On the Soapbox

Earlier this year, there was the controversy where misleading claims about security serving to veil a mix of protectionism and xenophobia sunk the transfer of operations of six American ports to a company owned by the Dubai government.

Today, the New York Times and C|Net published an article about the criticisms that the State Department is facing over the purchase of 15,000 computers manufactured by the Chinese company Lenovo.

1. Lenovo is the new owner of IBM's PC division. Its product lines have not changed (they often even include the IBM logo). If the State Department has used IBM computers in the past, it makes sense from a logistical standpoint to continue to use the same product lines and to use the same products that they are already familiar with.
2. Security is a red herring. In fact, IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad laptops are one of the very few that feature fingerprint scanners for use in security authentication. Putting this irony aside, the real core of the issue is that security comes from how people use the computers, how well the network is administered, and how secure the software is, in roughly that order. Hardware's role in security is all but non-existent.
3. Dependency on foreign companies is yet another red herring. The vast majority of the components used by all PCs are not manufactured in the United States. For example, every single CD/DVD computer drive manufacturer has its factories located in Asia. Almost all memory chips are manufactured in Asia. Even for the few component manufacturers headquartered in the US (notably Intel/AMD for microprocessors and nVidia/ATi for graphics processors), most of their manufacturing capacity is overseas. All that Lenovo does is buy components from the commodity market and assemble them into a computer, which is really not that glamorous of a task. Whether your PC comes from Texas-based Dell or China-based Lenovo, pretty much every single part of that computer was manufactured overseas.
4. As the article points out, even though Lenovo is supplying the machines, IBM is providing the support. But even if IBM was not providing support, because PCs are mostly made from standard commodity components, just about any IT professional can provide support.
5. Finally, protectionism here will not accomplish much. Since most of the components are purchased from the market, assembly constitutes most of Lenovo's business, and like most other computers sold in the United States, these computers are assembled in the United States using American labor. Okay, but what about money at the top: the corporate profits that are going to a foreign company? This business of acquiring components, assembling them, and selling the finished products is not very profitable, and the margins are very slim; why else was IBM so interested in shrugging off its PC division?

Hopefully, people will be sensible enough to make sure that, unlike the ports deal, this does not become overblown and overhyped.