This morning the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations held a hearing on Sovereign Wealth Funds–those growing state-owned investment funds (often invested in the tech sector) causing a political stir as of late.
The panelists differed at the margins, but all agreed that sovereign wealth funds are a good thing for the U.S. economy. We need the money! The thought that foreign governments would invest in the U.S. to surreptitiously bring down the U.S. is nil, as it’s a mutually assured destruction strategy. There’s just too much money being invested in the U.S. so even some Arab and Asian countries have an interest in seeing our economy prosper.
ACT released a paper on foreign direct investment earlier this year, where my coauthor Nora von Ingersleben and I conclude that there are processes already in place–namely CFIUS review–that will account for any national security threats. I wrote in a past blog post that Congress should refrain from politicizing foreign investment, including the proposed acquisition of 3Com.
Congress is right to be involved, and CFIUS keeps them involved. Congress receives reports from the CFIUS committee that does a national security review of foreign transactions to ensure transparency in the process.
David Marchick of the Carlyle Group was one of the witnesses, and last month he was a panelist at an event on foreign investment that ACT sponsored in the Capitol Building.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.