Apple CEO Tim Cook issued warning by CIA following classified briefing
There are wild claims that Tim Cook has been avoiding a potential global conflict, with the Apple CEO apparently being briefed on an attack from China that's closer than you might think. Taking over from Steve Jobs ahead of his tragic passing in 2011, Cook rose from the ranks of Chief Operating Officer to take Apple's top position.
Cook has helped Apple climb to be one of the world's most valuable companies and boast a current market cap of $3.87 trillion.
He’s been a pioneer for Apple's artificial intelligence capabilities, and while we haven't quite cracked his plans for augmented reality glasses with real-world overlay, he continues to innovate.
Apple recently had to deal with threats from President Donald Trump's trade tariffs, eventually signing a deal to ensure that the tech giant would build big in the USA.
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The huge number of Apple products are currently assembled in China by suppliers like Foxconn, but according to The New York Times, the country might have worrying plans for expansion.
We're told that federal officials have been trying to 'wean' companies like Apple away from Taiwan, with the outlet referring to a July 2023 meeting that was attended by Tim Cook and held in a 'secure briefing room'.
The NYT maintains that Cook, Nvidia's Jensen Huang, and Advanced Micro Devices' Lisa Su all headed to Silicon Valley and were forewarned that China’s military spending could mean it’ll make moves on Taiwan in 2027. It's said that Qualcomm's Cristiano Amon joined via video.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reiterated: "The single biggest threat to the world economy, the single biggest point of single failure, is that 97 percent of the high-end chips are made in Taiwan.
"If that island were blockaded, that capacity were destroyed, it would be an economic apocalypse."
The NYT says that Cook and co. have been too busy trying to win their respective markets, meaning that the 'Taiwan problem' remains an afterthought.
Crunching the numbers, a 2022 report from the Semiconductor Industry Association claimed that cutting off Taiwan's supply of chips would result in the largest economic crisis since the Great Depression. It could cause U.S. economic output to plummet by 11%, which would be twice as much as the 2008 recession.
It's thought that things would be even worse for China, marking a 16% dip.
In the previously unseen report, the NYT says that most U.S. tech giants would only have enough semiconductors to last a couple of months before their businesses would inevitably collapse.
Even though the USA is set to spend $200 billion on semiconductor plants before the end of 2030, this would still only account for 10% of the world’s production.
As for the 2027 countdown, Adm. Philip S. Davidson told the Senate Armed Services Committee in March 2021 how things were going to soon escalate in Taiwan: "The threat is manifest during this decade. In fact, in the next six years."
Davidson was steadfast in his belief that China's President Xi Jinping would use his army to take Taiwan by 2027. This led to the July 2023 meeting, where CIA head William J. Burns and Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, apparently briefed the tech bosses.
In the aftermath, Cook supposedly admitted that he was sleeping “with one eye open."
Still, the NYT investigation reiterates that Apple and the rest were slow on buying the USA's chips that cost 25% to manufacture domestically. If that wasn't enough, the Arizona plant of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is currently a generation behind what's available in Taiwan.
Despite TSMC comitting $165 billion to U.S. investment and at least five more plants, the Taiwanese government stands by an unofficial policy that TSMC has to keep its most advanced manufacturing tech on the island.
It's said that a 'silicon shield' is keeping Taiwan safe from China for now, but as we've seen with Russia invading Ukraine, that might not hold for much longer.