Intel buying McAfee – the rest of the story

My blog on InfoWorld Tech Watch about the acquisition should be up shortly. [UPDATE: See Is Intel buying an also-ran?]

There’s more to the story. A good friend of mine, Rob Rosenberger, has been writing about McAfee’s shenanigans with the Chinese government for almost a decade now. Check out Rob’s summary post about the whole sordid affair, which he calls The China Syndrome.

Rob wrote to me just a few minutes ago, with even more revelations. I don’t have any way to verify what he says. But I do know that in more than a decade of writing with and about Rob, he’s never steered me wrong.

Rob has confirmed to me that Jimmy Kuo was the “antivirus industry’s diplomat to China.  He works for Microsoft now, but back then he was the senior antivirus researcher at McAfee.”  Rob revealed that Jimmy called him twice “in a fit of deep remorse” looking for Rob to “absolve” him.

“Kuo soon got over his remorse,” Rob told me.  “We know this because he didn’t stick a gun in his mouth.”

Rob is no ordinary antivirus expert. By his own admission, he has been “floating in and out of” the U.S. intelligence community since 1982.  I asked Rob what he thinks is the long term fallout from The China Syndrome.  He said “The Defense Department failed to remember a very valuable lesson.  Our troops rely 100% on antivirus software written by companies that secretly armed America’s enemies.  Yet a few months ago, the Air Force Chief of Staff shook hands with McAfee and told everyone ‘these guys will protect our troops in the cyber realm and we’ll rely on McAfee to provide us the cyber intelligence we need,’ even though their intelligence officials hid their own shenanigans from Defense officials.”

There is a bright spot in all this, says Rob.  “Howard Schmidt is at the White House again; he understands the national security threat posed by McAfee and Symantec and, yes, Microsoft where Kuo now works.”  I know Rob had Howard’s ear when he was the top security manager at Microsoft.

It’s only fair to believe that he still has Howard’s ear at the White House.