Trump is serious about this China thing

Last year, when the Trump administration announced it would apply more scrutiny to foreign investments in U.S. companies, a bunch of smart people said it could be bad for health startups. Then, yesterday, came word that the federal government is forcing a company to literally sell itself because its majority owner is a Chinese firm.

The company is PatientsLikeMe, which has operated for more than a decade as a social network allowing users to find and share experiences with people who have the same diagnosis. In 2017, PatientsLikeMe took a sizable investment from the Chinese digital health company iCarbonX, which is why the government, in the name of national security, is now demanding the company find a new buyer.

PatientsLikeMe isn’t commenting (beyond its CEO tweeting about the company’s GDPR compliance, which, cool?), and neither is the Treasury. But the news sets a frightful precedent for startups and their investors. Previously, the worry was that the new federal rules would block future Chinese investments; now it’s clear the government has no qualms about dissecting past ones.

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