• Concern that Broadcom would sell off parts of Qualcomm to win regulatory approval, disrupting the work of the main American developer of 5G wireless technology — and therefore ceding the race for a superfast internet to China

The WSJ recently reported that members of Cfius have been examining the former point. It’s an interesting issue since the panel generally doesn’t get involved until a potential transaction has been submitted to it for review, and obviously, there’s nothing of the sort yet. Some officials pointed out that the panel has the jurisdiction to consider board takeovers as a form of foreign acquisition, though the article said that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin isn’t sold yet on the argument.

But let’s consider the second point. The WSJ reported that some Cfius members share Mr. Cornyn’s concerns about a weakened or distracted Qualcomm falling behind Huawei of China in the 5G contest.

But that ignores Qualcomm’s very public collaboration with Chinese tech companies on 5G. The American chip maker said in January that it has shared information on some of its hardware with Lenovo, Xiaomi and other Chinese companies.

And last week, Qualcomm and Huawei announced that they have jointly conducted significant tests for a 5G standard. Here’s what Serge Wilenegger, a Qualcomm Wireless executive, said in the news release:

“As the industry works toward the goal of commercial launches of 5G NR products and networks in 2019, close collaboration among global mobile industry leaders is necessary to validate the technologies and continue to build and improve our capabilities.”

The research analyst Stacy Rasgon of Bernstein isn’t convinced by Mr. Cornyn’s point either, arguing in an investor note that Intel can also play a role in developing 5G tech and that, more importantly, Broadcom itself is very interested in the wireless standard.