Congressional Challenge to DOE/Intel CRADA; DOE Hearing

Four influential House Democrats have sent a letter to DOE Secretary Federico Pena challenging the recently announced Cooperative Research and Development Agreement between Sandia, Livermore, and Lawrence Berkeley national labs and the newly formed Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography Limited Liability Company (formed by Intel Corporation.) The four representatives asked for answers to twenty-three pointed questions by the close of business yesterday, followed by a congressional briefing.

In making this announcement last month, Pena described the CRADA’s goal as producing computer chips 100 times faster than existing versions, with 1,000 times as much memory. To do so, extreme ultraviolet lithography will be used to manufacture these chips using a stepper, which etches circuit designs onto silicon wafers (see FYI #114 .)

Reps. George Brown Jr. (D-CA), John Dingell (D-MI), Ron Klink (D-PA) and Tim Roemer (D-IN), in an October 9 letter, objected to a provision that would allow Intel to work with foreign corporations. They state, “Serious questions have been raised that the main beneficiaries of this CRADA, in addition to Intel, will be foreign manufacturers of the production steppers that are the key to chip making.... Intel has announced that it intends to bring in Nikon, a Japanese manufacturer which is currently the dominant stepper manufacturer, and ASML, a Dutch stepper manufacturer, to help develop this technology. This would result in serious and unprecedented access to U.S. national defense labs by foreign companies.” The congressmen “Fear that U.S. companies and investment are completely unprotected” by the licensing agreement in the CRADA. The four representatives criticize DOE’s actions in “its rush to preserve jobs at the three laboratories.”

Congressman Klink pressed this matter at an October 9 hearing by the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations (Committee on Commerce.) The hearing was held on DOE’s management of the national laboratory system. Klink characterized the CRADA as a giveaway, charging that Intel and national laboratory jobs were seemingly more important than national security. Klink’s charges caught the attention of the other committee members, who questioned Office of Energy Research Director Martha Krebs about who was responsible for the CRADA. Krebs said she was not.

Testifying at the October 9 hearing, Victor Rezendes of the General Accounting Office and John Layton, DOE’s Inspector General, while acknowledging improvements, were generally critical of the pace of management reform. Both spoke of the inherent difficulty involved in measuring R&D outcomes. Krebs and Paul Gilman, an External Member of the Laboratory Operations Board, admitted that laboratory management could be improved, but stressed considerable cost reduction strategies that DOE had already implemented.

Subcommittee chairman Joe Barton (R-TX) described the laboratory system management as “broken,” and promised future hearings. He called many laboratories programs “niceties and not necessities,” with there being “other ways it could be done.” As examples of the former, he cited research in nuclear physics and high energy physics, and later said the “base closing commission” could serve as a model of what needs to be done to reduce the number of performers.