[bitpush]

Yes.

If you close your eyes on cozying up to authoritarian regimes. Apple operates in China at Beijing's pleasure. Much of it is behind the scenes because that's how Chinese like to do. Compare that to US, where everything is a show. Look no further than the gold plated plaque that Apple gave to Trump. That was shameful.

[euroderf]

An imperfect analogy, but...

Apple conserves privacy in the US by exporting privacy violations to China.

Kind of like relocating your polluting industrial processes overseas.

[bigyabai]

Funny thing is, we can assume that all the nasty stuff happens in China... but Apple is still a US company.

However Tim Cook kisses up to Trump in public is corollary to how he kisses ass in private. If Chinese iCloud servers had backdoored HSMs installed without anyone throwing a hissy-fit, imagine what kind of control the US Government has had for the past decade...