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IBM Will Share Tech With China To Help Build IT Industry There

Posted by Soulskill on from the different-tack-from-Google dept.

An anonymous reader sends this report from Reuters: IBM Corp will share technology with Chinese firms and will actively help build China's industry, CEO Virginia Rometty said in Beijing as she set out a strategy for one of the foreign firms hardest hit by China's shifting technology policies. IBM must help China build its IT industry rather than viewing the country solely as a sales destination or manufacturing base, Rometty said. ... [Her] remarks were among the clearest acknowledgements to date by a high-ranking foreign technology executive that companies must adopt a different tack if they are to continue in China amid growing political pressure. A number of U.S. technology companies operating in China are forming alliances with domestic operators, hoping a local partner will make it easier to operate in the increasingly tough environment for foreign businesses.

65 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. Buy american only. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Bad idea. they will get all the information and ditch IBM take it all for themself. Unless they only share opensource things that is already open then its fine.

    1. Re:Buy american only. by Trepidity · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I think IBM probably realizes that, but hopes to make money in the medium-term anyway. If a pro-China strategy gets them into the Chinese market for the next 10-15 years, they could profit significantly. If that results in their Chinese partners eventually taking over their business and nudging them out, well, in 10-15 years someone else will be CEO, and that's their problem.

      A lot of petrochemical firms are doing similar things. When Dupont goes into a joint venture with a Chinese firm to build a plastics facility, there are not many illusions about is going to happen to the technology: the JV partner will stay with Dupont for a few facilities until they develop enough skill in the tech to do it on their own, then subsequently will start building its own plants without Dupont.

      --
      10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
    2. Re:Buy american only. by parkinglot777 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Most of that information is only valuable if it's applied.

      How expensive and difficult is it to apply in the USA vs China?

      IBM can keep it in the USA, where it with whither in an atmosphere of economic stagnation, or sell it to China, a nation that will take it and use it in industry.

      You are too optimistic about the situation. History has been shown how things go. Also, you are short sighted about the cost applied. You underestimate and assume that Chinese are too stupid to gain values from the information (or too stupid to reverse engineer) without USA? Have you ever thought of the situation could be reversed in, let say, 10 or 15 years?

      Look at Trepidity post. His post nailed it. This is just for the current CEO who wants get credit right now. When shit hits the fan, the CEO is no where near by and the one in place takes all the blames.

    3. Re:Buy american only. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      To Godwin this thread early; didn't IBM help the NAZIs to round up all the jews, gypsies, black, feeble-minded, etc.? So this is just a continuation of their traditional behaviour.

    4. Re:Buy american only. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      China builds backdoors too. What's the diff?

      The USA is hanging themselves. Besides that these companies should be tried for treason, they are giving all of their country's power away to a hostile nation and dooming their future.

    5. Re:Buy american only. by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 1

      The horse was out of the barn decades ago. All the hand-wringing in the world achieves nothing. China will be just as hard hit once automatic robots can do anything - their massive job losses will really irk their new middle class, same as is happening hear.

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    6. Re:Buy american only. by Bonzoli · · Score: 1

      If you think trusting the Chinese is a good idea, then you should go back to that school and study up really close what happens in China to average people like yourself.
      We spent years building Democracies and some security so our businesses can sell it to the highest bidder for a short term bonus check. Do not look at the US gov to stop this, its been bought and paid for by big interest groups.

    7. Re:Buy american only. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The past 30+ years has seen the average Chinese life improve immensely, in no small part to the Chinese government. So why don't you go back to school and compare how the lives of the average citizen of the USA and China over the past few decades?

      See the stagnation of middle class wage (in real terms) for the past 50 years in the US. And learn about how the US has spent years promoting dictatorships friendly to US interests and years destroying democracies not willing to bend to US interests.

    8. Re:Buy american only. by Kagato · · Score: 2

      My experiences with IBM is you get a couple true blue IBM guys that act as front men that go to meetings while the real work is done by off-shore workers. Sometimes the offshore folks are IBM, but a lot of the time they are someone IBM has contracted to do the work. Which is why increasingly American companies have been dumping IBM and cutting deals directly with the offshore companies. Why pay IBM to be a middle-man? It's unclear to me exactly what value IBM brings in China outside a name to make executives and investors feel like good decisions are being made. Maybe that's enough.

    9. Re:Buy american only. by jsepeta · · Score: 1

      I'd gladly choose to live in the stagnant US Middle Class where i have the freedom of the internet than to live in a burgeoning Chinese middle class where I would not. I bet most Chinese can't even read /.

      --
      Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
    10. Re: Buy american only. by WindBourne · · Score: 1

      Actually, for the last 40 years, America has pushed democracies and not been willing to back totalitarian nations. Prior to that, we were just like European nations in that we backed anybody.

      --
      I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
  2. Do business with China get robbed by Crashmarik · · Score: 1

    Everyone knew it.
    The people who swarmed there must have figured they could kick it down the road past their retirement just leave the mess for those that came after.

  3. Corporate suicide? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    They are ready to do anything to bring the dividend to 15$/share. And the fact that they can just give away their technology to the Chinese shows how much of a guaranteed income IBM gets.

  4. Not surprising by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Especially since IBM sold their PC and Server divisions to Lenovo.

  5. Training Your Competition by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And this will be the last of the money made by IBM in China. They're going to spend a few more years teaching other companies everything they know, and then the Chinese will kick them out and undercut them with their own technology. Just brilliant, IBM. *golf clap* Now they're actually training their own competitors for some short term profits.

    If you haven't yet sold your IBM stocks in the last few decades, now might be the time to do so.

    --
    Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    1. Re:Training Your Competition by RabidReindeer · · Score: 1

      If you haven't yet sold your IBM stocks in the last few decades, now might be the time to do so.

      Got any tips on the Chinese companys to invest in?

      I hear Lenovo's got some good stuff.

    2. Re:Training Your Competition by renzhi · · Score: 4, Insightful

      First off, I've been living and working in China for 11 years, even founded my own software company and ran for 6 years, before merging with another company. So I'll comment on this one.

      You took a very simplistic view.

      An IT industry can not be built overnight, it took many generations to build up the experiences, the talent pool, the mind set, the mentality that people had on software (A lot of Chinese people, especially those in the power to make decision on IT purchase, have a very different mind set on software/service values), etc, etc. I've been here for over a decade now, although there's been some progress in software engineering here, mainly in the few big Internet companies such as Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, etc, there's not much progress. Enterprise software? Frankly, due to the mentality toward the values of software/services, there's not much changes over the decade. The local software companies in the field are extremely small, compared to the western giants such as IBM, HP, SAP, Oracle, etc. The enterprise software, and that includes systems acquired by government, is dominated by these foreign companies. They took the big profit, and leave the hard work to the locals to slave over. This situation is stupid to all parties. Very stupid of the government, especially to let this kind of shit happen over two decades without doing the proper thing. Very stupid of the foreign companies, as they could have made their life easier and made the cake larger. Very stupid of the local companies, as they are slaving to death, as most projects are losing money for them. And as a matter of fact, a lot of the local IT people, the smarter ones besides that, are giving up on a career in IT, they make more money selling pancakes and without the stress and overtime.

      Second of all, if these foreign companies are not trying to share, they will fight over a cake that will never grow. Look, none of the Internet biggies, the fastest growing sector, are buying anything from them. Their markets are in the enterprise software (and government sector). And these markets are not growing, and if you look seriously into the numbers, these companies are making their money by selling hardware and to a certain extent, software licenses, which are quite small as compared to the hardware portion. And software licenses are getting smaller still, as more and more open source softwares are made available. And selling services? Haha, don't make me laugh. Service is money-losing on all fronts. As the policies changed, if these foreign companies are not trying to change, their cake gets smaller and smaller, and their profit will be significantly squeezed, as they would have to sell via local distributors.

      Thirdly, even if they share, you are not going to think that they will share their crown jewel, are you? They will probably just play the games to comply, to make sure their cake is still there. These companies are exploiting like crazy, without actually investing much here. They have a very strong sale department, and very small tech support, nothing technically challenging. The technical works they do here? Could be done by any code monkey in any country.

      Fourthly, you might want to look at other industries, such as the car industry, for example. They had shared something, but look at how much more they have earned back? Just take a look at the chinese branch of GM, Volkswagen, Honda, Toyota, etc. They only share the parts that they do not have the competitive edge, or are on the edge of losing it, and still keep the core technologies. They think long term. In 15 years, the car market became the largest one in the world. Sure, they have now more and stronger local competitors, but so what? Their cake is so much bigger, they made so much money than before. Try to imagine the enterprise software market, if you can. If we can make it like the car market, this is going to be gigantic. I can tell you that most Chinese firms, even the big ones, have very little IT deployment.

      Anyway, my point is, it is stupid for

    3. Re:Training Your Competition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Sorry Dutch, you are perhaps short sighted.

      If IBM will not do it, someone else will. If no one will teach for money then they it will be stolen for less.

      Ultimately when your product is good competition and copycats come to the party. Only knowing a couple of tricks will not keep one in business because it's innovate or die.

      Something tells me that IBM has a few people that may know what they are doing and found good reasons to do so. Perhaps the competition will bring more innovation, faster progress and at a lower cost. If you cannot compete then make way for those that can.

      There's a big market out there, maybe after you train one country you train another...new markets, repeat business, a strategy, expertise in training what's all that? a business model.

    4. Re:Training Your Competition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Your points sound sensible on the surface. But the experience of US companies is exactly what GP said. Chinese companies want the other guy to share, then they use that technology to undercut him. It isn't a two way street.

    5. Re:Training Your Competition by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I think you're underestimating how easily and quickly both technology and infrastructure can be copied given a concerted effort. The Chinese are absolutely brilliant at creating clones of American-designed products. What can take generations to invent for the first time can be duplicated in mere years. Consider the case of the Americans and the atomic bomb technology, and how quickly the Russians achieved parity. Or consider Germany's initial lead in rocketry and then the US / Russia catching up to them in mere years. This is all done with high-level transfer of knowledge. Once you know how something is done, it's much, much easier to duplicate those results rather than inventing all that technology through expensive R&D the first time.

      China has clearly indicated that they're not interested in long-term relationships with the west in terms of critical technological infrastructure, and honestly, I can't really blame them. Would we want to buy Chinese-designed operating systems and computer systems? We're already starting to become wary of products *built* in China, let alone designed there. They're going to absorb and utilized the knowledge gained from IBM far faster than people are predicting, and once their industry is kick-started, they'll say goodbye to IBM. This is essentially a one-time sale for IBM - they're just selling off their IP and expertise for short term profits.

      However nuanced you believe this move to be, I just don't see it that way. It's nothing but a short-term profit grab that will hurt IBM in the long run. You don't see the most successful tech companies racing to sell their IP or expertise to the Chinese... only their manufacturing. And that's only if they feel it's worth giving up their control over that process - note that Intel keeps it's fab plants mostly in the US or other first-world countries. That's because IP/expertise *is* the crown jewels of a tech company.

      IBM is already dying a slow death, desperate to snap out of years of declining revenue. This will just hasten it by a few more years.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    6. Re:Training Your Competition by turbidostato · · Score: 1

      "First off, I've been living and working in China for 11 years"

      Great news.

      "there's not much progress"

      Hummm... in one word: Huawei.

      Huawei is not only selling networking gear but quickly becoming an all-encompassing IT behemoth with only two problems to solve in order to be the one-and-only, neither of which will last forever: bad press in international markets and a too slowly growing (for Huawei's pace) internal market.

      Currently the likes of IBM have only two clear paths: join ventures with Chinese companies (no other way to get into China), get the money today and hope for the better for tomorrow, or not going into China and just perish in ten to fifteen years -oh! and still letting go today's money to other companies that go with option 'A'.

    7. Re:Training Your Competition by turbidostato · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "It's nothing but a short-term profit grab"

      What else have US corporations become in the last 20 to 30 years?

      "that will hurt IBM in the long run"

      So what? This will be the problem of another CEO. I already got my big bonuses.

      "IBM is already dying a slow death, desperate to snap out of years of declining revenue."

      Or is it USA?

      On the other hand, don't count your chickens before they are hatched; remember IBM was also dead back in the nineties -I think even Netcraft confirmed it.

    8. Re:Training Your Competition by plopez · · Score: 2

      Well, you cannot buy stocks directly, just derivatives which I do not trust. You could directly lend or invest in a company there but the cash out mechanism can be highly restricted. So good luck with that.

      --
      putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
    9. Re:Training Your Competition by Bonzoli · · Score: 2

      Or fix NAFTA and the WTO, and actually penalize incoming products where the servants are bonded and jumping off buildings because they lost all Hope. hmmm..... Nope, lets just give it to china so they can shoot down satellites faster.

    10. Re:Training Your Competition by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 1

      "It's nothing but a short-term profit grab" What else have US corporations become in the last 20 to 30 years?

      Amazon is a pretty good example of bucking the trend. They've caused plenty of conniptions among the Wall Street "in-crowd" by eschewing short term profits, and instead investing in long term strategies. Look at where they're at compared to IBM now. Wall street only cares about the next quarter's earnings.

      Or is it USA?

      The US doesn't have the explosive growth of China (which is showing signs of slowing, btw), but that's only because China is transitioning from third-world to first-world status. That doesn't mean the US is necessarily in decline, just that it's relative dominance is decreasing. There's nothing wrong with that. We'll remain competitive for the foreseeable future, because this is still a country where start-ups can make it big. When that changes, you know we'll be in trouble.

      On the other hand, don't count your chickens before they are hatched; remember IBM was also dead back in the nineties

      Notice I said a *slow death*. They've been declining for a while. Given their size, they can still probably hold out for another couple of decades, but unless they take some radical reforming steps, like cutting down it's 13 layers of management and bureaucracy, and actually attempting to innovate rather than simply grabbing onto anything that looks profitable (like this boneheaded move), they'll just dwindle down to nothing. Remember, it took about fifteen years for Kodak to implode from when they were still a behemoth. Sheer inertia can keep a massive company going for a very long time.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    11. Re:Training Your Competition by ColdWetDog · · Score: 1

      I think you folks are all barking up the wrong tree.

      Lotus (err, IBM) Notes.

      Ever heard of a fifth column?

      USA! USA!

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    12. Re:Training Your Competition by blind+biker · · Score: 2

      You are writing your comment assuming that the IBM CEO actually gives a shit about the company's long (or even medium) term viability. This hasn't been true in the last 35 years in corporate USA. In publicly traded companies where there isn't a clear owner and therefore someone who cares about hi/her company, CxOs have been rampaging, merging, reorganizing, divesting, outsourcing etc. etc. all kinds of buzzword MBA-ese goes. None of those things were actually done to improve the company, but to make more money for the executives.

      --
      "The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
    13. Re:Training Your Competition by sribe · · Score: 1

      And this will be the last of the money made by IBM in China. They're going to spend a few more years teaching other companies everything they know, and then the Chinese will kick them out and undercut them with their own technology. Just brilliant, IBM. *golf clap* Now they're actually training their own competitors for some short term profits.

      See: Dell ;-)

    14. Re:Training Your Competition by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Now they're actually training their own competitors for some short term profits.

      Back then, before 1989, we had a motto: "Capitalists will sell to us even the rope on which we'll hang them."

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    15. Re:Training Your Competition by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Imported canned air.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    16. Re:Training Your Competition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Your bias is ridiculous. I hope you realize this while you're banging your dog ugly Chinese wife who's only with you for the money.

    17. Re:Training Your Competition by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Consider the case of the Americans and the atomic bomb technology, and how quickly the Russians achieved parity.

      Well, considering that they continuously kept getting information from the inside and it still took them four more years, perhaps one could say that it wasn't all that quick.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    18. Re:Training Your Competition by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 1

      I bet importing canned air is more profitable than working for IBM China.

      --
      Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
    19. Re:Training Your Competition by RabidReindeer · · Score: 1

      Consider the case of the Americans and the atomic bomb technology, and how quickly the Russians achieved parity.

      Well, considering that they continuously kept getting information from the inside and it still took them four more years, perhaps one could say that it wasn't all that quick.

      Then again, the Russians had to work to steal it. IBM's actively pushing it out.

      Bought a motherboard or LCD TV lately? Don't even bother to TRY to find one built without Chinese labor in it.

    20. Re:Training Your Competition by turbidostato · · Score: 1

      "Notice I said a *slow death*."

      Yes. And notice I said IBM was also said to be on their slow death march back in the nineties and still they managed to recover. Heck, Samuel Pamisano is taken as an example on MBA courses just for that. Maybe this time IBM will be able to go ahead again.

      "That doesn't mean the US is necessarily in decline, just that it's relative dominance is decreasing."

      That's a decline. And, yes, US *is* in decline. That it will be able to revert the tendency or not, is still to be seen, but a look at History and how past empires managed their decadence wouldn't allow for optimism.

  6. already happened! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    share technology with Chinese firms and will actively help build China's industry,

    I think most American firms already share technology with Chinese firms to help build China's industry.

    Wittingly or not.

  7. Patent Troll Tech? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    IBM has long ago become a services company, selling over priced, vague, business services, mostly to US Government and other companies already locked in. That business is not exportable since its bums on seats and the bums are H1Bs in America.

    The only other business it has is the world biggest patent troll, patenting variations of other peoples inventions. (Remember the stack boundary check that IBM patents with the tiny addition of 'in an OS')? And hitting them for money (Twitter hit for $36 million rather than challenge 900 crappy troll patent).

    And I'm sure many here have experienced IBM 'Business Consultants' coming in and throwing in their chaos. I remember IBM convincing top management that they should do QA, then rejecting non-IBM software as sub-standard on specious claims.

    They have nothing to offer a company but pain and politics.

    On the plus side, they're attacking China! So perhaps they can undermine that economy the way they did in the US, and are trying to do in Europe with software patents.

  8. Well that should make it easy by wiredog · · Score: 1

    for IBM to lay off another couple hundred thousand.

    --

    Best Slashdot Co
    1. Re:Well that should make it easy by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 2

      for IBM to lay off another couple hundred thousand.

      The last time Ginni Rometty fired a bunch of IBMers . . . just a few months ago . . . she was rewarded with a $7 million bonus.

      Why would she not want to lay off another bunch? She will get another $7 million for that again.

      --
      Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
  9. She should be fired by MikeRT · · Score: 4, Interesting

    And sued into the poor house by the shareholders and board of directors. This is not just training competition, but competition in a country notorious for wiping its ass with IP and trade secrets, using every other dirty trick to get ahead and using hyper nationalist politics to freeze out companies like IBM. Were she a politician and not a business executive, it would be roughly grounds for treason.

    1. Re:She should be fired by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Ginni Rometty is pushing 60 years old. She will probably dead in twenty, or so Alzheimered out, that there is no difference anyway.

      What does she care, how her decision affects the position of IBM or the US in the future?

      She is concerned with cashing in, like, now.

      --
      Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
    2. Re:She should be fired by supremebob · · Score: 1

      It's been well over a decade since IBM cared about much more than meeting their quarterly earnings projections.

      This just buys Ginni some time that she desperately needs to deploy her golden parachute out of the company. Their existing consulting customers are getting sick of the poor quality work that they are receiving, and the loss of business is hurting the bottom line hard.

  10. Somebody tell Dept of State Please by kjhambrick · · Score: 1

    Geebus ! god save us from these short-sighted MoFos.

    I would like to say that the Dept of State needs to know about this.

    http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?node=pt22.1.121

    However, too many members of the Executive Branch in DC seem to hate the USA more than they hate the Chinese and are likely to WANT this to happen to all our Corps.

    -- kjh

  11. A japanese way of saying ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Those who grow snakes die poisoned.

  12. Who is going to buy all their stuff? by tompaulco · · Score: 1

    After all of the American workers are fired, who is going to buy all the cheap stuff they make in China? The Chinese? Well, first you would have to pay them more. So the goods would cost more to produce. Doesn't seem to make much sense from a business point of view. Maybe from a charity point of view. On the other hand, hurting 1/3 of a billion in order to help 1 billion is not really a great ratio for a charity either.

    --
    If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
    1. Re:Who is going to buy all their stuff? by gtall · · Score: 1

      To some extent, the C party in China sees the problem with putting foreigners out of work, i.e., lose the market for their crap. They are attempting to simulate domestic consumption. It takes a government to wage screwups on a massive, country-defeating scale. And the C party is certainly up to the challenge. The only reason it hasn't yet quite caught up to them is that they are providing a marginally better life for enough of their pop. to keep the malcontents stifled (or shot, they aren't particular about which it takes). However, it is in the process of catching up with them. Their growth is slowing. Their environment is degrading.

      The basic problem for China is their C party of government has no reason for being. They don't anything particularly well. They are rife with corruption. And they know it, that is why they need to censure so heavily.

      Bahrain is a good example of what the outside world, and specifically technologies and ideas spawned by the U.S. and the West, can do. Bahrain is run by the usual assortment of incompetent Sunni "sheiks". They have a predominately Shi'ite pop. The Shi'ite pop. was more or less cowed sheep until Google Earth arrived. Then they started to get politically active. One fellow summed it up properly. He said they could see on Google Earth how all the development was happening in Sunni areas and they were relegated to the backwoods (backsands?) part of the country and then could see what a raw deal they were getting. So the Sunni alleged sheiks are clamping down...which will probably work until the Shi'ites work out how to have them all killed.

      It won't be Google Earth that dooms China's government, but once the people start comparing their incompetence with how other countries are governed, the C. party is toast.

  13. If you want the Chinese to use your tech by sabbede · · Score: 2

    just work with them. They'll steal it before long.

  14. IBM by johnsmith2708 · · Score: 1

    I think, American company will use the chep workers for developing their production, but who knows=)

    1. Re:IBM by moeinvt · · Score: 1

      IBM isn't actually producing a lot these days.
      Their PC and X86 server businesses have already been sold to Chinese companies. They're divesting themselves of their semiconductor business as well. I assume they'll keep the P-series and Z-series servers for a while, but "International Business Software and Services" would be a much more appropriate name for the company.

  15. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  16. In other words, a very very by Grey+Geezer · · Score: 4, Informative

    small number of wealthy people, will become even more wealthy at the expense of American, middle class, workers. Welcome to the global economy!

    --
    The USA is only 4X older than me...perspective
  17. Re:Partnerships are the only way by Bonzoli · · Score: 1

    Yea NSA did some shit to American Citizens, but its job is to know/spy on other countries. Because every few years Tanks seem to roll west out of some jackass despots country.
    When the crap hits the fan though, I'm sure you will be first in line demanding those same NSA or US gov troops protect you from those Chinese and Russian tanks, troops, sci corp, etc...

  18. Re:fucking chinks by belthize · · Score: 1

    Maybe we could put China on double secret probation.

  19. Re:OK, the NAZIS were bad enough by halivar · · Score: 1

    The criticism is finally apt. I've always defended IBM against accusations of Nazi collaboration on the grounds that the Hollerith machines (used to make the holocaust more efficient) were built in Germany by a German IBM subsidiary, and they were sold for peaceful, legitimate purpose. That branch came under Nazi control, and IBM was not able to reclaim it until after the war. So far, not IBM's fault.

    But now? To perform the same exact action, with a state that has killed many times over as the Nazi's? NOW they are culpable for everything the Chinese do with their technology. They are going into this eyes wide open.

  20. Re:IBM is in it for IBM by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 1

    They did business with the Nazis in WWII, why not the Chinese.

    Are you comparing the Nazis and the Chinese?

    --
    Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
  21. Glad to see whoring yourself out... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    ... for short term profitability is alive and well.

  22. Re:fucking chinks by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

    The planes had to drop them early because they'd have run out of fuel had they flown farther. It was a simple fueling mistake.

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  23. Re:IBM is in it for IBM by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

    Comparing, as in saying that if Nazis were good enough for IBM, surely the Chinese are even more palatable? Makes sense to me.

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  24. Re:IBM is in it for IBM by jsepeta · · Score: 1

    Why not?

    --
    Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
  25. neo-cons continue to destroy business by WindBourne · · Score: 1

    Seriously, neo-cons are the ones destroying american business just for short term profits. GE, HP, att, gm, Boeing Cisco, and IBM are companies being ran into the ground by fucking neo-cons who look at stock manipulation rather than profits as ideal.

    --
    I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
  26. The terminal decline of the US economy by TheMathemagician · · Score: 1

    We are simply witnessing another small step in the process by which China becomes the world's economic superpower and the US economy withers away. It seems fine while it's happening, another few years revenue locked in, share price rising. But no-one notices another round of layoffs for US employees replaced by offshore contractors. Might take 10, 20, 30 years, I can't tell, but there's going to be an almighty reckoning when the last white-collar job has been shifted offshore and the US shell companies have nothing left to sell.

  27. Is China a fascist state? by nickmalthus · · Score: 1

    There is a strong argument that China is more of a Fascist state than a Communist state. I sincerely doubt that Karl Marx would agree that the crony capitalism instituted in China is anywhere near an ideal communist state.

    --
    If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be-T J
  28. Re:fucking chinks by quantumghost · · Score: 1

    Actually General McArthur (or was it Patton) wanted to nuke Beijing also, but was denied...

    President Truman had reprimanded MacArthur on several occasions for publicly disagreeing with him over the general's proposal to pursue the Chinese across the Yalu River into China during the Korean War. The president relieved him of his command in April 1951. In secret, they had even discussed the possibility of using nuclear bombs against the North Koreans and the Chinese.

  29. That's the company that Nortel unwillingly built. by sethstorm · · Score: 1

    Huawei is not only selling networking gear but quickly becoming an all-encompassing IT behemoth with only two problems to solve in order to be the one-and-only, neither of which will last forever: bad press in international markets and a too slowly growing (for Huawei's pace) internal market.

    For nations that have seen the truth (US and Australia), they've rightfully limited their presence.

    Currently the likes of IBM have only two clear paths: join ventures with Chinese companies (no other way to get into China), get the money today and hope for the better for tomorrow, or not going into China and just perish in ten to fifteen years -oh! and still letting go today's money to other companies that go with option 'A'.

    There's a third option - survive by using a combination of influence over the US(to handle Door A folks) and business strategy to minimize the Chinese threat.

    --
    Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
  30. Re:That's the company that Nortel unwillingly buil by turbidostato · · Score: 1

    "There's a third option - survive by using a combination of influence over the US(to handle Door A folks) and business strategy to minimize the Chinese threat."

    The problem is that China is hugh and has a lot of wealth. Taking it to an extreme, China right now could afford 20 years of autarchy just growing its internal market and still come out of it with the biggest companies on each market to blow out competition once they go international. Both governments and corporations know that; this is why they want to take positions (and getting some money right now) so to minimize their loses.