#Tim Cook

[political-us]

[victusinveritas]

[cediweb]

Apple and SpaceX Forge Groundbreaking Partnership to Enable iPhone Connectivity via Starlink Satellites

CUPERTINO, CA — In a surprise move, Apple and SpaceX have unveiled a secretive joint venture to integrate Starlink’s satellite technology into iPhones, promising users the ability to stay connected even in the most remote corners of the globe. The partnership, reportedly orchestrated behind closed doors by Apple CEO Tim Cook and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, marks a significant leap in…

[punishedsaints]

[averagefireyenthusiast]

the 3 horsemen of iphoan

[probablybita]

i was supposed to finishing my microsoft bday animation rn but dawg i can't stop thinking these two i ship them too much im crazy

[thewales-family]

The Prince and Princess of Wales receive Tim Cook, CEO of Apple to discuss about the environment, mental health and other issues that mean a lot to them, at Windsor Castle in Windsor, England -September 28th 2023.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Eric Levitz at Vox:

In January 2017, Sergey Brin rallied beside progressive activists at San Francisco International Airport to protest Donald Trump’s travel ban. Eight years later, the Google co-founder sat with right-wing nationalists at Trump’s second inauguration. Brin is far from the only tech mogul who has (apparently) warmed to Trump in recent years. Mark Zuckerberg once bankrolled liberal causes. Now, the Facebook founder dines with America’s favorite insurrectionist at Mar-a-Lago. In 2016, Marc Andreessen argued that Hillary Clinton was the “obvious choice” for president, and that any proposal to choke off immigration “makes me sick to my stomach.” Last year, Andreessen endorsed Trump. And, of course, Elon Musk has gone from being an Obama-supporting climate hawk to quite possibly the single most influential advocate for — and patron of — far-right politics in the United States.

The Rebuild

Silicon Valley’s apparent rightward shift was already causing consternation in blue America last year. But Democrats’ outrage and anxiety over the red-pilling of Silicon Valley has only increased since Inauguration Day — when Brin, Zuckerberg, Musk, Jeff Bezos, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, and Apple CEO Tim Cook all sat with Trump’s camp in the Capitol Rotunda. Some Democrats view Big Tech’s rightward lurch as a political crisis, one brought on by their own party’s policy mistakes. In this account, Democrats needlessly alienated a powerful industry by embracing an anti-corporate economic agenda that is both politically costly and substantively misguided. Others in the party, meanwhile, insist that the Biden administration’s attempts to tame Big Tech’s power were both good politics and good policy. In their telling, voters hate corporate monopolies and love antitrust enforcement. And the extraordinary wealth and power of large tech companies constitute a threat to democratic government — a reality that Silicon Valley’s present chumminess with Trump only underscores. From this vantage, the tech industry’s interests and the general public’s were always irreconcilable. And as Silicon Valley grew wealthier, it was bound to gravitate toward America’s more pro-business party. The Biden administration’s error, therefore, was not doing too much to antagonize Big Tech, but too little.

This debate collapses together several distinct questions. Some of these are ideological — such as whether the Biden administration’s approach to antitrust enforcement was worthwhile on the merits. Today though, I want to focus on two factual questions at the center of the intra-Democratic dispute over Big Tech:

How and why did the tech industry’s politics change during the Biden era?

Would it be politically damaging — or beneficial — for Democrats to maintain (or build upon) Joe Biden’s approach to regulating the tech industry?

I think the answers to both these questions are more complicated than either progressive or pro-business Democrats allow.

Why tech moved right

To understand why Silicon Valley has moved right in recent years, it’s helpful to consider what had previously tethered the industry to the center-left. Many in the tech world argue that Silicon Valley and the Democratic Party were long bound by an implicit “deal”: Democrats would support the development of new technology, celebrate entrepreneurs, and take a light touch approach to regulating the digital sphere — in exchange for tech moguls backing socially liberal causes, progressive taxation, incremental expansions of the welfare state, philanthropies, and Democratic candidates. This was a pretty good bargain for the typical tech founder — since it effectively entailed the Democratic Party embracing nearly all of their preferences. Survey data on the views of Silicon Valley moguls is limited. But a 2017 study of tech entrepreneurs’ politics found that they were left-leaning on almost all issues — including taxation and redistribution — but quite right-wing on questions of government regulation and labor unions. This distinct ideological profile has been dubbed “liberal-tarian.” Given that Democrats have always been the party more supportive of regulating industry and promoting organized labor, the party’s alliance with tech was long fraught with some tension. But in recent years, both sides began souring on their supposed contract for a variety of reasons.

[...] After the financial crisis, the party’s progressive wing grew more influential. And its ascent increased the salience of both inequality and labor issues in Democratic politics. For a party increasingly concerned with wealth concentration and workers’ rights, tech giants that generated vast fortunes off “winner-take-all” markets — while, in many cases, committing labor violations or undermining traditional employment — did not look like engines of progress. As importantly, the notion that social media platforms promoted democracy and social reform fell into disrepute. In the wake of Obama’s election and the Arab Spring — both of which were widely credited to novel media technologies — many liberals bought into the idea that Facebook and Twitter would abet a more egalitarian politics. But authoritarian regimes proved adept at restricting online speech. And if social media’s potential to facilitate rightwing extremism wasn’t clear to liberals before 2016, it was apparent to them afterward. Following Trump’s victory, many Democrats blamed their party’s defeat on Facebook’s dissemination of “fake news.” Around the same time, research suggesting that social media could have adverse mental health effects started to accumulate. All this — combined with tech platforms’ adverse impact on traditional journalism — led the mainstream media to view Silicon Valley more critically. Between 2012 and 2019, the New York Times’ coverage of Facebook turned sharply negative, according to one prominent data analysis. Add in Silicon Valley’s growing enthusiasm for crypto — a technology that appeared to be good for little beyond scams and speculation — and it isn’t hard to see why Democrats soured on Big Tech. The party’s newfound skepticism of the industry didn’t just translate into greater regulatory scrutiny, but also, a withholding of both praise and access. According to some in tech, the sector’s leading lights felt themselves shunned and slighted by the Biden White House. “I think the fundamental problem, and I heard this from many, was that former President Biden was unwilling to meet with tech CEOs and entrepreneurs,” the billionaire investor Mark Cuban told me. “It was that simple.” One former Biden official echoed this assessment, saying that tech companies “couldn’t get meetings with a lot of the key regulators. Certainly [FTC commissioner] Lina [Khan] wouldn’t meet with people — she liked to say, ‘We’re enforcement, you can’t really meet with us.’”

This piece in Vox is a must-read on how portions of Big Tech turned rightwards in recent years, being from backing Hillary in 2016 and funding progressive causes (at least socially) to backing Trump and his reactionary far-right agenda. Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen are a couple of examples of this shift.

[planetofsnarfs]

A Pulitzer-winning editorial cartoonist revealed that she quit her job at The Washington Post after management axed her drawing of billionaires—including Jeff Bezos, the paper’s owner—bending the knee to Donald Trump.

Last month, Bezos, the immensely wealthy founder of Amazon, dined at Mar-a-Lago and his company donated $1 million to Trump’s upcoming inauguration. But ahead of the election, Bezos drew fire after the Post‘s management shut down the editorial board’s plan to endorse Kamala Harris. 

In a post on her Substack, Ann Telnaes said that she drew a cartoon that criticized corporate titans—including Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, and Patrick Soon-Shiong, in addition to Bezos—for their efforts to curry favor with the president-elect. (Like Amazon, tech giants Apple and Facebook also ponied up $1 million for Trump’s inauguration, reported Axios.)

She wrote, “I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations—and some differences—about cartoons I have submitted for publication, but in all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now."

According to Telnaes, the decision represented a failure of the newspaper’s obligation “to nurture a free press in a democracy.”

“Owners of such press organizations are responsible for safeguarding that free press— and trying to get in the good graces of an autocrat-in-waiting will only result in undermining that free press,” she added.

[wherepond]

Maximilien Robespierre & Tim Cook Trump doesn't get it

The real reason why companies manufacture in China

Why does Apple manufacture in China?

Many assume it's solely down to low labour costs and a vast workforce – a 20th-century view of low-skilled jobs. However, the reality is starkly different, as Apple CEO Tim Cook reveals.

Forget the old stereotypes. In a compelling interview clip, Cook explains the critical factors beyond cheap wages that keep Apple's production centred in China. Discover the crucial role of specialised skills, advanced tooling expertise, and the sheer scale and flexibility of the Chinese manufacturing ecosystem.

Cook's insights shed light on why bringing manufacturing back to countries like the US or UK is far more challenging than simply comparing labour costs. Watch to understand the modern realities of global manufacturing and why China remains a powerhouse, directly from the leader of one of the world's biggest tech companies.

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