first amendment to the US Constitution, so Americans have the opportunity to restrict their export and re-export to the extent that they consider necessary for their foreign policy purposes. How much it will hit the IT-companies around the world, we will know in the coming years.

EDIT 02.18.2014 In August 2013, T-Platforms appealed the decision of the Ministry of Commerce. An appeal of a thousand pages was considered 4 months, and Russian and American senior officials were involved in the discussion of the problem. As a result, on December 31, 2013, export restrictions were lifted. Read more here .