Those wild and crazy guys over at CFIUS have kept intact their undefeated season, forcing Bain, Huawei and 3Com to withdraw their joint filling for a mitigation agreement. As I wrote about last week, 3Com and company had offered to spin off Tipping Point to remove any potentially sensitive technology from the deal.  I guess that wasn't enough for those free trade dudes at CFIUS.  So the 3Com-Bain deal joins the Checkpoint-Sourcefire deal as being shut down by the government.  3Com's stock took a beating on the news.

My feeling is does any security company have a chance of being acquired by a foreign owned company? If not how seriously does this effect the value of US based security companies?  Will the rest of the world retaliate?   Will this set off a cold war in the security market? Would Mitt Romney let this happen if he were President?  Where does this leave 3Com? Generally I am a fan of lowering barriers and free trade. If Tipping Point was going to be spun off, why not let this deal go through.  Cisco could use the competition. I think that this type of heavy handed intervention by the government will come back to haunt us in the future.