U.S Calls Broadcom's Bid For Qualcomm a National Security Risk

Further complicating the hostile takeover of Qualcomm by Broadcom, the U.S government is saying that the deal could pose a national security risk, and is calling for a full investigation. The New York Times is reporting that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CIFUS, notes that the risk is related to Broadcom's relationships with foreign entities.

I can understand where the committee is coming from, having a foreign country have nearly complete control over your wireless communications could be a problem indeed. The article notes that this will likely be the death knell for the Broadcom takeover of Qualcomm.

In the letter from the Treasury official, the government said it was important to have a well-known and trusted company “hold the dominant role that Qualcomm does in the U.S. telecommunications infrastructure.” Any loss of that competitiveness, the letter said, “would significantly impact U.S. national security.”

rgMekanic said:

I can understand where the committee is coming from, having a SINGLE COMPANY have nearly complete control over your wireless communications could be a problem indeed.

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FTFY

Fuck Qualcomm.

its more like "we control the propaganda right now and if this happens will we still"?

Sigh. On one hand sure, having a foreign government control the chips in all your country's mobile devices *may* be a risk. On the other hand, isn't that basically what position the US already has? Won't other countries read inbetween the lines and start going, crap, now we got to make our own mobile chips because it's a security risk?

Kind of a silly stance if you ask me. They should just make the microcode opensource and open for people to review and look for risks.

Gigus Fire said:

... They should just make the microcode opensource and open for people to review and look for risks.

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I'm always amazed by the level of pushback against open design mentality. Proprietary loses every time, and yet these companies fight it so hard they throw themselves to the brink of being a national security risk.

Having worked for both of these companies in the past, I'd say merging them would be a very very bad idea.

Broadcom is very much the stiff Asian, corporate, in your suit, work in a box, do as you're told, suck the life out of you, respect the hierarchy, drone center you'd expect from an old company from the far east. The only thing different is not having to bow at the beginning and end of a meeting.

Qualcomm is most definitely American, T-shirt and jeans, open, laid back, encouraging ideas, relaxed, concerts and shows in the quad every Friday at lunch, a real cafeteria with great food, gives science tours for schools and children, colorful, fun and exciting to work for. It's only drawback is it is located in the worst location for commuting in San Diego. One road in, one road out. The view, however, is awesome.

Broadcom would quite literally ruin Qualcomm.

Cisco and Juniper should sell their networking ASICs to 3rd parties. It's time for whitebox networking. Network OS and network apps will be the long-term value-add. Think a rack full of Dell servers vs. an Oracle DB license - the former is a rounding error.

Yeah. This one definitely needs to be stopped. 2017 was already a record year for M&A in the semiconductor space. We don't need more consolidation in 2018.