Dual Use: Buy a Golf Club, Build a Bomb:
"Sometimes, it seems that any piece of modern technology can, with a few turns of a screw, be transformed into a weapon of mass destruction. Federal agents arrested Asher Karni, an Israeli businessman living in South Africa, on Jan. 1 for exporting parts that Mr. Karni said were destined for machines that break apart kidney stones. Federal agents say the parts, known as triggered spark gaps, were actually destined to be triggers for nuclear bombs in Pakistan."

The triggered spark gaps - precision switches that send short, large bursts of electricity - are in fact used by a machine called a lithotripter to break up kidney stones. But the same device can also serve as the trigger for detonating the cocoon of conventional explosives that surrounds the uranium in an atomic bomb, starting the chain reaction that creates the much larger nuclear explosion.

The triggered spark gap is a classic example of a so-called dual-use technology, which cannot be exported without permission from the Department of Commerce.

"A dual-use item by definition can be perfectly innocent or it could have military applications," said Kenneth I. Juster, the under secretary of commerce who oversees the export control program.

Mr. Karni invited suspicion by ordering 200 spark gaps from PerkinElmer Optoelectronics of Salem, Mass., far more than the handful of spares a hospital would need. PerkinElmer notified governmental officials and, at their request, sent a shipment of 66 triggers, secretly disabled.

The list of dual-use technologies, largely drawn from international agreements, also includes some other items not obviously deadly. Carbon fibers, the stuff of tennis rackets and golf clubs, are ideal for the nose cones of intercontinental ballistic missiles, because they resist the heat of re-entry through the atmosphere.

A type of extremely hard steel, known as maraging steel, , is useful for bombs (and golf clubs, too). The element beryllium, used in high performance aircraft and furnace linings, can be shaped into reflectors of neutrons, necessary to make sure a nuclear explosion doesn't peter out.

Aluminum tubes can be used in centrifuges that separate out the rare form of uranium used in atomic bombs. And many ingredients in common insecticides can be made into deadly human poisons as well. Also regulated are high-precision scientific equipment needed to assemble bombs.

The law regulating dual-use technologies, the Export Administration Act, expired three years ago, but remains in force by presidential executive order. The Senate passed a new version in 2001, but it stalled in the House because of concern that the new version weakened controls on potentially dangerous technologies. Even if controls on American exports were airtight, however, they would be of no use if a country or terrorist could buy what they needed elsewhere.…

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/14/weekinreview/14chang.html