The tech, legal, and political worlds are all atwitter over the way Apple CEO Tim Cook was grilled during cross-examination at an “epic” antitrust trial on Friday. No doubt this reaction was partly due to the unusual fact that the presiding judge, not opposing counsel, was the one who grilled him. As Fortune reported on May 21:
U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers needled Cook on why on why the iPhone maker won’t give users the option to buy lesser-priced virtual goods and content directly from developers — and only allows purchases through Apple’s own App Store, an issue at the heart of the case. …
‘What is the problem with allowing users to have choice, especially in the gaming context, to have a cheaper option for content?’ Gonzalez Rogers asked. ‘We would in essence give up our total return on our IP,’ Cook responded, referring to the company’s proprietary intellectual property.
To be fair, though, Cook parried with that unflappable elan, which he’s so famous for. And the thrust of his argument was that users are free to choose Android phones if they want cheaper options. Ouch!
Except that Cook did not have a legal leg to stand on. Nor did the judge leave him flayed like a dead fish, however, which is the impression virtually every report gave.
In fact, most portrayed him like the idiomatic five-year-old trying to deny he stole the cookies; you know, despite being caught with his hand in the cookie jar and having crumbs all over his face.
Frankly, only wishful schadenfreude explains this disconnect. Because, evidently, Cook’s notorious sanctimony has been so upsetting that everyone – from spurned reporters to exasperated politicians and jealous CEOs – saw in his cross-examination more of what they wanted to see than what actually transpired.
Mind you, many were probably channeling the joy everyone shared at Microsoft CEO Bill Gates’s expense when he did in fact squirm like a five-year old under similar circumstances. The occasion was an antitrust case in 1998, featuring Microsoft in the role Apple is playing today as tech hegemon.
But, after finally condescending to sit for a deposition, Gates shocked everyone when he began withering under cross-examination almost immediately. In fact, his infantile responses to probing questions government lawyer David Boise posed became so farcical, even the presiding judge could not help laughing out loud.
For example, Gates asked Boise for the meaning of words like “concern,” “compete,” and even “we” so many times, he made Bill Clinton’s famous request for the meaning of the word “is” look sincere and profound. But I digress.
The point is that this antitrust trial is just a sideshow for Apple. Of course Microsoft lost its case – with the judge ruling that it was every bit the “market monopoly” back then that Apple so clearly is today. Yet Microsoft is bigger and more profitable today than ever.
Not to mention that the government’s victory against Microsoft spawned the very tech monsters it’s now trying to control, most notably Amazon and Google. So that proverb – about better the devil you know than the one (or ones) you don’t – probably obtains….
That said, there’s no denying the reputational and financial damage this trial is costing Apple. But Cook knows those costs pale in comparison to the opportunity benefit Apple is deriving from having this sideshow in California deflect from the main show going on in China these days.
Sure enough, that show features Microsoft and its demon spawn, as well as rival Apple and every other big tech company. But leave it to a tabloid headline to expose the immorality involved in doing business there. Because here is how the Daily Mail blared what Apple is doing on its main page on May 18:
- How Tim Cook agreed to hand over the data of all Chinese Apple users to the Communist government and allow its servers to be run by state officials in return for being able to do business with Beijing
The report itself details how Apple is blithely taking orders from Chinese authorities. Chief among those orders is configuring iPhones to better enable state censorship of foreign news, especially on topics like human rights, and to better facilitate state spying on Chinese citizens, especially those who might be involved in pro-democracy protests.
Of course, this stands in glaring contrast to the way Apple defiantly denied similar requests from American authorities. Chief among those requests was allowing it to access iPhones to better investigate crimes, especially related to terrorism, and to better prevent online abuse, especially related to children.
But this is nothing new. Because I’ve been damning Apple’s mercenary hypocrisy in this respect for over a decade. Indeed, apropos of headlines, I’ll see the Daily Mail’s cited above and raise it one of my own:
- “For Some, Doing Business in China Means Leaving your Conscience at the Border!” August 1, 2005
That clearly speaks for itself. But perhaps no headline conveyed my frustration and dismay quite like this one over a decade later:
- “Apple: If US Were a Police State, Like China, We’d Happily Comply,” February 27, 2016
By the way, given Apple’s notorious history of taking orders from China, I did not intend to convey even a hint of irony. Indeed, to reinforce my point, I included the following quote in this commentary:
Apple’s compliance with the Chinese government makes a mockery of its defiance against the American government. Not least because this betrays the fact that Apple is all too willing to sacrifice customer privacy for corporate profit. … And if you believe the Chinese government uses Apple to protect the privacy of its citizens, your naiveté is matched only by Apple’s hypocrisy.
As it happens, though, Apple is merely doing what other tech companies [like Google] have done, and are still doing.
(“Apple Defends iPhones as Safe Haven for Terrorists to Plot,” The iPINIONS Journal, February 22, 2016)
Enough said?
Except I’d be remiss not to note that tech CEOs are not the only ones kowtowing to Chinese authorities.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has so far been unable to speak with China’s top general despite multiple attempts to set up talks, U.S. defense officials said on Friday.
Relations between China and the United States have grown increasingly tense, with the world’s two largest economies clashing over everything from Taiwan and China’s human rights record to its military activity in the South China Sea.
(Reuters, May 21, 2021)
Naturally, it’s tempting to suspect racism afoot in the Chinese snubbing this first black defense secretary. But that suspicion is mitigated, though not excluded, by the pioneering roles Colin Powell played as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and secretary of state, the one Condi Rice played as secretary of state, and of course the one Barack Obama played as president of the United States.
Still, you’d be forgiven the impression that America itself is already recognizing China as the most powerful nation in the world. Because only that explains it begging China for meetings, no? Except that former President Trump’s public dalliances with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un so cheapened once-coveted meetings with top US officials that even North Korean officials are now ghosting them.
In fact, I refer you to my most recent podcast “Biden’s Foreign Policy ‘A-Team’ Is Failing Him” on May 15 to hear me venting and bemoaning in equal measure about reports on North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un ghosting Biden himself the way this Chinese defense minister has been ghosting his defense secretary.
Frankly, Biden would do well to impose a moratorium on all head-of-state meetings with China, Russia, and other rogue states. Instead, he should implement his Build Back Better agenda to make America stronger than ever and strengthen NATO alliances. Then he should communicate with those perennial enemies the way the US communicated most effectively with the old Soviet Union, namely through military strength.
As it happens, I addressed this unfolding dynamic with respect to calls to boycott the 2022 Beijing Olympics in the May 15 podcast on Biden’s A-Team, which I cited earlier. It includes these two instructive prescient and pertinent paragraphs:
The only way the US and other Western countries can regain the moral high ground in their dealings with China is to force the IOC to relocate the Olympics. Let the chips fall where they may. Because let’s face it China is as dependent on manufacturing cheap stuff to sell in Western countries as Western countries are on buying cheap stuff that is manufactured in China.
Not to put too fine a point on it but this co-dependency makes the economic relationship between Western countries and China today even more existential than the military relationship they had with the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War. Which is why, just like that old one, this relationship is based even more the concept of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD).
Moreover, I warned in my Earth Day podcast on May 1 that Chinese nationalism is so insecure that China even bullies nations that invite the Dalai Lama to attend peace conferences featuring Nobel Peace laureates. In a similar vein, it is bullying member nations at the UN right now to exclude Taiwan from a world health forum. But I warned it would be thus ever since I wrote “World Beware: China Calling In (Loan-Sharking) Debts,” on February 3, 2010, and the more ominous “China Buying Political Dominion Over the Caribbean (Latin America, and Africa),” on February 22, 2005.
Again, China continually demonstrates that no perceived slight is too petty to escape its superpower vengeance. So world beware, this bullying only hints at what portends if China wields the kind of power and influence throughout this 21st century that America wielded throughout the twentieth.
Related commentaries:
doing business in China… if US were police state… Biden’s A-Team…
Earth Day… world beware… china buying dominion…