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US Government May Not Approve Sale of IBM PC Unit
andy1307 writes "Xinhua, among others, quotes a Bloomberg report saying the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States, or CFIUS, might block the sale of IBM's PC unit to Lenovo over national security concerns. CFIUS is made up of 11 U.S. agencies, including the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and is chaired by the Treasury Department. They are concerned Lenovo employees might be used to conduct industrial espionage. The Bloomberg story said members of CFIUS were focusing their attention on an IBM facility in North Carolina of the United States. The same article says IBM hasn't produced its own PCs for several years and that the bulk of its production is done by manufacturing partners, largely in China. In the past, CFIUS has blocked the sale of Global crossing to Hutchison Whampoa because it would have meant Chinese control of the undersea cable communication network."
The real story is that the government has millions of IBMs bought in the past two years that are now just so much scrap due to lack of support.
I know that at my own company, heads are rolling over having standardized on IBM (from Dell) and now laptop problems are going unfixed due to 'attitude' problems from support vendors.
It's a good job no other large countries ever behaved like that isn't it. Gosh, imagine sneaking around to access technology and then using it to build rockets or missiles and using them to threaten the world. Wouldn't that be dreadful.
Do not export to China!