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US Calls Broadcom's Bid For Qualcomm a National Security Risk (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source): The United States government said Broadcom's proposed acquisition of rival chipmaker Qualcomm could pose a national security risk and called for a full investigation into the hostile bid. The move complicates an already contentious deal and increases the likelihood that Broadcom, which is based in Singapore, will end its pursuit of Qualcomm. Such an investigation is often a death knell for a corporate acquisition. A government panel, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or Cfius, noted, in part, that the potential risk was related to Broadcom's relationships with foreign entities, according to a letter from a United States Treasury official. It also said that the deal could weaken "Qualcomm's technological leadership," giving an edge to Chinese companies like Huawei. "China would likely compete robustly to fill any void left by Qualcomm as a result of this hostile takeover," the official said in the letter. The letter and the public call for an investigation reflects a newly aggressive stance by Cfius. In most cases, the panel operates in secret and weighs in after a deal is announced. In this instance, Cfius, which is made up of representatives from multiple federal agencies, is taking a proactive role and investigating before an acquisition agreement has even been signed.
"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators."
-- P. J. O'Rourke
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Can we just dispense with linking paywalled sources in the first place?
It's definitely a poor idea to allow Huwei or however the fuck it's spelt to dominate this space.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
It's not stupid, it's just different from what you're used to. Tariffs alone would be stupid. Quashing H1B's alone would be stupid. Extra scrutiny to foreign investment alone would be stupid*. All of the above plus a hefty corporate tax cut might actually lead to an improvement.
Or maybe not so stupid if we realize the existence of a whole wide universe not captured by the single number on the bottom line. Milton Friedman never understood this but you can't just stockpile steel or microchips; you have to be able to make your own or you risk inviting potshots from people who can.
It isn't necessarily stupidity. The common opinion among economists and right-wingers that it's stupidity has historical baggage attached to it.
Back in Adam Smith's day, just about everyone was a subsistence farmer and free trade would make everyone wealthier in absolute terms. Even a century ago, there wasn't much difference in the standard of living among nations that would trade with each other. Sixty years ago, Europe and Japan were decimated by war and "free trade" could only mean that the French sold us cheese, the Germans sold us beer, and both bought our computers and jet engines. And it's still true that rich nations ought not throw up trade barriers against other similarly rich nations.
But...that's not what we've got right now and the free traders sound silly when they apply lessons learned under those circumstances to the situation of "free trade" with places where the prevailing wages are a tenth of what ours are here but the information and know-how flows freely. Maybe it's good for them, but it hollows us out.
The countries with the lowest trade barriers are Singapore, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and New Zealand. These are all countries with strong and growing economies. There are many examples of countries, such as Chile, South Korea, and Taiwan, that had closed economies, that then opened themselves to trade and prospered.
Can you name even a single counterexample of a country that put up trade barriers, and saw their rate of growth increase?
High school kids that try to rise up are quickly eliminated by US Air Force Predator drones strikes, flown by our own US military. The kids have AR-15s – America never passed reasonable gun control – but they didn't stand a chance against Predators and guided missile strikes.
-- Americanus
This is a common military strategic thinking mistake made by top US military brass and armchair computer war games players.
The Afghan and Iraqi insurgents only have homemade Kalashnikovs, RPGs and IEDs! We will easily crush them with our M1 Abram tanks, Predator and guided missile strikes! We will defeat them in a few weeks!
Well, after 15 years, the US military still hasn't defeated them. The US military met the same fate in Vietnam. I remember in the 70s, everyone in the US said that we would never repeat the same mistakes made there.
Oops! We forgot, and thought we could defeat guerilla insurgents with a conventional army. And we repeated the same mistakes in Afghanistan and Iraq.
How did the UK do in trying to defeat the IRA?
They didn't, and were forced into a peace process with known terrorist murderers. Or freedom fighters, depending on your personal political beliefs.
A high school kid with an assault weapon hidden under his bed will not defeat the US military. But he can indefinitely harass and annoy them causing casualties that will eventually force them to give up.
Oh, where will these high school kids get their weapons . . . ? The same place they get their drugs today. All the US military might cannot prevent drugs from being smuggled into the country . . . weapons will be no problem either.
And IEDs, just how will the high school kids make them . . . ? The same way I did in high school. Take a bottle of iodine crystals and mix it into household ammonia cleaning fluid. Strain the resulting precipitate through a coffee filter, and let it dry . . . somewhere in the shade, not in sunlight! When it is dry, poke at it with a pencil.
Fun, fun, fun.
The Palestinian terrorists even produce deadly souped up bottle rockets called Qassams, which use aluminum powder and sulfur for fuel. Oh, and "Carlo" machine guns.
So, "Red Dawn" was a seriously silly movie . . . but the effectiveness of a guerilla fighters against a conventional military force should not be underestimated.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The issue though is that it tends to require a level of brutality that is currently politically untenable in the United States.
And not just politically. American soldiers committed suicide in record numbers in Iraq. What do you think those numbers would be like if they were massacring their neighbors at home?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I get better news on reddit.
I can get better news by face-rolling the keyboard in the search bar. It's not like the goalposts are particularly high, here.
Seriously, I come here for the comments and discussions when it's not just screaming obscenities like monkeys flinging poo...yeah, I know...unicorns and hen's teeth these days.
Point being, if you're coming to Slashdot for *news* then you're doing it wrong. It may have the word "news" in the motto, but this is not a current-news site by any stretch of the imagination.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
I'm from New Zealand, and I think this a quite an oversimplification. Australia has much higher trade barriers than NZ, and has much higher growth (they have had something like 28 years now without a recession). This is because they have a big enough population to sustain their own heavy industries, and abundant natural resources that are in high demand.
The countries you list are all very small either population and/or resource wise. They have to trade, or their people go without. It doesn't really prove anything as to whether protectionist policies are useful or not.
I generally agree that trade barriers are stupid, but there is also the valid counter point that other countries do not necessarily play the game fairly. There is no easy solution to this, because if a country reacts by putting up its own barriers (tariff or non-tariff) then you just start a tit-for-tat trade war which most certainly is very damaging to all involved. But doing nothing can invite further abuses from your trade partners.
Personally I think a lot of people want to find 'the one rule to rule them all' around trade and economics because it is intellectually satisfying. But I do not believe that exists in many areas of economics. Indeed, I think the greatest failing of neo-liberalism, is that it allowed intellectually incompetent people to sweep into power by proclaiming that the solution to every problem was simply 'leaving it to the market'. How else do you explain the bunch of idiot showmen/women who now dominate western politics.