Those advocating nuclear arms control and nonproliferation have few reasons for optimism and many reasons for concern, with obstacles including a lack of public interest in the issue; inadequate security controls at facilities storing nuclear-weapons materials; the threat posed by rogue nations such as Iran and North Korea; and the Bush administration's opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty banning nuclear weapons testing.

These and other challenges were explored at a special CISAC workshop on "Arms Control and Nonproliferation: Past Triumphs, Future Prospects," held June 1 at SIIS. The event honored George Bunn -- a nuclear nonproliferation pioneer and consulting professor at CISAC -- on the occasion of his 79th birthday. The workshop, which drew more than 120 attendees, was moderated by CISAC co-director Christopher F. Chyba and featured presentations by four expert panelists who have worked closely with Bunn. They included his son Matthew, a senior research associate for Harvard University's Project on Managing the Atom.

As the first presenter, Matthew Bunn discussed the problem of inadequate security systems to prevent the theft of weapons-grade nuclear materials. Because there are no worldwide standards for protecting such materials, many nations devote inadequate resources to the task. Bunn showed slides of nuclear materials storage facilities with primitive locks, flimsy seals and broken-down fences. He cited Russia as the largest threat, because it has the world's biggest stock of unguarded nuclear-weapons materials. He urged international standards for safeguarding nuclear materials; renewed discussion with Russia on the issue; and the removal of nuclear material from sites where adequate security is not feasible.

In the second presentation, Thomas Graham -- a senior U.S. diplomat who has negotiated numerous major arms-control agreements -- said the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty was not meant to forever discriminate between nuclear "haves" and "have-nots." Instead, it was designed so that those without nuclear weapons would benefit by receiving peaceful nuclear technology from weapons-producing nations, and guarantees that they would not be attacked. But when the United States shirks its nonproliferation obligations -- as it has done by rejecting the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and taking steps to develop new nuclear weapons -- the entire regime is threatened, Graham said. He cited Pakistan and North Korea as the biggest nuclear threats, and said the United States must engage in direct negotiations with the latter.

The next presentation, by Daryl Kimball -- executive director of the Arms Control Association -- addressed prospects for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Though the treaty has been signed by 171 nations including the United States, it has been ratified by only 113 of those nations -- not including the United States -- and must be ratified by 12 more of the 44 designated "nuclear-capable" nations before the treaty can take effect. Kimball discussed the Bush administration's opposition to the treaty, noting that Bush has sought to remove it from the Senate's agenda. Still, Kimball said he's optimistic that the treaty will ultimately be ratified by the United States and will take effect. He cited increasing international pressure on CTBT "holdout states," and a recent U.S. poll showing that public support for the treaty is at its highest level ever, 87 percent.

John Rhinelander, an attorney who helped negotiate the ABM Treaty and SALT I agreements, discussed the prospects for nuclear weapons in space. The weaponization of space is supported by the Bush administration, he noted, and is a real possibility if the United States follows through on its missile defense program. He predicted that President Bush, if re-elected, would continue to pursue weapons development in space, but said Kerry seemed unlikely to do so if elected.

During a question-and-answer session following the presentations, the panelists offered perspectives on why it is so difficult to get the public's and lawmakers' attention on nuclear non-proliferation issues. The panelists agreed that since the breakup of the Soviet Union, most Americans -- including lawmakers -- no longer perceive nuclear weapons as a serious threat, and they have little knowledge about the existing quantity of nuclear weapons. Matthew Bunn said the problem is, "there is no one whose reelection depends on reducing or securing nuclear weapons." He said nuclear non-proliferation could best be promoted by tying it to the issues of terrorism and homeland security. Rhinelander and Grahm advocated holding Congressional hearings on the issue for the first time in 20 years.

Regarding Israel, India and Pakistan, Graham said those nations -- which produce nuclear weapons but have refused to join the NPT regime -- cannot continue to remain outside the regime. He proposed that the three nations be allowed to join in limited form, in exchange for accepting basic limitations such as no first use and no nuclear testing.

Throughout the event, Bunn was praised by the panelists and moderator; Chyba described him as "the personification of the best that CISAC strives to be." Bunn was the first general counsel for the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, helped negotiate the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and later served as U.S. ambassador to the Geneva Disarmament Conference.

In a May 14 lecture hosted by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Francis Fukuyama, PhD -- professor of international political economy at Johns Hopkins University and renowned author of The End of History and the Last Man -- discussed the problem of weak, underdeveloped nation-states; the effectiveness of various approaches to strengthening such states; and the importance of culture, context and history in the task of state-building. His lecture, titled "State-building: A Framework for Thinking about the Transfer of Institutions to Developing Countries," drew a full room of attendees to the Bechtel Conference Center in Encina Hall

A former member of the RAND Corp. and the U.S. Department of State who has written widely on issues of democratization and international political economy, Fukuyama first presented a framework with which nation-states can be evaluated according to two key criteria: the strength of the state, and the scope of its functions. The first refers to a state's ability to enforce its own laws and policies; the second refers to how involved the state becomes in carrying out various societal functions, ranging from basic functions such as maintaining law and order and protecting public health, to more "activist" functions such as running industries and redistributing wealth.

Fukuyama asserted that from a development standpoint, nation-states should be strong but should carry out only the minimum necessary functions. He said that only one country he has studied -- New Zealand -- has effectively moved toward this ideal in recent years. He noted that many struggling, developing nations, such as Brazil, Mexico, Pakistan and Turkey, are overly ambitious in their scope -- attempting to run vast industries, for example -- but are weak and unable to carry out their policies because of factors like corruption. Other states that Fukuyama identified as "failed states," such as Haiti and Sierra Leone, are both limited in scope and weak, attempting to carry out only the most basic governmental functions and not doing it very well.

Fukuyama then discussed and evaluated various approaches to strengthening developing nations. He noted that in recent years much emphasis has been placed on encouraging such nations to reduce the scope of their functions, through deregulation and privatization, but said the effectiveness of this approach is now in question. A more effective approach, he said, is helping weak nation-states build their own strong institutions, such as political parties, public health networks and central banking.

Unfortunately, Fukuyama said, sometimes the efforts of outside organizations to strengthen a country's institutions only make things worse, because solutions are imposed from outside rather than developed from within. "Ideally, we would want a country's own public health system to handle that country's problems with AIDS or malaria," he said. "But when you flood the country with your organization's own doctors and nurses and infrastructure, what do the local doctors do? They quit their government posts to get on the payroll of your NGO." In a few months or years, when the organization withdraws its support, Fukuyama noted, the system collapses, because it was not built to be self-sustaining.

At the end of his talk, Fukuyama emphasized the importance of understanding local culture, context and history in the task of state building. For example, he said, those who run programs aiming to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa should consider working with traditional faith healers, as they are an important part of the healthcare system in Africa.

The clearest evidence of the Iran link came in January 1990, when Pakistan's army chief of staff conveyed his threat to arm Iran to a top Pentagon official. Henry S. Rowen, at the time an assistant defense secretary, said Pakistani Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg issued the warning in a face-to-face meeting in Pakistan. "Beg said something like, 'If we don't get adequate support from the U.S., then we may be forced to share nuclear technology with Iran,'" said Rowen, now a professor at Stanford University. Rowen said former President Bush's administration did little to follow up on Beg's warning. "In hindsight, maybe before or after that they did make some transfers," Rowen said. Rowen said he told Beg that Pakistan would be "in deep trouble" if it gave nuclear weapons to Iran. Rowen said he was surprised by the threat because at the time Americans thought Pakistan's secular government dominated by Sunni Muslims wouldn't aid Iran's Shiite Muslim theocracy. "There was no particular reason to think it was a bluff, but on the other hand, we didn't know," Rowen said.

Silicon Valley cannot be replicated-not even in the US, leave alone India.

But there is no underestimating the complex and high end nature of information technology work that's increasingly being done in India.

There is almost nothing that is not doable, except certain high investment, high value manufacturing, like microprocessors.

This year stands out for the speed with which India, still very much a poverty ridden developing country, has emerged as a partner of mature econom-ies in a wide ranging field that covers information technology, business processes and research and development.

Unsurprisingly, such a major development has been accompanied by drama, excitement, anguish and misunderstanding. The rapid acceleration in trends, which in some cases date back to over 10 years, has given little time to players on both sides to rationally assess and adjust to new realities.

Some don't seem to know what has hit them and have therefore gone on to make unrealistic assumptions.

In the west, particularly in the US, there is a backlash against outsourcing to countries like India, China, the Philippines and Russia, with India being the most visible and so taking most of the rap.

Correspondingly, there is an element of euphoria in India in the belief that it has arrived. Some are making unrealistic assumptions that it is on the way to becoming a new Silicon Valley to the world.

Significantly, the knowledgeable and those who are in the vortex of change have a realistic view of what exists on the ground and an enlightened foresight of the shape of things to come.

In this survey of opinion leaders in the information technology industry, we try to come to grips with the new, rapidly emerging reality what is the exact nature of the high tech work taking place in India in information technology and what are the precise contours of the emerging cross border partnerships?

First, the Silicon Valley red herring. Sridhar Mitta, managing director of the incubating firm e4e Labs, almost snorts at the mention of Silicon Valley.

He recalls how the good professors at Stanford University started to get too many visitors who came and asked the same questions what makes Silicon Valley tick and can we replicate it in our country?

They undertook a methodical study for a couple of years and helped define the uniqueness of the creative process that occurs in a small geography 30 miles by 10 miles, near the Californian city of San Francisco.

To Mitta, the Valley's defining characteristic is that some of the best brains in the world are concentrated in a small geography. "It is an innovative high tech cluster. There is an ecosystem of companies which add value to each other."

In Silicon Valley people are willing to share ideas and are not worried about theft. Business discussions are concluded very fast as people want to get on with a project. A project can be started in a week.

There is no concern over individual ideas being stolen as it is assumed that if you are bright you will have many more worthwhile ideas. In the Valley, people don't care about religion, creed or nationality. "There is only one religion, business," Mitta says.

Another industry insider concurs. "Silicon Valley is not a service, but a risk taking model, whereas the Indian software model is largely based on cost effective and efficient delivery of services," he differentiates.

Many of tomorrow's problems are first defined in US universities and then get crystalised as business opportunities. "Firms in the Valley work closely with those universities to quickly grasp the business ideas that emerge from diagnosing and solving a technical problem, for example."

Where does Indian expertise and capability stand then? "The Indian environment still lacks the original ideas that create the new business models. This is because of the lack of proximity to markets," the industry insider explains.

"Once an engineering problem is defined, it can be executed in India." The key and growing Indian competency now is that it has crossed the technical hurdle, there is little that cannot be technically done in India.

If Silicon Valley scores 100 for the purpose of our present discussion, Mitta gives Bangalore 15.

"Bangalore has passed criticality in technical prowess but is still abysmally low in interaction. The culture of networking is better in Bangalore than in the rest of India but nowhere near what exists in the Valley. Here a major part of the load is carried by multinationals which guard their secrets very jealously," Mitta says.

Bangalore also scores on its educational institutions which can deliver the raw materials or skills. Like the Valley, it has some of the best brains, relatively speaking, and some companies have reached criticality of size. Some complex work gets done here in a serial way within companies.

"I know that a US company can start a complex work group here which involves doing many things, though not all. But I don't know what the company on the floor above mine is doing," notes Mitta.

Subroto Bagchi, COO of MindTree Consulting, who is based in the US, explains that in the 1990s people thought that any work that required a high degree of customer knowledge and collaboration, design and architecting had to be done exclusively in the US.

"Anything that required innovation had to be done near the water cooler. So now there is hardware, software and wetware the coffee machine and what's between your two ears, as most of the human brain is water."

But the big change has come with the availability of high bandwidth which has made the water cooler virtual.

"If earlier we looked at India for just development or maintenance work, now we are able to look at co-development and co-architecting," Bagchi notes.

Till two human beings meet, trust is not established. Innovation-related activity, co-development and co-architecting are not done by two entities but by two human beings.

Two techies have to accept each other as "buddies" before they can innovate together. "That happened after Y2K. It established the cross cultural comfort. In a nutshell, India has become legitimate," Bagchi adds.

Higher value add projects are now coming to India and company boards across the world are increasingly being asked, 'What is your India strategy?' Investors in venture capital funds are asking them, 'What are your plans for India,' and they in turn are asking companies 'What are your India development plans?'

The software insider says India's current role is to "complement" not "replace" Silicon Valley. "If present trends continue, maybe India can equal Silicon Valley in seven to 10 years. But the approach cannot be 'We versus they.'"

Another authority adds his support to this scenario, making a deft distinction between what is on and not on.

Says Madhukar Angur, David M French distinguished professor at the Flint School of Management, University of Michigan: "Today almost nothing is too high-tech for India. In technology (IT, designing, R&D) India has taken significant strides. It is pretty close to self-sustaining growth. But it is not quite there. So MNCs will look at India as a location for startups but not standalone ones."

So they will also seek out partners, as Intel has done with startups like Tejas Networks.

The cooperation and joint development approach is underlined by K P Balaraj, managing director of WestBridge Capital Partners.

He feels that "the vast majority of the work being done by start-ups in India is led by teams located in the Valley. What is changing though is the timing of an India ODC (overseas development centre) which is being set up much earlier in the life cycle or even at the seed stage."

What is more significant is that as multinationals which follow the example of early leaders such as GE, TI, Intel, Oracle and others start to do more cutting edge work here, there will be a large base of India-based engineers and managers who will have the experience of building and bringing a world-class product to global markets, primarily the US.

"From this base, we will see a future generation of product entrepreneurs emerge who will have the vision and market credibility to attract high quality VC funding for their plans," Balaraj adds.

Innovation means developing new technology or products. Product development in India is already taking place but as a secondary exercise.

Sanjay Kalra, CEO of the HCL-Deutsche Bank joint venture DSL Software, explains the sequence of what came first and then what followed. At any point of time more than 70 percent of spending takes place on sustaining investments in existing technologies.

This, like work on new technologies, also requires high end work that is innovative. But a majority of the effort is in tasks that are process and procedure bound.

In such tasks, innovation is focused on how to deliver the subcontracted tasks better (process improvement, quality).

High end startups are now beginning to allocate and locate a high percentage of employees (or contractors) in India.

In the past it was the large technology players that leveraged the lower costs and high availability of talent. The smaller startups would contract to small and large players on a need basis.

But of late a lot of smaller startups are also beginning to factor in India as an integral part of their business plans right from the beginning.

What is more, several start-ups are now using India as the base to also conceptualise and then produce in India for markets in Asia.

The good news on products is that Intel is in India in a big way and is going in for the joint effort startups that hold the key to the future. Intel's own agenda, says Ketan Sampat, president of Intel India, is to establish leading edge design capability.

Says Sampat: "At Intel's development centre (its largest non-manufacturing site outside the US), we are engaged in some of the most advanced development activities not just in India but anywhere in the world. For example, the flagship next-generation enterprise processor that Intel will have in volume production is being designed entirely in Bangalore."

But he sees an important milestone that has to be crossed Indian firms still have not broken into the ranks of product companies with their own intellectual property and branded product lines.

"The i-flex's of the world are still too few and far between," Sampat says. So Intel Capital, the company's strategic investment programme, has been an investor in several Indian technology companies. Sampat mentions the investment in Sasken Technologies.

"Its product GSM/ GPRS software stacks complements our "Manitoba" (wireless Internet on a chip) product and it has customers worldwide."

He also mentions another telecom company, Tejas Networks. "It is starting with the Indian market which is sizeable now and is using it as a springboard to the global market."

Sanjay Nayak, CEO, Tejas Networks, sees only the beginnings of high end startups in India, like his company. "It will take some time before we see a major shift in startups originating in India, though the enablers are all there."

The most common trend is to have an "engineering backend" in India of a US originating startup. Within this, the major amount of work that is being done is "software" centric not much system design or hardware design work is done.

He expects that "once we have a few success stories of high-end product companies from India, it will accelerate the trend." In the past, countries like Israel and Taiwan have witnessed such trends.

Srini Rajam, chairman and CEO of Ittiam, another startup product company, sees high end start ups becoming increasingly dependent on designs done in India.

"There is a strong push coming from the investors of the start ups to locate a large part of their design team in India or source their key designs/IP from Indian companies, in order to improve R&D budget utilisation and time-to-market."

He sees early revival worldwide in one segment-the semiconductor and embedded systems. "This is in turn is enabling the growth of chip design, embedded software and system design activities in India."

Several factors are likely to encourage more high end work to come to India and help it become an increasingly important partner of Silicon Valley.

First, the reverse brain drain or brain gain that has been taking place in the last few years, especially since the tech bubble burst in early 2000 and the recession that set in in Silicon Valley.

One person who has been plotting it carefully is Rafiq Dossani, a senior research scholar at the Asia-Pacific Research Centre of Stanford University.

"My guess is that 6,000 jobs have been lost from Silicon Valley in IT to India. Looking ahead, the flow will depend on both opportunities in India and here."

The Silicon Valley economy is picking up rapidly and hiring should soon increase, feels Dossani. In addition, it remains unbeatable on new product development because of its global reach of talent and proximity to markets.

So the younger and more innovative will be attracted to the Valley. India will continue to attract those in the 30-40 age group interested in raising families in India and those interested in a rapid rise up the executive ladder through a stint at a senior level in India.

Also, a key security factor is enabling high end work to shift to India, argues Angur. India will be a country of choice for location of partnerships on considerations of economic stability.

"Multinationals gamble on technology but are cautious on geography. Even China and Taiwan have a security downside. India-Pakistan relations is indeed perceived as a security risk but still India is on the preferred US list."

He sees a significant historical parallel. Technology and IT will be to India what the automobiles industry was to the US.

"One out of every three in the US has something to do with automobiles. The IT revolution has the seeds of becoming something like that. In the immediate future mutlinationals will consider India more and more for high-tech startups and there will be more high tech jobs."

Bagchi shares a deeper insight rooted in Indian history and social development. India, he feels, has two cards up her sleeve: "One is the power of diversity and two the power of pluralism, imparted to it by its institutions."

The future of the global economy is in more trade but post 9/11, the west is also looking for a sense of comfort a degree of security and cultural fit.

How many countries are there with world class capability in IT services from which an American company can source? Out of the choices available, how many countries are both diverse, so that there is a democratic-cultural fit, and believe in institutional pluralism - executive, judiciary, legislative system? "These institutions give a guarantee of continuity," he says.

To become an innovation partner to Silicon Valley, an economy must innovate. Innovation is invariably linked to diversity. The US has been at the cutting edge of technologies because it has such a pro-immigration policy.

"We did IT services for 15 years and moved up the value chain. But the next big value chain is about innovation. That innovation depends on the fertility condition on the ground. That condition is necessarily about diversity," Bagchi adds.

WASHINGTON - Take Jamey Bennett. When he first began selling his LightWedge personal reading lamp a few years ago, everything was made in China. Then the headaches began: Numerous conference calls in the middle of the night. Shipment delays because of a dockworker strike in California. And many problems related to language differences. The problems became so acute that Bennett transferred the manufacturing to Virginia two months ago.

"Managing a significant manufacturing effort in China remotely with a business of our size is very difficult," Bennett says.

"Firms that just believe that this is going to be simple ... very often get burned," says Martin Kenney, a University of California-Davis professor who recently completed a study of firms doing work in India. "This is a very, very complicated business activity, and there are a thousand ways it can go wrong."

Examples of the perils of moving work abroad keep cropping up. Last month, Indiana said it was halting a contract with an Indian company to upgrade its computer system for its unemployment benefits office after politicians and others started an uproar about the work leaving the state, not to mention the country.

Dell recently shifted some of its computer call center work from India. After moving some of its appliance call center work to India a few years ago, GE in May moved the work back to the Phoenix area. It found that workers in India, who don't own many appliances, couldn't relate to the customers' problems. U.S. workers can take more calls because they resolve issues faster, boosting productivity.

Highlighting how sensitive the topic of moving work outside the USA is, spokesmen for Dell and GE declined to comment. But Dell CEO Michael Dell recently told USA TODAY his company sticks with U.S. employees for many jobs for their skills.

"Most of our (employees) are in the U.S., and it's probably going to remain that way for a long time," Dell said. "The fear of jobs moving from one country to another, at least in our case, is probably greater than the reality."

That doesn't mean the trend will go away. Repetitive and low-skilled manufacturing and services work will likely continue to be sent abroad. But some firms' experiences suggest the hysteria about work going outside the USA may be overblown.

'Lost in the translation'

Several major issues confront businesses when they shift manufacturing outside the USA:

?Culture, language. U.S. firms are finding the do-it-now culture of the USA and some American tastes don't easily translate overseas.

Wells Fargo chief economist Sung Won Sohn says companies he has come in contact with have complained of productivity problems. A U.S. furniture importer has had a tough time persuading his overseas manufacturers to "distress" furniture, a popular style in some U.S. markets that evokes an antique feel. His workers don't see the point in taking a new product and making it look older.

And there are language issues. Although many people overseas speak English, phrasing and other issues can crop up when English is not the first language.

"Quite a bit was sort of lost in the translation," LightWedge's Bennett says.

A Dell spokesman told the Associated Press the company was shifting some corporate clients from Bangalore, India, to Texas, Idaho and Tennessee after receiving service complaints.

Gary Beach, publisher of CIO Magazine, recently was on the phone with a Dell agent in Bangalore for 11/2 hours after having problems with a notebook computer. "The guy was very polite, but he had to go to his supervisor after 65 minutes," Beach says. "It was a change in power options in your control panel. You had to switch to 'always on.' ... Duh!"

-Expertise. Many countries are churning out well-educated engineers, scientists and others while some foreigners are coming to the USA to be educated and then return home. But such education often does not replace experience.

Bethlehem, Pa.-based Air Products and Chemicals makes liquefied natural gas machinery in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. The firm has no plans to move the factory, even though none of the products is sold in the USA.

"We have spent a number of years building up this plant, making major investments and also building up a skilled workforce," spokeswoman Kassie Hilgert says. "Both the workforce and the technology are not transferable to anywhere else in the world."

Kenney notes that some of the businesses overseas are so new that there are few trained managers who know how to properly oversee both service and manufacturing operations.

-Shipping. Some manufacturers are finding the time, money and extra regulatory burdens associated with shipping products to the USA prohibitive. Those issues were compounded after the Sept. 11 attacks, because import regulations were strengthened.

Sanjay Chandra, co-founder of American Leather, a furniture producer in Dallas, does all manufacturing in-house. With hundreds of combinations of styles and fabrics and other attributes to choose from, the firm waits to produce the furniture until orders are received and prides itself on getting the products shipped out in a matter of weeks. Shipments from China are estimated to take about six weeks, after production, according to manufacturers.

"Special order, quick ship doesn't really lend itself to foreign manufacturing because of the time issues," Chandra says.

The shipping headaches may grow. Under rules starting this month, importers are required to electronically send lists to the government in advance of shipments, to help Customs and border protection agents identify high-risk cargo that deserves special attention because of terrorism fears. That is upsetting some importers who say the lists will cost them time and money if there are delays at the borders.

The challenges of importing were also highlighted a little more than a year ago when dockworkers in California were locked out during a labor dispute, stranding Asian imports at sea. The 10-day action that led to the closure of 29 docks was estimated to cost the U.S. economy up to $2 billion a day and forced some manufacturers who rely on foreign parts to shut down.

Keeping supplies flowing

The dockworker strike persuaded Alan Schulman, owner of Glentronics, to stick to his supply method. Schulman, who sells battery-operated, backup sump pumps, has suppliers both overseas and near his headquarters in Wheeling, Ill. When the dock strike started, he was able to switch to his local supplier and continued without any interruptions.

"I always want Plan B."

There are numerous other issues that U.S. firms are bumping into when it comes to working abroad. Many companies find themselves holding more inventory in case there is a supply disruption. That means added costs, because more inventory requires extra space, financing and, sometimes, employees.

"Supply Chain 101 says the most important thing is continuity of supply," says Norbert Ore, who organizes a regular survey of manufacturers for the Institute for Supply Management. "And when you establish a supply line that is 12,000 miles long ... you have to weigh the costs of additional inventory and logistics costs vs. what you can save in terms of lower costs per unit or labor costs."

Shipping business abroad also means relinquishing some control, which for some business owners is easier said than done. And, unless you own the facility and have an employee on-site, fixing any problems that require in-person work involves a lot of time and money. The contracts to set up facilities abroad can also be lengthy, involving months of negotiations and lawyer and consultant costs.

Regional conflicts, such as the periodic clashes between India and Pakistan, also must be considered.

Some move despite challenges

Despite all those issues, for some, moving work abroad is the way to go.

Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs estimates that of the 2.7 million U.S. factory jobs cut in the last three years, 1 million have been relocated abroad.

A wide range of service jobs, such as customer call centers, medical billing and architectural drafting, are also moving outside the USA. In the next 15 years, U.S. employers will move about 3.3 million white-collar jobs abroad, Forrester Research predicts.

The main motivation: money. UC-Davis' Kenney and co-author Rafiq Dossani of Stanford University estimate a call center worker who costs clients $12.47 an hour - including equipment and other costs - in Kansas City costs $4.12 an hour in Mumbai, the Indian city formerly known as Bombay. Indiana originally went with the Indian company after its bid for the computer work came in at $15 million, $8 million below the closest competitor.

After working in Asia and Europe for 15 years, Philip Ison, president of Ison International, bought an upholstery factory in Tennessee in 1999 and shut it down after two years.

"There was just no profit margin to be made," he says. "With all of the headaches between health insurance, workman's comp, OSHA, you can just keep on going down the list. It's not economically feasible to produce something here that takes a lot of labor."

Ison now produces furniture in Romania and ships the products to Norfolk, Va., before selling in the USA.

"With the Internet and the communication systems that are available at this point in time, it's no big deal to sit here and run the factory," he says.

But while some jobs may continue to be sent overseas, it's clear that others - especially those requiring special skills, quick turnaround times or customer contact - will stay in the USA.

"Most companies believe it's going to be easier (to shift work)," says Rudy Puryear of Bain and Co., who has consulted with clients on setting up operations abroad. He says he's seen some firms pull back two or three years after shifting to foreign workers or suppliers. "It is a buyer beware situation."

There are "no good options" for the United States to confront or contain North Korea's nuclear weapons proliferation, according to political science Professor Scott Sagan.

Sagan, who is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for International Studies, was one of five foreign policy experts who joined a panel discussion Friday titled "It's a Mad, Mad World: Prospects for Security, Diplomacy and Peace on the Korean Peninsula." Presented by the Law School, the event took place in Dinkelspiel Auditorium as part of Reunion Homecoming Weekend.

Panelists Mi-Hyung Kim, Bernard S. Black, Gi-Wook Shin and Scott D. Sagan took turns weighing in on the difficulties of U.S. diplomatic relations with North Korea during a law school-sponsored discussion. Photo: L.A. Cicero

What makes the situation even more vexing is that the objectives of neither North Korea nor the United States are entirely clear, said law Associate Professor Allen Weiner, a former State Department lawyer and diplomat who moderated the panel.

"Is the United States intent on a regime change? Or putting the nuclear genie back in the bottle?" Weiner asked.

"North Korea feels threatened by the United States and believes nuclear weapons are the only way to protect its national sovereignty," said sociology Associate Professor Gi-Wook Shin, director of the Korean Studies Program in the Asia/Pacific Research Center.

The talk came one day after North Korea announced that it is prepared to "physically unveil" its nuclear program. By Sunday, President George W. Bush announced that he would provide written assurances not to attack North Korea if the country takes steps to halt its proliferation and if other Asian leaders signed, too. Bush, who counted North Korea as part of an "axis of evil," stopped short of offering a formal, Senate-approved nonaggression treaty.

Earlier this month, North Korea claimed to have finished reprocessing 8,000 spent fuel rods to produce enough weapons-grade plutonium to build a half-dozen nuclear bombs. Faced with a collapsed economy and the legacy of 1.5 million deaths from starvation in the late 1990s, the North Korean government, led by Kim Jong Il, has overtly threatened to use its small arsenal as deterrence against U.S. aggression. Although it has been difficult to verify North Korea's capabilities, international experts have asserted that its main nuclear facility in Yongbyon could produce one or two bombs a year.

Tension first heated up last October when North Korea admitted to having abandoned the 1994 Framework Agreement brokered by the Clinton administration to shut down its nuclear reprocessing facilities.

Confirming U.S. intelligence reports that North Korea possesses nuclear weapons capabilities, the former director of the CIA under the Clinton administration, Jim Woolsey, said from the audience that in 1994 the CIA was confident North Korea had enough plutonium to make one or two bombs. Estimating that its current capabilities hover somewhere around six bombs, Woolsey explained North Korea doesn't have good delivery technology. The greater concern, he said, is that it would produce enough plutonium to sell to al-Qaida.

The amount of plutonium it takes to build a bomb is the "size of a grapefruit" -- making it difficult to monitor and stop weapons material shipments, Sagan said.

Believing North Korea is posturing for economic aid and bilateral security guarantees, the United States has sidestepped direct talks and instead joined South Korea, China, Japan and Russia in a round of six-party talks with North Korea last August. Bush's announcement is seen as an effort to jump-start the next round of regional talks that were expected by the end of the year.

The crisis has taken its toll on the longstanding alliance between the United States and South Korea. Panelist Mi-Hyung Kim, a founding member of South Korea's Millennium Democratic Party and general counsel and executive vice president of the Kumho Business Group, the ninth largest Korean conglomerate, said the relationship between the United States and South Korea is the "rockiest" it has ever been because of "Bush's hard-line policy on North Korea" and the fact that wartime control of the South Korean military reverts to U.S. hands. Bilateral talks would further alienate South Korea, which fears that Seoul will become a "sea of fire," she said.

"South Korea thinks Bush is a bigger threat than nuclear weapons 35 miles to the north," Kim explained, pointing out that South Korea will bear the brunt of a military conflict. "South Korea wants to avoid war and economic burdens it can't afford," she said.

Part of the problem has been the failure of the United States to explain its policy to the South Korean people. "The United States is bad at selling its policies to publics abroad," Weiner noted. We're used to dealing bilaterally with government officials; public diplomacy is a skill we've had to learn over the past 15 years."

"A PR campaign by the United States is not going to solve this," Kim countered.

"If North Korea collapses, how will South Korea survive?" asked law Professor Bernard Black, a panelist who served as an economic policy adviser to the South Korean government. "South Korea would have to devote 30 percent of its GDP to bring North Korea up to its standard of living and that's not sustainable.

"South Korea has lived under North Korean guns for the last 50 years. North Korea can destroy Seoul at any time. South Koreans are saying, 'What's changed?' The last thing South Korea wants is to provoke North Korea to attack."

China, North Korea's closest ally, may have the most leverage through trade sanctions and has a vested interest in halting regional proliferation, Kim said. "China does not need another nuclear neighbor. ... It has enough problems with India and Pakistan." North Korea's proliferation could lead to a nuclear Japan, South Korea and "its worst fear, a nuclear Taiwan."

Predicting that nothing would come of the next round of talks until after the next U.S. presidential election, Kim said ironically, "North Korea is expecting a regime change in the United States to an administration that is more reasonable."

"North Korea is not a crazy rogue state but a dangerously desperate state," said Sagan. "When you play poker with someone who's cheated in the past, you can expect them to cheat again."