Slashdot Mirror
Trump Blocks China-Backed Takeover of US Chip Maker 'Lattice Semi' (cnn.com)
MountainLogic shares a report from CNN: President Trump has stopped the takeover of an American chip maker by a private equity firm with ties to China. The deal, which would have seen China-backed Canyon Bridge Capital Partners acquire Lattice Semiconductors, was blocked over national security concerns. "Today, consistent with the administration's commitment to take all actions necessary to ensure the protection of U.S. national security, the president issued an order prohibiting the acquisition," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement Wednesday. The national security risk included "the potential transfer of intellectual property" to the Chinese-backed company and the "Chinese government's role in supporting this transaction," according to Mnuchin's statement. Those are sensitive matters: the Trump administration launched an investigation last month into whether China is unfairly getting hold of American technology and intellectual property. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., which reviews deals that could result in a foreign entity taking control of an American company, had previously recommended halting the deal. Lattice CEO Darin G. Billerbeck called the outcome "disappointing" and called the proposed acquisition "an excellent deal" for Lattice and for "expanding the opportunity to keep jobs in America." According to CNN, Lattice currently employs 300 people in Oregon -- and Canyon Bridge has committed to adding 350 more if the takeover deal went through.
This is one of those feel-good two-minutes-of-hate articles that Slashdot likes to post to bash Trump without regard to the content of the story.
For example, if the exact opposite decision had occurred and the sale had gone through, we'd see the usual trolls bashing Trump as being an anti-science moron who was too stupid to understand the technology being given to China. Instead, he'd be bashed as being a Wall Street insider who is personally selling American technology to China in some sort of illegal "collusion"*.
* Hilariously ironic to anybody who was half-awake during the election and paid attention to where Wall Street actually dumped its election money (hint: It wasn't on Trump). Not to mention when the Clinton who actually won the presidential election actually *did* transfer rocket technology to China that probably ended up getting to North Korea eventually.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
...called his buddy, "Yeah, it's done. Go ahead and buy it for fifty cents on the dollar. Use the money you made by shorting Boeing."
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
The 'competent authorities' are all part of the executive branch. They report to the President. The 'competent authorities' advise the president, he signs the order.
Are you implying that building the wall would be some sort of new law? It is not, the laws on entry to the country already exist, have for a long time, and were created by Congress. 'The wall' is just a means to enforce the law, which is the President's job.
There are competent authorities for national security. They declare the policies, they set up the review and approval procedures and so on. Every country has them. Some other threads already mention them.
Why has the president need to step in?
Which part of the current regulation failed?
And, most importantly, do you WANT him to have this power?
Lets put this in perspective,
Trump has shown that he is willing to claim personal credit for things he had little or nothing to do with if he thinks his base will see it as a promise kept. After all, he personally has added 1 million jobs since becoming prez https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/08/24/trumps-claim-that-he-himself-created-1-million-jobs-as-president/?utm_term=.c131d8f4b007
In this case you can rest assured that the "normal competent national security authorities" had (almost certainly) already red flagged the sale, He is likely taking personal credit because it was "his administration" that red flagged the sale, and he believes it makes him look strong on national security.
To be fair to Trump, he wouldn't be the first (and certainly wont be the last) politician to take personal credit for the hard work of others.
Xilinx bitstreams are essential to the security features in the various family members,
It is the fact of the bitstream resistance to de-engineering which protects the IP streams licensed or internally created
As Xilinx sees it, releasing that information is counterproductive
I take it you don't work in the semiconductor industry. A lot of companies I've worked for use Lattice for prototyping. And some open source fanatics have reverse engineered their iCE FPGA and can generate reasonable bitstreams for several models.The FPGA world is more than just Xilinx and Altera, I would say Lattice is a third major player that has more market share than all the other minor players combined. (roughly 6% vs 5%)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire