Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are Snowden and his reveals already forgotten?
Not sure what you mean, he revealed the UK gov was a willing co-conspirator.
Proposed acquisition of ARM Limited by NVIDIA: public interest intervention
41–50 of 217 posts
Re: Proposed acquisition of ARM Limited by NVIDIA: public interest intervention
#42Re: Proposed acquisition of ARM Limited by NVIDIA: public interest intervention
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's in line with recent behavior toward e.g. Huawei and 5G. What's interesting here is that Softbank is a Japanese company, but reading the government announcement you'd think it may as well be Chinese. It would be interesting to see the UK explain to Japan, somewhat of an ally, why its company is a national security threat.
But SoftBank is selling ARM to NVIDIA...
It's probably something where the government wanted to stop this deal for a number of reasons, and "national security" was the easiest justification where they already had a legal apparatus in place for doing so.
Re: Proposed acquisition of ARM Limited by NVIDIA: public interest intervention
#44“On national security grounds”...? Why would NVidia, a US corp, be more of a security problem than a Japanese one? If it’s just a matter of commercial overreliance on a single supplier, I find the “National security” bit to be somewhat specious.
Re: Proposed acquisition of ARM Limited by NVIDIA: public interest intervention
#45I've been struggling to understand why Nvidia's takeover of Arm might be a UK national security issue (the competition case is quite clear but separate). I'm guessing though that Arm collaborates with UK intelligence agencies and that that collaboration might be jeopardised with the Nvidia takeover (in a way that it was not with the Softbank takeover). Does anyone have any further insights?
ARM is a piece of infrastructure now, and dangerous in the hands of NVidia for other reasons than spying. Mostly economical. And yes, that's also national security.
Re: Proposed acquisition of ARM Limited by NVIDIA: public interest intervention
#46I can see a future where Nvidia buys ARM, becomes more hostile to licensees, and the door is left open for something like RISC-V to gain more market relevance.
Re: Proposed acquisition of ARM Limited by NVIDIA: public interest intervention
#47Re: Proposed acquisition of ARM Limited by NVIDIA: public interest intervention
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that the capability to design a modern CPU is pretty essential for future defence independence. I think that ARM represents a good chunk of the UKs claim to be able to do that. If the UK wants a share of future US programs of all sorts then it needs to be able to make these claims - or face must less generous terms.
What's the point of being able to design CPUs if we can't make them? We certainly don't have defence independence at all. I'm not sure about the second point but it seems premised on withholding IP from US which seems unlikely. Much more likely that there is intense collaboration between say GCHQ and Arm (maybe both ways -> GCHQ gets to understand modern CPU security issues from Arm and Arm benefits from GCHQ input o…
If you needed them for defence I'm sure you could set up a fab on older process nodes fairly fast. A tank consumes and generates so much power for moving that it doesn't matter if the CPUs in it will last only 2 hours in a cell phone...
Re: Proposed acquisition of ARM Limited by NVIDIA: public interest intervention
#49> Under the powers set out in the Enterprise Act 2002, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport is able to intervene on national security grounds. > The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) will prepare a report on the competition and national security aspects of the proposed transaction. So it's being framed as a national security threat, interesting.
Re: Proposed acquisition of ARM Limited by NVIDIA: public interest intervention
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
But SoftBank is selling ARM to NVIDIA...
Yeah, good point. Can't trust those damn yankees. It's probably something where the government wanted to stop this deal for a number of reasons, and "national security" was the easiest justification where they already had a legal apparatus in place for doing so.
Trump did a brilliant job :)