U.S. Buys Back Computer Sold to Chinese Man
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WASHINGTON — The Energy Department’s Sandia National Laboratory has bought back a supercomputer it had sold as surplus to Korber Jiang, a Chinese citizen who is the principal of EHI Group USA and exports American goods to his home country, a congressman said Friday.
Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) called for Energy Secretary Bill Richardson’s resignation over the sale, saying that the computer could have been used “to design nuclear weapons.”
“He’s going around the country saying there are no problems in the Department of Energy, that everything is under control,” Weldon said in an interview. “If there are no problems, then how can this happen?”
Neal Singer, a spokesman for Sandia National Laboratories, said that the New Mexico facility sold the Intel Paragon XPS to Korber’s one-man company for $30,000 in October. After discovering Korber’s nationality, Singer said, the department bought back the computer for $88,000 last week and stored it under guard at Sandia. The spokesman said the difference in cost may have been due to shipping costs incurred by Korber.
“Secretary Richardson has instituted a moratorium on any sales of surplus material that incorporates export control technology until there has been a thorough review of what happened,” said department spokeswoman Brooke Anderson.
Insight Magazine first reported the sale.
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