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Comment by throwaway40483 | Hacker News Reader

No way a foreign company will be allowed to buy Toshiba due to national security concerns. One of domestic players will be to chip in and be partial owner.

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Toshiba has been having a lot of trouble lately thanks to Westinghouse, so the Abe's government might consider foreign control to be a lesser evil than massive layoffs or a bailout.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-11/toshiba-r...

Why national security..? If there's a world war and all of a sudden Japan doesn't have computers? (genuinely curious)

Perhaps they meant economic security.

>If there's a world war and all of a sudden Japan doesn't have computers?

Pretty much. If you're at war you need that materials to feed the war machine, which includes the metal to build the plane as well as the computers that go in the cockpit (and let's not forget the knowledge to build it all).

Got it.

Kind of makes sense.

They just don't want the Chinese to get DRAM fab technology and then flood the market with cheap parts.

I don't think the issue is actually national security as much as preserving Japan's relatively closed economic system of interlocking corporate ownership / keiretsu.

Why am I being down-voted? That's the standard bargain Japan has with the US. It goes back to the Cold War. I'm not passing judgment; it's just a known matter of fact that their economy is rather closed to outside investment, especially controlling interests.

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