There is a distinct whiff of the aroma of propaganda around this one.
Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story
41–50 of 334 posts
Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story
#42It’s fascinating to see this story unfold. On one end you have Bloomberg doubling down on their claims, and here you have Apple making a move that shows their confidence in their claims. For a while I was buying the subpoena theory, but this action clearly doesn’t fall under that, and they would be setting themselves up for serious liability / damage claims if it were true. Either there is some gross miscommunication…
>Tim Cook is not properly informed - which is very unlikely at this point Humor me, why is this unlikely? Why is it not possible that (whatever three letter agency) grabbed a few engineers, told them to do X without talking to anyone else, at the risk of them and their families getting disappeared to a black site? Besides, in security controlled jobs it's perfectly normal to not be allowed to disclose what you're wor…
I think the idea that he has to know everything going on ahead of time or when it happens is certainly infeasible.
But while I'm not promoting some kind of executive supremacy, I don't feel it's a big stretch that the CEO can get properly informed of specific goings on of the company if the issue really lands on her or his plate. Even if there's some hole, having zero evidence that something weird may have happened on several thousand servers seems odder than anything.
Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story
#43If it turns out to be false, should the SEC look into it?
Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story
#44Man, I am now 90% convinced that someone intentionally misled Bloomberg. It looks like this may end up being an extremely embarrassing episode for them.
It's all just speculation but this seems like the exact kind of story you would want in order to pass some legislation to prevent foreign manufactured chips being used by USG.
I'm all for globalism but that's one area where the best strategy is probably to keep production inside the borders. Not that I'd condone misleading the press to create a case for the legislation.
Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story
#45Man, I am now 90% convinced that someone intentionally misled Bloomberg. It looks like this may end up being an extremely embarrassing episode for them.
And potentially a group of people. Maybe I am giving Bloomberg too much credit at this point, but their article cites a number of sources -- albeit anonymous ones -- and I think it could very well be a coordinated effort from a group of interested parties.
See what one of the sources says:
https://risky.biz/RB517_feature/
He showed the “emails he sent to Bloomberg, prior to the story’s publication, that said the hardware back-dooring the article described “didn’t make sense”.”
Another text about that source:
https://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/18/10/08/security-r...
Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story
#46“Seventeen individual sources, including government officials and insiders at the companies, confirmed the manipulation of hardware and other elements of the attacks. We also published three companies’ full statements, as well as a statement from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We stand by our story and are confident in our reporting and sources.”
OTOH, Joe Fitzpatrick, one of the few named sources, is very very doubtful of the veracity of the story.
Blog interview with Joe Fitzpatrick: https://risky.biz/RB517_feature/
https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/10/08/security-research...
Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story
#47Interesting tidbit from the linked twitter post: "Something is wrong. Blanket denials from companies, NCSC and DHS are v. unusual. The only precedent for this is a 2014 Bloomberg article, by the same author, which claimed NSA exploited Heartbleed, and was vigorously knocked down with zero follow up by Bloomberg or correction." https://twitter.com/nicoleperlroth
Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story
#48What happens to Tim Cook if Bloomberg is correct?
Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
LOL. Bloomberg is not going to "close shop in shame" over this. I seriously have no idea what set of assumptions you must be using to think that this is even in the realm of possibility. It's like saying "worst case, an asteroid hits us in 20 minutes."
Agreed that they won’t close shop over this, although it could be similar to how Dan Rather stepped down from CBS over the document controversy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy
The thing with the Killian documents case is that, while CBS (presumably) didn't knowingly run a false story, they were very negligent in their sourcing and verification. They wanted the story to be true too much. [ADDED: We don't know at this time whether the same can be said of Bloomberg, assuming the story unravels.]
Other news organizations were also pretty mad at CBS over this. There was a story around W's National Guard service that actually didn't depend on the Killian documents. But once those documents were determined to be fake, it pretty much blew up the reporting around the story generally.
Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story
#50It’s fascinating to see this story unfold. On one end you have Bloomberg doubling down on their claims, and here you have Apple making a move that shows their confidence in their claims. For a while I was buying the subpoena theory, but this action clearly doesn’t fall under that, and they would be setting themselves up for serious liability / damage claims if it were true. Either there is some gross miscommunication…
>Tim Cook is not properly informed - which is very unlikely at this point Humor me, why is this unlikely? Why is it not possible that (whatever three letter agency) grabbed a few engineers, told them to do X without talking to anyone else, at the risk of them and their families getting disappeared to a black site? Besides, in security controlled jobs it's perfectly normal to not be allowed to disclose what you're wor…
The flaw in your logic doesn't lie in your assertion, but the opposite:
If it's indeed possible for some powerful forces to coerce some engineers into accomplishing certain goals, how possible is it for the same said forces to coerce some other people into accomplishing some other goals?