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Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

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Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#321

Post by notJim »

kelnos wrote: post #115
gonehome wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think these things have a corrupting influence on the principles of the company over time: https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html It's better to figure out an exit (imo) than continue to capitulate on these kinds of things, particularly in a country that is hostile to foreign companies and IP (and particularly if one of your company values is the privacy of your users). --- >>Peter Thiel: Well I…

Not disagreeing with what Thiel is saying here, but it's pretty hypocritical for him to be criticizing here considering he's the co-founder of Palantir, a company that feeds some tasty tasty morsels to the surveillance state and military-industrial complex.

He's not opposed to the surveillance state or military-industrial complex (in fact, he's in favor of them in the US), he's opposed to China's government.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#322

Post by nutshell89 »

I think that what many of the comments here miss is that "Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era" was not officially mentioned until a year later, and the Chinese Constitution was not amended until 2018. China in 2016 likely didn't appear like the threat to Western geopolitics that it does today.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#323

Post by eloisius »

qeternity wrote: post #73
ipv6ipv4 wrote: post #50

Daring Fireball [1] has another passage from the article which is illuminating with regards to any promises Apple makes about how it will resist governmental pressure to compromise its products, vis-à-vis Apple's CSAM scanning tool. "Sometime in 2014 or early 2015, China’s State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping told members of the Apple Maps team to make the Diaoyu Islands, the objects of a long-running territorial di…

I totally get that people want companies to act with dignity, but the idea that a company, even one as large as Apple, is going to make any sort of difference with respect to China's oddities is wishful thinking. Apple has a business to run. They abide by all sorts of requests in various countries in which they operate. Of course there has to be a line somewhere, I'm just not sure this is it.

That’s all op said. Regardless of the moralizing, if you buy into apple because they market themselves as the company who will stand up for your privacy, remember that it’s just marketing. Apple has a business to run, and they’ll fold to government pressure like a lawn chair.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#324

Post by munificent »

ivalm wrote: post #225
breakfastduck wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is absolutely no way at all to verify that claim - considering 'better/worse' entirely depends on the happiness of those individuals. Something we have no way of measuring.

Something like 30% remains from pre-agricultural sites show signs of violent death... sure not a measure of happiness but i'll take safety for starters.

It's unclear how reliable statistics like these are, and the picture of how violent and/or war-like pre-agricultural humans were is very far from clear:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/how-hum...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/war-is-not-part-o...

https://www.wired.com/2013/07/to-war-is-human-perhaps-not/

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#325

Post by [deleted] »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #261
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Apple has, and will, fold to government pressure faster than a lawn chair." As a publicly-traded, trillion dollar company, where profits are at stake, this would seem to make sense. What does not seem to make sense is why anyone would believe Apple might ignore its own financial interests and those of its shareholders and deliberately sacrifice a major opportunity^1 in order to resist government pressure based on so…

Apple shouldn't have to. There should be laws that US companies can only cowtoe to the US government WRT free speech. In this case - it appears to only be happening in China - which I guess is fair game. But the line should be drawn at China being able to use its market to force US companies to censor people outside of China.

[deleted]

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#326

Post by star-trek-fleet »

onepointsixC wrote: post #201
trasz wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Birth rates always drop when the quality of life improves. Sure. They do not drop 60% in only a few years, only amongst a single ethnic group in a single region. The numerous testimonies, plus recently leaked documents confirming this is an explicit CCP policy removes any doubt.

No no no

That's just one possible explanation.

But the premises of 60% drop in birth rate from 2016 to 2918 is not verified in the first place...

I am still asking the source of 60% drop in birth rate of Uyghur groups. You probably need similar data for other ethnic groups to prove that this drop in Uyghur is unusual.

The point remains that no one is applying the same standard when discussing China related issues. Why birth rate drop is linked to genocide? Because it's China!

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#327

Post by Eelongate »

lastofthemojito wrote: post #94
remarkEon wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>World peace through world trade And here I was under the impression that most everyone - everyone important enough at least - understood that Fukuyama was (very) wrong. Perhaps his definition of "world peace" is different.

I'm not sure where Fukuyama and Friedman agree and disagree, but Cook's quote struck me as Friedman-esque. It sounds like he sees Apple as a player in Friedman's Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention: "No two countries that are both part of a major global supply chain, like Dell’s, will ever fight a war against each other as long as they are both part of the same global supply chain". (Quoting from https://en.wikipedia.…

Norman Angell thought much the same... in 1909.

>In The Great Illusion, Angell's primary thesis was, in the words of historian James Joll, that "the economic cost of war was so great that no one could possibly hope to gain by starting a war the consequences of which would be so disastrous."[4] For that reason, a general European war was very unlikely to start, and if it did, it would not last long.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#328

Post by ksec »

burntoutfire wrote: post #155
qeternity wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally get that people want companies to act with dignity, but the idea that a company, even one as large as Apple, is going to make any sort of difference with respect to China's oddities is wishful thinking. Apple has a business to run. They abide by all sorts of requests in various countries in which they operate. Of course there has to be a line somewhere, I'm just not sure this is it.

> Apple has a business to run. "Apple" is not some abstract entity. There are people behind Apple (the shareholders, the managers, the employees). Real people, with real morals and values. I don't think that the only thing all of them care about is "running a business" and that all of them feel it absolves them from acting humanly. It's more complicated than that. (having said that, of course, greed is always strong)…

>There are people behind Apple

I think that is precisely why this has been leaked. Some people inside Apple obviously are fed up with what Apple is doing. I would imagine especially those working in operation and supply chain.

There were lots of signs this was happening since 2016 if you are watching Apple supply chain over the years. But it is the first time we got some sort of evidence.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#329

Post by Lamad123 »

gonehome wrote: post #14

Apple’s approach to China remains the most disappointing (and hypocritical) thing about the company. When privacy really matters for the users that need it most, Apple sells them out for continued access to the Chinese market. https://stratechery.com/2021/the-information-on-apple-in-chi...

But they need slave labor from China and fuerdai's money.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#330

Post by nathanvanfleet »

tonyhb wrote: post #149
topicseed wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Maps is blocked in China, I think.

So, as much as people like to throw shade at Google, we can say that they haven't caved on this. That's a plus for them.

I think you're assuming they are not available because they pushed back on the one specific thing about island size and not something else all together. It's not really proven that they are not available because they have that much integrity.
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