would about sum up my opinion. First--and this is more than symmantics--which I think are important anyway but--they are not taking over security, they are taking over operations. This is important because the whole security scheme of the United States is layered security or defense in depth. So, the portion of our security that their operations would have control over would be very slim--one layer of the onion as it were. All of the other people responsible for HLS, are still in play and still have jurisdiction. Plus, all of the compliance regulations--those things port operations must do--are still in effect.
But the biggest thing to remember is that Thunder FZE is in the business of making money---a lot of money--and that is why they are interested in this acquisition. They are not in the business of terrorism and would be hugely at risk if an attack occurred (certainly they would lose their entire investment). One of the things thast we looked at frequently were just in time supply systems and organizations like FEDEX--they know what they are shipping what is in their pipelines--so what we tried to do is understand their systems and utilize their information vice regulate their business---that is one of the falicies about the inspection system--when someone says 95% of containers are uninspected, they are wrong--what they mean to say is that 95% of containers are not inspected by uniformed officials of the US Government---close to 100% of containers are inspect by the shipping agents the shippers the stevedores etc etc. But I digress--the point is that this has very little to do with security and everything to do with emotions---someone with as much cash as Thunder or DWP would have no reason to put a bunch of that cash at risk to support AQ, when they could do it much more cheaply---and in that they are aware of the potential for infiltration, it makes perfect business sense that they will be very wary of that vulnerability.