As shock and awe sweep the Department of Justice, undead Joe Biden policies shamble ahead with purposeful mindlessness.
A swarm of zombie lawyers within the department has launched a legal attack on two American tech companies whose merger would threaten Huawei, communist China’s global communications and technology giant.
The slow-moving American legal process only helps the Chinese surpass American companies.
The antitrust action centers around a 1914 law that is blind to Chinese hegemony. That law, the Clayton Antitrust Act, prohibits mergers that might create monopolies and stifle competition.
While antitrust action sometimes can be necessary, the federal government’s lawsuit stifles American competition — our most formidable weapon against foreign adversaries. And it directly contradicts President Trump’s national security-driven tech crackdown on Chinese companies, notably Huawei.
A counter to Huawei
The Department of Justice hatched the lawsuit more than a year ago under the Biden administration, though it is now predictably being blamed on Trump. In question is a $14 billion merger between Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Juniper Networks, which the companies say would accelerate the development of critical technologies like 6G and AI-driven networking.
HPE argues that combining its storage and computing strengths with Juniper’s expertise in data center routing and switching would create a formidable alternative to Cisco, which dominates more than half of America’s wireless communications market.
The company said in January that the merger would enhance “secure, unified, cloud and AI-native networking to drive innovation from edge to cloud to exascale.”
It would also counter Huawei, which controls 30% of the global telecommunications and 5G marketplace. Cisco controls just 7%.
In January, the Department of Defense labeled Huawei a Chinese military company. Many national security experts fear the company’s equipment contains back doors that aid and abet China’s People’s Liberation Army. Chinese law requires all companies to cooperate with and serve the regime’s intelligence services.
Increasing American competition can assist tremendously in mitigating Huawei’s global influence.
Playing into China’s hands
The lawsuit, which outlasted Biden’s tenure, was filed in federal court on Jan. 30, 10 days after Trump’s inauguration. The Federal Trade Commission joined in.
None of the Department of Justice’s statements indicate any concern that tying up the HPE-Juniper merger in litigation would aid the Chinese Communist Party’s goal of global information dominance, censorship, and espionage. Instead, the focus remains on the 1914 law.
The assault on the merger began under Attorney General Merrick Garland and was executed by Biden-appointed Jonathan Kanter, then-assistant attorney general for the antitrust division. Kanter had been in the position since 2021, implementing an aggressive antitrust agenda, which claimed to prevent further Big Tech consolidation that would allegedly harm competition and innovation. The agenda was part of a broader Biden economic policy to curb corporate monopolies and “protect” consumers.
Kanter built the case into the last days of the Biden administration.
Trump-appointed acting Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Omeed A. Assefi signed off on Kanter’s action against HPE-Juniper.
Assefi represents a strange mix in Washington. He served with the White House Counsel during Trump’s first term but was later appointed by Biden as a federal prosecutor for the District of Columbia. Trump then named him the acting head of the antitrust division pending the Senate confirmation of Trump’s nominee, Gail Slater.
Slater is also an antitrust hawk regarding Big Tech, but she is no ideologue like the zombie lawyers driving the lawsuit. Her work on 5G and Chinese telecom suggests she views antitrust enforcement through a geopolitical lens — ensuring U.S. firms remain competitive against rivals like Huawei. She has not commented publicly on the HPE-Juniper merger.
The Justice Department’s narrowly focused action risks weakening HPE-Juniper’s ability to challenge Huawei’s pricing and technological advancements, particularly in AI-driven networking, which will be critical for future infrastructure. Huawei would likely exploit years of litigation against HPE-Juniper to the Chinese Communist Party’s advantage in vital international markets.
US vs. China in the tech race
The merger’s focus isn’t primarily on wireless local area networks where the Department of Justice is fixated but rather on enhancing data center capabilities — a sector vital for AI and cloud computing. A stronger HPE-Juniper could accelerate innovation and drive competition with the ever-innovative rival Cisco, but more importantly against Huawei.
Here, the Department of Justice’s narrow antitrust focus clashes with President Trump’s consistent, powerful stance since 2018 against Chinese dominance over American technology, particularly against Huawei.
The slow-moving American legal process only helps Chinese companies like Huawei surpass American companies at the breathtaking pace of technological advancement.
The FBI’s valuable but miniscule counterintelligence capabilities are no match for China’s economic and industrial espionage, which strips American companies of their innovations and beats them to market with cheaper, advanced technologies.
Antitrust enforcement is essential, but not at the expense of empowering the Chinese Communist Party to overtake us in artificial intelligence and global communications.
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