U.K. May Block NVIDIA’s Acquisition of Arm over National Security Concerns

[Tsing]

Image: NVIDIA/Arm



NVIDIA announced in September 2020 that it would be acquiring British semiconductor and software design company Arm for $40 billion as a means of accelerating innovation and extending the reach of its AI-centric computing platform.



Unfortunately, there’s a chance that none of that might actually happen.



This is primarily due to a report that was recently delivered by the local Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which has convinced U.K. Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden and other key officials that NVIDIA’s acquisition of Arm could have worrying implications for the country.



More specifically, third parties have raised significant concerns over how the deal could include potential risks to national security.



Coverage from Bloomberg suggests that the problems are serious enough for the takeover to be rejected completely. A deeper review...

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[Brian_B]

NVIDIA announced in September 2020 that it would be acquiring British semiconductor and software design company Arm for $40 billion as a means of accelerating innovation and extending the reach of its AI-centric computing platform.

Unfortunately, there’s a chance that none of that might actually happen.

Copy/paste this from an nVidia press release? I may be the only one, but I would ~welcome~ this deal getting blocked.

 

[Zarathustra]

Copy/paste this from an nVidia press release? I may be the only one, but I would ~welcome~ this deal getting blocked.

I was thinking the same thing.

This deal being blocked is not only a good thing, it is absolutely crucial for the survival of the market as we know it.

The deal going forward would be a complete and utter disaster.

It would give Nvidia way too much control of the market, and Nvidia has a long, long history of abusing market dominance. I don't trust any company with market dominance, but given their track record in this regard, Nvidia would be the absolute last company I would trust to on this position.

 

[Uvilla]

UK is smoking that patriotic crack lately.
Looking to block Chinese investment in an ancient semiconductor company also. Its like 165nm ancient.

 

[Zarathustra]

UK is smoking that patriotic crack lately.
Looking to block Chinese investment in an ancient semiconductor company also. Its like 165nm ancient.

Yeah, there are plenty of good reasons to prevent Nvidia from controlling ARM Holdings, but I wouldn't have thought "National Security" was at the top of that list.

Whatever gets the job done though, I guess.

 

[Brian_B]

A lot of things can come under the realm of national security that you wouldn't expect.

Like - a steel mill going out of business. That should be considered a national security interest - we need a certain level of industry and manufacturing in the event of wartime (ok, so the US has been at war for a really long time now, but not a large scale world war). If we lose all of that capacity, we could find ourselves in a pickle with logistics, particularly if overseas transit becomes contested. We already have some policy that most military assets must be produced domestically, but not necessarily each individual sub-component: how could we make tanks and ships if we can't make steel?

I could see tech especially going that way. Imagine if we had to resort to importing Chinese-made processors for everything. Then we find out that all our military assets have a back door that could be exploited. It wouldn't even necessarily need to be by the Chinese - maybe we get in a scuffle with North Korea over something, and China just lets that backdoor slip over the border, and we find that all our missiles just magically start missing their targets... proxy fighting rather than direct confrontation seems to be the name of the game of the last 75 years.

**this isn't an indictment of any particular steel mill or industry, just an off the top of my head hypothetical example that I came up with.