HOW IT STARTED: Apple CEO Tim Cook: Learn to code, it’s more important than English as a second language.
—CNBC, October 12th, 2017.
How it’s going: Laid-off techies face ‘sense of impending doom’ with job cuts at highest since dot-com crash.
—CNBC, Friday.
Related: Silicon Valley Opens Its Wallet for Joe Biden. A Wired analysis finds roughly 95 percent of contributions by employees of six big tech firms have gone to Trump’s Democratic challenger.
—Wired.com, October 6th, 2020.
TIM COOK SEEMS TO HAVE BACKED DOWN PRETTY QUICKLY: Twitter’s Largest Advertiser Returns to Platform, Has Now ‘Fully Resumed’ Spending.
YES. NEXT QUESTION? Is Apple working with China to suppress freedom protestors?
Related: Tim Cook’s Silence Just Said Everything.
🚨WATCH: Apple CEO Tim Cook ignores our questions on China as zero-COVID lockdown protests rage in the country. Full video 👇🏻 pic.twitter.com/m0NpgRN6U4
— Hillary Vaughn (@hillary__vaughn) December 1, 2022
Flashback: A Slow Kowtow to China.
Demanding obeisance has a rich history in Chinese culture. In 1793, British envoy Lord George Macartney was charged with opening permanent trade relations with China. The Chinese still clung to the old feudal demand of the kowtow. In the old days, the Chinese believed that the emperor literally ruled the world, which meant foreign rulers were more like vassals. And all vassals must acknowledge the supremacy of the emperor, the Son of Heaven. The problem was that Macartney was essentially a stand-in for the British crown, and he couldn’t in good conscience recognize the emperor as his sovereign.
Kowtowing requires three kneelings and nine prostrations—meaning the supplicant actually lies face down on the floor—in order to demonstrate total inferiority. Macartney agreed to kneel out of respect, but he wouldn’t put his head to the ground nine times.
The Chinese were offended and Britain and China didn’t get the trade deal. I bring up this anecdote for three reasons. First, it’s worth recognizing that the trade deal was in the interests of both countries. Lots of “realists” think that countries do things solely out of raw self-interest. That’s arguably true. But the definition realists use for self-interest is way too narrow. Notions of national pride and honor are also forms of self-interest.
Which brings me to the second reason. America should have some notion of honor. We don’t have a crown, but we do have certain ideas and ideals that we like to claim similar loyalty to. We also like to claim that these ideas and ideals are universal. When we figuratively kowtow to China, we are openly admitting to China that both claims are untrue—or at least negotiable. You can’t claim to believe human rights are universal and inviolable while simultaneously excusing or ignoring the mass violation of human rights that defines China under CCP rule.
Last, none of this is in our interest. It’s not like the Chinese respect us for our groveling. They enjoy watching us bend to their demands and mock our obsequious desire to gain favor as proof of their superior system. They use our self-flagellation over race as a cudgel in their propaganda and diplomacy. Such appeasement only buys greater demands and worse moral and strategic compromises.
* * * * * * * *
I whiggishly believe that one day China will be a free country. And when it is, the Chinese will not look back on America today as a spiritual ally the way those who were slaughtered at Tiananmen Square did. They will see us as a country that sought approval from the regime that persecuted their ancestors for the cheap at any price of Fast and Furious 9 ticket sales.
As Jim Geraghty wrote in October of 2019, when the CCP-NBA connection was exposed for millions of Americans to see: We’re Not Exporting Our Values to China — We’re Importing Theirs.
TIM COOK: Apple CEO Gives Fox News Reporter Silent Treatment When Questioned About China. “Do you support the Chinese people’s right to protest? Do you regret restricting Airdrop access that protesters used to evade surveillance from the Chinese government? You think it’s problematic to do business with the Chinese party when they suppress human rights?”
BECAUSE COOK REGARDS THE CHINESE AS FRIENDS AND ELON MUSK AS AN ENEMY:
Related: Tim Cook Says He’s Ready To Pull Twitter From App Store Once President Xi Gives The Order. It’s satire. Or is it?
UPDATE: Apple’s cowardice on China reveals app store Twitter ban as pure hypocrisy. “Apple is willing to defend its market value by co-operating with, quite literally, the world’s most brutal regime in its efforts to crush a grassroots movement of protestors pushed to the breaking point. But allowing people to tweet things offensive to liberal pieties is worthy of its action?”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Tim Cook denies Twitter threat.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Tim Cook Says He’s Ready To Pull Twitter From App Store Once President Xi Gives The Order.
TIM COOK’S WAR ON THE WORKINGMAN: Apple circulating anti-union talking points to retail store managers.
APPLE SHAREHOLDERS SHOULD HAVE SOME VERY POINTED QUESTIONS FOR TIM COOK: Over Reliance on China Could Cost Apple $8 Billion.
THE COVETED TURTLE BOY OF THE WEEK AWARD: Looking Around: Tim Cook is Turtleboy Of The Week; Saule Omarova withdraws; nicknames within the 0bama administration.
OUR TECH OLIGARCHS DON’T ACTUALLY STAND FOR ANY SORT OF DECENCY: How Apple, Tim Cook give in to China while pushing back against the US.
NOT A GOOD LOOK FOR TIM COOK: Apple and TikTok skipped a Senate hearing on Big Tech and China, and empty seats show lawmakers aren’t pleased.
The missing tech execs were given the “empty seat treatment,” according to Politico reporter Cristiano Lima, with their names prominently displayed on the vacant table and chair reserved for them.
Senator Josh Hawley has been one of the biggest critics of TikTok and of Big Tech in general, and he tweeted his disapproval at the companies that skipped the hearing.
Concerns about major tech companies’ connections to China have grown in the past year. Short video app TikTok, which has been download over 1 billion times, in particular has been scrutinized for allegedly censoring content that could anger the Chinese government. In September, The Guardian reported on internal TikTok documents instructing the moderators to censor politically fraught topics including Tiananmen Square and an independent Tibet. The company said that these guidelines were no longer in use, and that the Chinese government has no control over them, because the app does not operate in China.
Then why not testify that to Congress?
DECOUPLING, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG: Apple CEO becomes chairman of China university board. “Tim Cook will work closely with Chinese government officials to promote Tsinghua University’s economics and management school.”
THE ERA OF TIM COOK: A $999 monitor stand is everything wrong with Apple today.
SATIRE… OR IS IT? Tim Cook apologizes for creating racist OK hand gesture emoji – will be removed in next iOS update.
I just now discovered NPC Daily, and some of their stuff is very well done.
TIM COOK SUCKS (CONT’D): Apple Music Caught Censoring Pro-Democracy Music In China.
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS TIM COOK: Apple never forgets to remind us how “woke” they are, how caring and morally enlightened they are, especially on LGBT issues. The openly gay CEO of Apple has no problem virtue signalling:
But he has a problem withdrawing Apple from OIC nations that hang people for the crime of being gay. (Four stores in Brunei alone!) Not on the list of companies boycotting Brunei. Apple’s Investor Relations team would love to hear from you, I’m sure.
TIM COOK’S STRENGTH WAS SUPPOSED TO BE QA AND SUPPLY CHAIN: Apple apologizes for failing MacBook keyboards yet again.
IF THE APP TRACKED GAYS FOR THE PURPOSE OF HUNTING THEM DOWN, WOULD TIM COOK WOULD STILL BE DRAGGING HIS FEET?: “Saudi app criticized for feature to control women’s travel“
TIM COOK’S LEGACY: Apple just lost a Facebook: Market value decline since peak exceeds value of nearly any US company. “Apple shares have fallen by 39.1 percent since Oct. 3, when the stock hit a 52-week high of $233.47 a share. With its market cap down to about $674 billion, those losses are larger than individual value of 496 members of the S&P 500 — including Facebook and J.P. Morgan.”
Related: Apple’s iPhone has lost its magic.. “If the current iPhones aren’t selling well now, one must wonder what will happen if the next generation represents only minor upgrades.”
Apple as a company was meant to be headed by a product-obsessed genius, not a gray social justice warrior. It is doing poorly under the latter.
TIM COOK TO INVESTORS: People Bought Fewer New iPhones Because They Repaired Their Old Ones.
And they repaired their old ones because the new ones aren’t delivering the innovation and performance that used to make people scrap their perfectly-good older phones to buy the new ones. Possibly because Apple’s CEO is spending more time on social-justice nattering than on running the kind of company Steve Jobs would be proud of.
Related (From Ed): Apple’s Terrible No Good Very Bad Earnings Warning.
UPDATE: Five Ways to Look at Apple’s Surprise Bad News: None of them is good.
BY “HATE AND DIVISION,” HE MEANS “POLITICS I DON’T AGREE WITH,” OR WILL. Apple CEO Tim Cook: Those Who Seek Hate and Division Have No Place in Our Platforms. Get woke, go broke.
UPDATE (From Ed): “Legalistics aside, Cook is well within his rights to ban whoever he wants from his private platform. The only problem is that Cook seems to be very selective in what he considers to be sinful not to ban. For instance, the hate preacher Louis Farrakhan still has his app, the Nation of Islam, up in the Apple store. Farrakhan is a rabid and open anti-semite who has compared Jewish people to termites. If Cook considers it sinful to not take action against those who use hateful and dangerous rhetoric against other races or religions, then Cook is a sinner’s sinner.”
WELL, GOOD: Tim Cook calls for strong US privacy law, rips ‘data-industrial complex.’
Speaking at the International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners (ICDPPC) in Brussels, Cook said that businesses are creating “an enduring digital profile” of each user and that the trade of such data “has exploded into a data-industrial complex.”
“This is surveillance,” Cook said. “And these stockpiles of personal data serve only to enrich the companies that collect them. This should make us very uncomfortable.”
“We at Apple are in full support of a comprehensive federal privacy law in the United States. There, and everywhere, it should be rooted in four essential rights: First, the right to have personal data minimized. Companies should challenge themselves to de-identify customer data—or not to collect it in the first place.
“Second, the right to knowledge. Users should always know what data is being collected and what it is being collected for. This is the only way to empower users to decide what collection is legitimate and what isn’t. Anything less is a sham.
“Third, the right to access. Companies should recognize that data belongs to users, and we should all make it easy for users to get a copy of, correct, and delete their personal data. And fourth, the right to security. Security is foundational to trust and all other privacy rights.”
I’m not usually a fan of Cook’s politics, but he has made privacy one of Apple’s standout features/services over the last few years.
LESS TALK, MORE TECH, TIM: Apple’s Tim Cook drops to 96th place on list of CEOs most popular with workers.
InstaPundit is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.