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."

Comments

Business ought to be left alone

[Dancin_Santa]

There is very little good that come out of government meddling in the affairs of private companies when no one is being harmed. IBM wants to sell, Lenovo wants to buy. No harm, no foul.

The Chinese are not the Red Menace they are made out to be. If anything, they are about as far from Red as you can get. More a yellowish-tan... But they are capitalists through and through.

It's funny, the land of freedom and capitalism is taking steps that would make a communist plutocracy proud.

Re:Business ought to be left alone

[Anonymous Coward]

Grrrrr, I really hope you're trolling but I'll bite.

The moderators must be smoking crack - insightful indeed? Closer to the mark is insanly paranoid and raving mad about a insubstantial red menace... Oh, your from the USA, I guess that's been drilled into you from birth so you can be excused a little. Fortunatley many Americans are able to draw their own conclusions rather than spouting the nonesense they've been force fed - take a look some of them post on slashdot.

When the USA instigates illegal foreign wars of occupation isn't it YOUR govenrment that needs to be slapped down?

Human rights? So the USA has such a good history of this, signed up to the Geneva convention - oh, what's that it's not - and infact in contravention of it in practice in many places - Guantanimo is an illegal ethical and moral disgrace for example, let alone what's been going on in Abu Grade and other places where it seems there is/was an institutionalised systematic policy of abuse.

How about this for a chiller - the USA tops the world for child prostitution. Yup, nice wholesome christians that you are, is Bush going to try and impose those values on the rest of the world too - along with his current agenda of promoting short term greed over protecting the environment for future generations?

Why is it also that the USA effectivley has more votes in institutions like the WTO and the IMF than everyone else put together. Is it right that the richest people in the world get to dictate global finances, which they always do in their favour. I thought the WTO and IMF were there to help developing nations, not as a way for the USA/G8 to rip them off. This is an example of that - "You must accept our free market conditions on your own economies, but we'll do whatever we like".

The reason that the dollar is spiraling downward has nothing to do with the rest of the world or China (which infact is still helping to prop up the dollar through trade - probably why they've got MFN, you can trade with them and profit lots from the cheapness of those human rights abuses), the fault lies entirley with the USA administration. It's the one that's running your economy down the toilet, but then Bush's out of office in another 4 years so he's squeezing for every last drop he and his friends can make. Perhaps you should sort out your trade deficit and borrowning so you wouldn't have to foist debt off onto developing nations by selling them your currency.

The other reasons the dollar is dying is simple, there is now a sensible alternative, the Euro and so people have a choice - good it's a free market :-)

The USA isn't well liked in the world because of it's terrible foreign policies and as the USA has used the dollar as a way to impose unfair trading and debts on other countries is it any wonder that places are now sending them back and saying no thanks, we'll give the Euro a go. Isn't that what Iraq did shortly before being invaded. Other places that did that - Iran and North Korea - where is top of the impending invasion list? So what do you have to do to be a member of the axis of evil? That's also why the USA administration hates the French so much - it's been mostly their diplomacy that affected these changes to monatary policy.

I could go on and on and on but you get the picture - wake up, stop looking at the world thru Bush tinted goggles and take an objective view and I think you'd be suprised at what is really going on in the world.

Make no mistake, the Stars and Stripes meanace is alive and well today and something needs to be done ASAP.

Re:Business ought to be left alone

[nounderscores]

The point is that you have at least two known psychopaths with shotguns in a room full of other people of dubious morality. The room is getting rapidly hotter and you are running out of food. There was an escape stairwell, but it's dangerous, broken and expensive to fix.

You are one of those two shotgun toting psychopaths. You've already shot at least one person to prove a point (but nobody liked that guy anyway) and your colleague has done likewise a few times as well. People in the room are very worried about you.

Do you:

a) Become repentant of your sins and mend your ways and then tell the other psycho to do likewise?

b) Blow the guy's head off, before he shoots you or somebody you like?

c) Talk to him quietly while waving your gun around to stop other people in the room getting ideas? I mean, if the two of you team up you could eat all the other people in the room and not go hungry, right? Yeah, let's eat them.

I know that this view of the world is really screwed up, but if you look at world events, I think that this is the world that our leaders see.

When did this happen?

[g0hare]

Computers are all made in China anyway! We don't build cars in America, we don't grow food in America, we don't even do tech support in America, we don't make steel in America, we don't make clothes in America and we're busy moving all our jobs that pay well overseas! When exactly did this kind of behavior become a "national security problem?" instead of good business? I mean I know all those people who used to make textiles in the South all just went right out and got themselves a degree after the mills closed - what, you say they weren't smart enough to do that?

Then WHAT THE HELL is left for them to do when all those jobs are gone except cook meth in their trailers? Or become religious terrorists?

This is like

[cyberkahn]

sticking your finger in the leaking dike or singling out a grain of sand from the beach. It's already too late. We have exported a majority of our technology to China already, which of course is being copied, therefore, saving China billions in R and D. America's greed has sold itself out.

Before you flame me, yes, I am a patriotic American, however, I am not blind to what is happening. America is going down the path of Rome. Just give us more bread and circuses. Football is more important than academics. Money is more important than ethics.

#2?

[Savage-Rabbit]

Hardly #2, but the USA is nevertheless waking up to the fact that China is catching up technologically at a much faster rate than anybody had expected. Soon enough the Chinese will have reached a point where they can threaten the USA militarily using Chinese developed technology based on technological transfer from Russia, W-Europe and the USA it self. Greedy corporations outourced work to China and with they exported the technology China needed to develop better and better military hardware. This sort of a panic reaction is simply a belated reckonition of this development. Expect the Chinese to field Submarines, Tanks and a Stealth aircraft capable of competing with the F-35 within the next 20 years or so and its surface fleet will become a serious challenge to the USN in the Pacific.