NYT is portraying this issue as a technology race when it's really just a surveillance infrastructure conflict of interest.

Qualcomm and Broadcom make closed source basebands, which are used (backdoors) and abused (zero-day exploitation) for spying via wireless ISPs on behalf of their respective parent governments.

If Broadcom acquires Qualcomm, it may become easier for some governments to locate firmware vulnerabilities which can either be fixed to prevent U.S. surveillance or exploited to expand local surveillance powers.