The supposed Chinese bid to buy a US disk drive company gets more and more curious. It all started over the weekend, when the New York Times quoted Bill Watkins, ceo of Seagate, as saying that an approach had been made – though he wouldn’t say who had made it, or to whom. For good measure, he added that people were "freaking out" about this in Washington DC, since control of advanced disk drive technology could help the Chinese plunder US secrets.

Since Seagate and Western Digital are the only remaining US disk drive makers (IBM having sold out to Hitachi), and since it was Watkins making these comments in public, this seemed to point a finger directly at Western. Read more