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> "There is credible evidence that leads me to believe that Broadcom Ltd." by acquiring Qualcomm "might take action that threatens to impair the national securi
by thinkloop 9y ago
> "There is credible evidence that leads me to believe that Broadcom Ltd." by acquiring Qualcomm "might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States," Trump said in the order released Monday evening in Washington.
> The government said it feared Broadcom would cut investment in research and development in order to increase short-term profits. That could allow Chinese companies to become the dominant supplier, the U.S. said.
The definition of "national security" keeps getting looser over the years.
- andybak 9y ago"What's good for General Motors is good for America"? And let's not talk about where the term "Banana Republic" originated. Moving away from the US - thus it has always been. The good old East India Company springs to mind.
- seorphates 9y agoThat doesn't seem too far off the mark. On the craftiness of nation states scale that's maybe, what, a 2?
- maxander 9y agoI suspect the issue is that, if whole classes of chips that are important for military purposes (wireless communications, for example) are made exclusively by China, they could put in backdoors and other traps that would compromise U.S. military hardware. I haven't seen anyone discuss this angle openly, though, so either I'm off base somehow or it's not something the U.S. wants to loudly discuss (because they're likely doing it too.)
- tooltalk 9y agoNobody is looking at it from that angle because Broadcomm is not a Chinese company. So, yes, you are way off on this. The Trump admin is essentially running on exophobia to push all their trade policies (eg, steel tariff where Canada and Mexico are the top exporters.
- googlryas 9y agoYour implication that only Chinese companies can plant backdoors seems exophobic to me. If we are going to go with the 'only China can backdoor things', Broadcomm has corporate offices in Singapore - why couldn't someone amenable to the Chinese cause, or a lot of money, help get a backdoor in? The same is still possible with US citizens running a US enterprise in the US, but the punishment in America for treason against America is pretty severe and well known. What is the punishment in Singapore if you help put a backdoor in a product which ultimately goes to the US military?
- tooltalk 9y agoI guess, to xenophobes, everything looks xenophobic. Sure, there are national security threats from many other foreign actors, but in this particular case, the poster to whom I responded wants to specifically discuss hypothetical threats posed by Chinese interests and companies that are geo-politically close to China.
- thinkloop 9y agoThat's a fair angle, but no need to "suspect", the reason has been provided: simply that it threatens being #1.
- jstarfish 9y agoI'm not seeing it in this case, but the American exclusiveness is hardly a secret. The government does not source critical tech to third-parties with international ties. Our soldiers only carry weapons made by American suppliers. Our police only drive American vehicles. Even government software needs to run on domestically-produced platforms (Xbox, generic PC). It's not because we live in a Tom Clancy novel; we don't want to put ourselves in a position where services we depend on for safety or national security experience shortage or unavailability because of beefs with our suppliers. And we don't want Huawei or Lenovo backdooring things like routers and laptops that might be used in sensitive deployments.
- majormajor 9y ago"Supply chain" seems pretty central.