There’s a lot of hoopla surrounding Bain Capital’s buyout of beleaguered 3Com Corporation, due to the fact that one of the buyers is Huawei, a company from China. Or “communist China” (gasp!) according to today’s press release from Rep. McCotter:
News circulated today Bain Capital and communist China’s Huawei plan to resubmit an application seeking U.S. approval for a planned buyout of American 3Com Corporation within the next several weeks. Congressman Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) made the following comments on the possible new merger:
“No business can sufficiently structure such deals to protect America from this stealth assault on America’s national security. It is the solemn duty of the United States government to protect our liberty from all threats; and CFIUS must again do its job and reject this latest threat to our cyber-security.”
It’s nice that members of Congress are looking after our national security, but they don’t have to when it comes to foreign direct investment. We have CIFIUS. And in a paper I co-authored with my colleague Nora von Ingersleben, we assert that when CIFIUS gets politicized, American innovation will suffer.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.