In the aftermath of the Dubai ports dispute, the Bush administration is hiring a Hong Kong conglomerate to help detect nuclear materials inside cargo passing through the Bahamas to the United States and elsewhere.

The administration is negotiating a second no-bid contract for a Philippine company to install radiation detectors in its home country, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. At dozens of other overseas ports, foreign governments are primarily responsible for scanning cargo.

"Li Ka-Shing is pretty close to a lot of senior leaders of the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party," said Larry M. Wortzel, head of a U.S. government commission that studies China security and economic issues. But Wortzel said Hutchison operates independently from Beijing, and he described Li as "a very legitimate international businessman."

Any positive reading would set off alarms monitored simultaneously by Bahamian customs inspectors at Freeport and by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials working at an anti-terrorism center 800 miles away in northern Virginia. Any alarm would prompt a closer inspection of the cargo, and there are multiple layers of security to prevent tampering, officials said.

Very interesting. This comes on the heels of the Dubai port management row and along with an outcry over the State Department buying computers from Lenovo, the Chinese buyer of IBM's personal computer division.

Li Ka-Shing is a major power in Hong Kong, and owns a large percentage of the country's assets as a whole. Companies, buildings, etc.. His son Richard runs PCCW, the province's major telecom company. As a whole, the Li family in a major power in both Hong Kong and China as a whole.

I think an outright rejection of letting some of these parties get involved in the process of running and securing our ports is missing some of the big picture. Without the cooperation of trading partners, our ports will never be secure. In the case of scanning for radiological weapons, its not all that useful unless it can happen before things get here. Either way, that will require cooperation on the part of foreign powers. In these recent cases, the players at hand are all places that have a very hardcore interest in having both our support in the geo-political realm and in having us as a solid trade and business partner.

Dubai is counting on tourism and being a business hub to be the basis of its economy by 2015. If they don't achieve that goal, things will not be going well for them around that time. This is why they are engaging in insane amounts of unprecedented creative building.

Hong Kong is a business and trade hub where anyone can do business. It being able to stand on its own two feet is critical to keep whatever independence it does has from China going. It is one of the world's major trade hubs matched in tonnage only by Singapore (where Li Ka-Shing also holds some significant interests).

While I do hold my reservations.. I don't think its completely out of the question that there is some very smart positioning going on here in terms of the foreign partners being picked to handle some of the pieces of our trade security.

I think we must accept a few realities here moving forward in evaluating this situation: 1) We must have the cooperation of foreign powers to secure our ports. Port security starts long before ships arrive at port. 2) We are not getting all the information necessary to form a complete picture of the strategy in play from inverted pyramid AP news stories and 3 minute segment talking-head TV punditry. 3) We are a nation of consumers the rest of the industrialized world depends on access to in order to make their economies run.

We need more information about what the Bush Administration is thinking here. There may be something to it; an open mind is necessary. This is not a partisan issue that should be used like a football. I think the public dialogue needs to be more informed.

AP | U.S. Hiring Hong Kong Company to Scan for Nukes