The New York Times has turned a quickly-forgotten 4,000-word front-pager into a must-hear podcast on today’s The Daily.
Apple’s Bet on China (32 minutes)
My take: What the Times’ investigative team turned up is so much less interesting than the story Nicas tells about Tim Cook’s 25-year relationship with the People’s Republic of China. A fascinating yarn, well spun and nicely illustrated with audio soundbites. If you want just the headlines, here’s Nicas on CNBC last month:
See also: Tim Cook says Chinese iPhones are secure, the NYT says they aren’t (video)
At 24 seconds in, ” About two years ago Tim Cook mastered minded…”
Before Tim Cook joined Apple, the PC industry had completely turned to overseas outsourcing.
Surely Nicas knows this. Never let the facts get in the way of your story.
It’s easy to blame China and Big Tech. Demagogues on the right and left do this all time. But we all love to consume lower cost goods and reap higher profits in our investments.
For those who have done business in China, you may have heard the old joke that goes like this: “Xi Jinping is sitting in his car reading a newspaper, when his driver interrupts him and says, ‘Comrade, there’s a problem. The sign says to turn Left for communism, turn right for capitalism. Which way should I go?’ Xi tells his driver, ‘There’s no problem. Just signal left and go right.’”
This is no Apple problem NYT. This is a USA leadership failure involving both political parties believing erroneously that admittance of China into the WTO would somehow foolishly lead a self-serving authoritarian regime to become more democratize. Get off of Apple’s case & target your outrage where it deserves to be targeted: toward the political leadership of both US parties in trusting that the PRC ruled by the CCP would abdicate their privileged authority & wealth to the Chinese masses.
Note: China is making progress on IP theft, strategically.
Many nations do the same as China, India only recently suggested the strategic partnership requirement will go away. There simply is no other way to access such markets. Fail to comply and they’ll nationalize your factories & jail your execs.
This doesn’t make it right, especially in the eyes of US citizens whose government also expects quick access to any records inside any firm’s data centers, no questions allowed and mind the gag order. Those lobbing critiques at overseas glass data centers must consider what is shared from databases on our shores.
I don’t always agree with or like what foreign firms do to comply with overseas regs or non-democratic regimes. Oil and mineral firms have a deadly track record here. I still buy fuel but XOM shares.
Apple’s 2021 Supplier Responsibility Report proves Apple is willing to lead by example everywhere it does business. Worker rights are human rights.
How long before Chinese manufacturers, using Huawei tech, supplant Android. In this scenario Vestager has lost her job.
https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/
But from the San Bernardino case we can see where Apple has chosen to draw the line. The secure enclave on the iPhone will encrypt DATA STORED ON THE PHONE. The encryption technology was designed such that not even Apple can access it. Encryption is not the default setting. They did turn over any data that was on iCloud. I suspect that backups to iCloud decrypt locally and re-encrypt for storage on iCloud using an Apple accessible key.
It will be interesting to see how Apple responds when China inevitably either requests Apple build a backdoor or requires Apple to turn off the encryption feature for iPhones sold in China. BTW our own FBI has already requested this. Apple stood firm.
Or the media.
bas, you raise perhaps the most important point. Trust Apple more than any other company.
Don’t count out Harmony OS by Huawei!
Read the Art of War by Sun Tzu. A quick read but subtle. China still takes that book seriously. Leaders must pick battles according to what the people will tolerate. Besides, there are many developers based in mainland China obediently writing compliant apps for iOS and Android. China may be the 1st or 2nd largest mobile app developer community. Some call it a growing cottage industry but that grossly understates what those developers represent in terms of China’s quest to one day dominate all things tech.
With the Chinese, Trump (and anybody that follows his successor) think in terms of the legacy they can create in four years.
Such is the legacy of multi-party political systems.