Given it's CIFUS, I'm guessing it's an inversion thing--ie they don't want yet another company taking its money abroad for tax sheltering--but they might not have a legal leg to stand on so they'll throw some security FUD to hold up the sale.
The other possibility is CIFUS was asked to block the sale by a three-letter agency, which would be a joke, because (a) TLA's should quit forcing backdoors into crypto and let vendors secure their stuff, (b) even without backdoors, IOT and embedded security is already laughably weak, and (c) given the multinational nature of most development teams, it wouldn't be surprising for someone's home government to ask for a peek at the code, and (d) most corporate security is laughably weak, so foreign governments can and do just take what they want any time[1].
If the US is truly worried about Asia subverting embedded devices, then maybe they should be addressing some of these issues and not look at ownership.
CFIUS reviews M&A deals only on national security grounds. That's why the details of the proceeding are usually classified.
If this were an anti-trust or inversion issue, then it would fall onto the DOJ to bring up an action and we would be able to get more details on the resultant proceedings. There's no point in DOJ asking CFIUS to do what they themselves can easily accomplish.
The other possibility is CIFUS was asked to block the sale by a three-letter agency, which would be a joke, because (a) TLA's should quit forcing backdoors into crypto and let vendors secure their stuff, (b) even without backdoors, IOT and embedded security is already laughably weak, and (c) given the multinational nature of most development teams, it wouldn't be surprising for someone's home government to ask for a peek at the code, and (d) most corporate security is laughably weak, so foreign governments can and do just take what they want any time[1].
If the US is truly worried about Asia subverting embedded devices, then maybe they should be addressing some of these issues and not look at ownership.
1. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/06/chinese_hacki...