You have no way of knowing that. What we do know is this comes right on the heels of 2 recent rounds of layoffs for IBM, so relocation within the company is probably extremely low, unless you want to move to Bejein.
In the end, this act by IBM will free up American capital and result in more investment and job creation here--money that small businesses and consumers would have had to pay for PC's.
IBM is the 'premium' pc company, so no one will really be saving any money buying pc's from IBM, ever.
Let's keep things in perspective here: this is not the cold war. This is some internal programming jobs at IBM--not nuclear secrets (which the Soviets did get, by the way). None of this falls under the forbidden export categories.
Let's keep our eye on the ball, how about instead (article from minutes ago):
This kind of stuff is going on all the time, and needs to be better controlled instead of this shortsided selling out we keep seeing.
First of all, you can't be saying that no one has any reason to buy from IBM. But at any rate, let's expand the argument, as others on this thread have, since HP and others are doing the same thing sending jobs overseas.
You have no way of knowing that.
I'm going on the word of an IBM worker, who is not the first to say the same thing about the severance package--again, see adam_az's post way up above. He got laid off from IBM and did pretty well for himself as a result.
You're always going to have tech export problems, but again, we're talking about PC's here, not missile or satellite technology. If we want to keep this hardware and expertise out of Chinese hands, we're already too late.
I just don't see the problem here.