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Lenovo Looking to Buy Seagate, May Raise Political Concerns

Posted by Zonk on from the this-is-what-we're-worried-about dept.

andy1307 writes "According to an article in the New York Times, Lenovo has expressed an interest in buying Seagate. This has raised concerns among American government officials about the risks to national security in transferring high technology to China. From the article: 'In recent years, modern disk drives, used to store vast quantities of digital information securely, have become complex computing systems, complete with hundreds of thousands of lines of software that are used to ensure the integrity of data and to offer data encryption.'"

8 of 255 comments (clear)

  1. Oh my god, it's the Red Scare! by r_jensen11 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Quick! Where's McCarthy when we need him?

    Honestly, they're raising the same fuss as when IBM sold off their PC and laptop divisions to Lenovo. There's no reason why we should be paranoid about stuff this. It's business.

    1. Re:Oh my god, it's the Red Scare! by Kjella · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Honestly, they're raising the same fuss as when IBM sold off their PC and laptop divisions to Lenovo. There's no reason why we should be paranoid about stuff this. It's business.

      Yes, it is. And when those Chinese-owned leaders get certain hints to store certain things in "bad" sectors who might suddenly resurface in "slack" space seeded with a salt to look like random noise or risk being shut down, that's also business. Or there's a kill code that they can send out to wipe itself and bring down military systems in an emergency situation. No, it's not just a gag China does just to pull off something like that, they're certainly in it for the business. But when business and government go hand in hand like they do in China, you'd also be naive to think they don't further each other's goals. It's not like that the lust for money is mutually exclusive with the lust for power, quite rather the opposite.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    2. Re:Oh my god, it's the Red Scare! by couchslug · · Score: 4, Insightful

      McCarthy's excesses didn't make opposing Mao and Stalin wrong.

      --
      "This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
  2. So don't buy Seagate by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So a Chinese Company wants to buy a Canadian (?!?!?) company that makes hard drives. Fine. Stop buying Seagate for the NSA, and move on with our lives.

    --
    SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
  3. Isn't it a bit late to worry? by tftp · · Score: 3, Insightful
    This has raised concerns among American government officials about the risks to national security in transferring high technology to China

    I think the horse has not only left the barn, it's off the planet by now. What were those "government officials" thinking for last decades? And this process is not [easily] reversible - China has all the factories now, and rephrasing Mao, "Power comes out of the gates of the factory." This much we see already.

  4. The irony of it all by v3xt0r · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This government, the same one who has no problem allowing China to take hundreds of thousands of jobs away from Americans simply by our failed international trade policies, wants us to worry about national security issues related to 1 corporation. What about all the other national security issues that are caused by trade w. China, or any other socialist/communist country for that matter? What about all the (60%+) staff @ Los Alamos?? Lenovo is the least of my concerns, at this point.

    --
    the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
  5. hehe National what??? by xednieht · · Score: 4, Insightful

    China buys blocks and blocks of our national debt, and they're concerned about the Seagate purchase? pfft

    With their ownership of US debt, China is probably as concerned about our national security as we are.

    --

    Hope is the currency of fools
  6. Fuck nationalism, what about quality? by pavon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Seagate is pretty much the only computer componets company that hasn't wavered much in quality over the years. IBM, Western Digital, and Maxtor have all gone through phases ranging from good quality to absolute crap, while Seagate has continued to put out consistently good products.

    I understand that theory that larger companies can decrease overhead and thus be more efficient, but that never seems to happen. The success rate on mergers looks almost as bad as on startups. But this stupid economic model that is the stockmarket rewards growth (even artificial growth) over all else - quality, efficiency you name it. We created this system, and the laws that govern it, and then we act shocked, just shocked, when the market consolidates to the point of a monopoly. What is the point of even having anti-trust laws when we not only allow but encourage consolidation at every turn.

    Sorry, I'm just so tired of seeing all these mergers that decrease the amount of competition in the field and end up destroying everything that was good about the company to begin with.