Apple and the “Trojan Horse”: Do You Believe the Target or the Enemy Bearing Gifts?

“No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution.” – Machiavelli

The “controversial report” of malicious chips in the servers of American companies brings to mind the Trojans and Greeks. The tale of the Trojan horse is a lesson to all – it’s time to “look a gift horse in the mouth.”

In an interview on Amanpour & Co., Tim Cook, Apple CEO stated, “Here’s what we do today. The iPhone is really not made anywhere. It’s made everywhere. That’s the truth. ”

Mr. Cook, here’s what we did a century ago: If a problem arose with a Model T Ford, some may say the buck stopped with the CEO, Henry Ford. If a problem, say security, comes up with Apple products, are you ultimately responsible? If not, how does one find the responsible party in a global haystack of foreign technologies? Then again, that may be the point.

Amanpour:  “Are you concerned about this rather controversial report . . .  that the Chinese military, a special unit of the Chinese military . . .had infiltrated little chips into servers that were used  among others by Apple . . .Is there any evidence to that?

Cook: “We never found a malicious chip in any servers. We never reported something to the FBI like that. The FBI never contacted us about anything like that.

Apple not finding “a malicious chip in any servers” doesn’t necessarily mean it was not present.

How does Cook reconcile this assertion with his previous statement that the iPhone “is made everywhere”? Isn’t the product left open to risk and manipulation? Important to note that the 10.4.2018 Bloomberg article had comments from China but not from France, Germany, U.K., or Korea- the other different countries Cook pointed to.

Mr. Cook brings up the FBI. I thought I’d share these words from I.C. Smith, Former Special Agent at the FBI. In his 2004 book Inside, A Top G-Man Exposes Spies, Lies, and Bureaucratic Bungling Inside the FBI,Smith writes, “The penetration of an adversary’s operation is the ultimate goal in foreign intelligence, and from all indications, the Chinese had succeeded masterfully.” Penetrating operations may not be exclusive to government intelligence.

Retracting the Bloomberg article seemed to be a concern for Cook. I wonder what he thinks about a 2010 Bloomberg article, “The Last Pitchman.” In it, Devin Leonard notes,“Steve Jobs, the Apple chief executive officer who has lately been taking a page from [Edward] Bernays by describing the iPad as a weapon of freedom-‘freedom from programs that steal your private data’.” 

Mr. Cook, is the iPhone like the iPad, a “weapon of freedom”? Does the “technology [and] things from all the different countries” your company uses truly give consumers the “freedom from programs that steal [our] private data.” Freedom, this idea, isn’t free.

“The denizen of the technological state of the future will have everything his hearth every desired, except, of course, his freedom . . . forced by technique to become . . . the imaginary producer-consumer of the classical economists.” – John Wilkinson, 1964

Kelly O’Keefe, executive director of the Virginia Commonwealth University Brandcenter, is noted in saying in the same 2010 Bloomberg article “We need something to believe in. People believe in Apple. They believe in Jobs.” Mr. Cook, perhaps we are “chasing a ghost” as you suggested. We want to believe the “Messiah,” the leader of Apple, is not gone and left us with an operating officer; Walter Isaacson notes in his book, Steve Jobs, “Tim Cook. Steady, calm.”

The 1996 book, Regional Advantage. Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128, gives an excellent account of the challenges faced by companies like Apple. According to the authorAnnaLee Saxenian, “The difficulties of Apple Computer-which failed to open up the proprietary architecture for its Macintosh personal computers-are a reminder that even once-innovative companies can succumb to betting on a product.” Mr. Cook, are you a betting man?

Saxenian further notes that “Apple, in the words of one analyst, ‘built a fortress to protect themselves, but found out they are isolated from the rest of the industry,’ and began losing share in a market they had helped to create.” Has the iPhone, like a fortress, become a prison where the enemy has strategically isolated its users into submission?

Unlike the tale of the Greeks who brought the horse to the City of Troy, it seems Apple sailed overseas and may have brought back the “Trojan Horse” to the Cities of America. Users, can you have your apple and eat it too? Recall Steve Jobs words and “connect the dots.”