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Comment by barbacoa | Hacker News Reader

It's surprising the US gov would take action to stop this. One one hand yes, this isn't great for the industry. But on the other it would mean that ARM will become an American owned company which gives the US government enormous new tech war leverage against China.

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It seems extremely unlikely that the UK will allow this deal anyway so it is somewhat moot what the FTC does.

The original ARM sale to Softbank was made while everybody was distracted by Brexit, and is regarded as somewhat of an embarrassment. However Softbank appears to have played themselves because any attempt to sell ARM to a non-British owner will likely be denied as politically unacceptable.

>However Softbank appears to have played themselves because any attempt to sell ARM to a non-British owner will likely be denied as politically unacceptable.

Softbank gets to keep a cool $1.25 billion in cash from Nvidia if the deal falls through. It's standard M&A practice and so a win-win situation for them.

Is it that general? Its one thing if a deal fails because a party gets cold feet, or can't reach an agreement. Its another if the parties are all agreed and ready and a regulator steps in, isn't it?

The worst thing Softbank did is selling Arm China stock to China local. This is serious failure for western world.

I wonder if vague fears about China are part of the reason the FTC has been sitting on their ass doing nothing about the tech industry for the past decade+?

It would be ironic if true, because their failure to intervene has hurt America's ability to innovate and created opportunities for China.

The arm china saga is already absolutely insane.....

Anyone know what rights Apple has to ARM? Do they have a license that pretty much allows them to do anything?

The are one of 15 companies that has an architectural license, which is the most flexible type of license. I don't think the details of the license are public (not even all 15 of the licensees are known). They were also an initial investor in ARM, so I suppose it is conceivable that they still own a small portion of it, together with SoftBank, although that seems unlikely.

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