One of the biggest holiday gifts last year was the Sony PlayStation2 video game console. Good luck trying to find one. Hundreds of thousands of gamers around the world are still waiting to get their hands on the elusive item. But, according to news reports, one customer managed to collect about 4,000 of the goodies over the past year. The lucky gamer is the government of Iraq, and it is not interested in racking up high scores.
Baghdad reportedly wants to link the consoles together to make a supercomputer with military uses, including control of missiles or development and testing of weapons of mass destruction. Experts challenge the claims. They say PlayStations cannot work in parallel, which is required to make a supercomputer. Sony officials say it is unlikely that anyone could have bought that many consoles.
The PlayStation problem highlights the complexity surrounding security planning. "Dual-use systems" -- items that can be used for both civilian and military purposes -- have been around for years. But the growing sophistication of ordinary, everyday devices has made it more difficult to guard against the proliferation of technology that can be used to make weapons. International mechanisms exist to check the spread of technology, but the list is potentially too long for any system to be foolproof. No parent can wait for international approval before picking up a last-minute stocking stuffer.