No 3Com for ChiComs

As the $2.2 billion merger between U.S. network-equipment giant 3Com and the Chinese firm Huawei Technologies collapsed this week, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Liu Jianchao could be heard calling for a "fair and favorable environment for Chinese enterprises in the United States." From a government that engages in extensive military and commercial espionage in the United States — four alleged operatives were just arrested passing U.S. military command-and-control technology to the People's Republic — a cry for principle on mergers with security relevance is beyond belief.

You could have asked every single DOD communications officer and they would have predicted this eventual situation. If the Chinese had taken control...DOD would have spent billions to redo their entire networks and find another top class companies equipment to replace the 3Com equipment. Trust would have been zero.

Inroad from China. Reeks of Global Crossing and when I ran a Google search:

Michael Rescoe (Board of Directors)

Mr. Rescoe has served as a director of Global Crossing since December 2003. He has served as executive vice president and chief financial officer of Travelport Ltd., a privately held travel services company, since November 2006. He previously served as executive vice president and chief financial officer of the Tennessee Valley Authority (the "TVA"), a federal corporation that is the nation's largest public power provider, from July 2003 until November 2006. Mr. Rescoe was a senior officer and the chief financial officer of 3Com Corporation, a global technology manufacturing company specializing in Internet connection technology for both voice and data applications, from April 2000 until November 2002. During 1999 and 2000, Mr. Rescoe was associated with Forstman Little, a leveraged buyout firm. Prior thereto, Mr. Rescoe was chief financial officer of PG&E Corporation, a power and natural gas energy holding company, since 1997. For over a dozen years prior to that Mr. Rescoe was a senior investment banker with Kidder, Peabody and a senior managing director of Bear Stearns specializing in strategy and structured financing.

...you don't say, we landed a $10m DOD contract for new network routers and switches? At the Pentagon? Get with the boys in development and have them put in a backdoor that copies Chinese intelligence with all of the internal traffic.

I know, IDS might be able to detect it, might not either.

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