Lenovo Looking to Buy Seagate, May Raise Political Concerns

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.'"

Extent of the legit concerns?

[neapolitan]

We (the US) have long had a ban on the export of 'strong' (>40 bit, now >64 bit key) technology to foreign governments / citizens. I've long wondered about this.

It seems to me that:

- All concerns regarding exporting of technology that is not guarded as a trade secret is ineffective. If China wants a technology that is freely available over here (USA), just have one of their numerous graduate students download the technology and send it over there. AFAIK, no American internet provider actively prohibits strong encryption connections to Chinese IPs (their "great firewall" may be different).

However, my second immediate thought is:

- Seagate likely has numerous trade secrets that are *not* public domain, and thus can now be exclusively owned and operated by the Chinese. Imagine if DES had a backdoor (or Seagate's equivalent), and my organization uses Seagate's out of box encryption (not likely ;) -- now a foreign government controls this. Legitimately scary.

As for the 'manufacturing techniques' -- as long as there is an oligopoly of storage makers, I'm not concerned. We have bright minds here coming out of graduate school and going to work at Seagate as well as Western Digital, IBM, Intel, etc.

All the more reason to use published cryptographic standards, and not rely on any proprietary solutions -- they can never fall exclusively into the "wrong hands."

Re:Oh my god, it's the Red Scare!

[WindBourne]

wow. You need to study history. The business world is used heavily to spy or screw on each other. For example, Xerox copiers as well as pipe controls come to mind. And yes, this still occurs. I wrote about this earlier, but it bears repeating. In a start-up that I was part of, we had a Taiwanese who wanted to invest in us. Only he wanted access to the machine that we had (it was hard to send it even to Britain or Canada, china was out of the question). Turns out that he wanted to take the device to China. Said that he could get 100's of millions for it (no doubt). And that is just one story. America has been selling off far too much business. For something like this, it needs to stop.

Re:Isn't it a bit late to worry?

[Grishnakh]

The problem with your panicking concept is that, at least for now, China's economy is highly dependent on the USA's. After all, we're the ones buying most of the junk their factories make. In exchange, they're getting a bunch of our green paper currency. So I would have to assume that China is not interested in our currency devaluing rapidly any time soon, because then they'll have sold us all that stuff and done all that work for nothing, and they'll have a much smaller market to sell to.

So basically, since Dollar bills are basically IOUs, we're in debt to China. In a normal trade relationship, they would be using those dollars to buy stuff back from us. The problem here is that we don't really make much to sell to them. I know Buicks are really popular there for some strange reason (bad taste? Are the Chinese going to start dying their hair blue and wearing really ugly clothes next?), but that's not enough, plus those Buicks are probably made in Chinese factories anyway.

What's the endpoint of this? Honestly, I don't know. I'm an engineer, dammit, not an economist. But it doesn't look good to me. I guess, if nothing else, China will wind up with lots of great technology, and spiffy new factories to build it with, and while we're sitting around with worthless currency trying to figure out how to survive when we've all forgotten how to do anything practical because we were too busy studying marketing and law, China will be self-sufficient. Does China have expansionist of imperialist aims? Would they be interested in conquering the USA and enslaving us while stealing our resources? The way we've been acting, we probably deserve it.

Cisco

[Presto Vivace]

I thought the Chinese already owned Cisco, or am I misinformed?

Is this how they will defeat us?

[AmazingRuss]

Seems like they are trying to create a couple of generations in our country that have no idea how to design or manufacture anything, by undercutting us and removing any incentive to learn.

If they can keep this going, the US will eventually become a nation of realtors and barristas. Could be they aren't interested in the paper we give them at all.

Re:Is this how they will defeat us?

[ClamIAm]

Seems like they are trying to create a couple of generations in our country that have no idea how to design or manufacture anything, by undercutting us and removing any incentive to learn.

If by 'they', you mean 'China' or 'the Chinese government', I'm pretty sure this is incorrect. The Chinese and their government certainly have more (economic) power now than before, however this power has come at the cost of giving even more power to those who are already the winners of Global Capitalism.

Also, regarding education in the US, I suggest reading John Taylor Gatto's essay "Against School". In it, he documents how the US education system was designed to mold children into people who do what they're told and won't fuss when the ruling class pulls tricks like outsourcing, "free" trade agreements, wage/benefit reduction, labor suppression, etc.

To steal a term used by free-market apologists, basically what we have here is the invisible hand of the ruling class doing whatever they can/want to increase their power and riches. It has nothing to do with some evil Chinese plot to destroy America.