<story><title>Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story</title><url>https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/apple-tim-cook-bloomberg-retraction</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>moftz</author><text>Tim Cook would have to know. If there is something like a NSL involved, Apple&amp;#x27;s legal team would have already reviewed it. That same legal team would also be advising Cook on what he publicly says since he is an officer in the company. He could lose his job or be fined for saying false information in the press (think about what happened to Musk) so its in his and his legal team&amp;#x27;s best interest to only say true things in the press or at least spin things so they aren&amp;#x27;t blatantly false. An NSL compels you to say nothing. You can neither confirm nor deny anything and its probably against the law for him to outright lie about the situation in the eyes of the SEC so he has to either be spinning things, omitting things, or outright telling the truth. The Bloomberg piece is fantastic but that kind of attack vector does exist however narrow it may be. I don&amp;#x27;t know why Bloomberg seems to want to double down on this. They are either incredibly stupid and are involved in some murder-suicide plot against Supermicro or they are telling the truth but maybe a little misguided.</text></item><item><author>tunesmith</author><text>Is it precedented for a news organization to double down like this in the case where a reporter just makes stuff up Stephen Glass style?&lt;p&gt;Because barring a Stephen Glass scenario, what&amp;#x27;s fascinating here is that no matter which side is right, this is evidence of some sort of mysterious power play.&lt;p&gt;Either Apple was hacked, they know, and are denying, which is evidence of them being under the thumb of U.S. national security.&lt;p&gt;Or, they were hacked and an internal team knows and Cook doesn&amp;#x27;t, which is evidence of U.S. national security having powerful influence inside of Apple.&lt;p&gt;Or, they weren&amp;#x27;t hacked, and Bloomberg is doubling down, which at this point would mean that someone has successfully hacked their journalistic verification processes to an extreme level.&lt;p&gt;In all three of those cases, it points to a level of attacker competence that I&amp;#x27;m not normally inclined to believe in.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>abalone</author><text>Just for clarity, there are some cases where the CEO is in fact left out of the loop specifically so they aren&amp;#x27;t in jeopardy of lying to shareholders. But typically it is the chief counsel who is informed in these scenarios. It is significant the Apple statements have been clear to rule out that possibility.</text></comment>
<story><title>Apple CEO Tim Cook Calling for Bloomberg to Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story</title><url>https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/apple-tim-cook-bloomberg-retraction</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>moftz</author><text>Tim Cook would have to know. If there is something like a NSL involved, Apple&amp;#x27;s legal team would have already reviewed it. That same legal team would also be advising Cook on what he publicly says since he is an officer in the company. He could lose his job or be fined for saying false information in the press (think about what happened to Musk) so its in his and his legal team&amp;#x27;s best interest to only say true things in the press or at least spin things so they aren&amp;#x27;t blatantly false. An NSL compels you to say nothing. You can neither confirm nor deny anything and its probably against the law for him to outright lie about the situation in the eyes of the SEC so he has to either be spinning things, omitting things, or outright telling the truth. The Bloomberg piece is fantastic but that kind of attack vector does exist however narrow it may be. I don&amp;#x27;t know why Bloomberg seems to want to double down on this. They are either incredibly stupid and are involved in some murder-suicide plot against Supermicro or they are telling the truth but maybe a little misguided.</text></item><item><author>tunesmith</author><text>Is it precedented for a news organization to double down like this in the case where a reporter just makes stuff up Stephen Glass style?&lt;p&gt;Because barring a Stephen Glass scenario, what&amp;#x27;s fascinating here is that no matter which side is right, this is evidence of some sort of mysterious power play.&lt;p&gt;Either Apple was hacked, they know, and are denying, which is evidence of them being under the thumb of U.S. national security.&lt;p&gt;Or, they were hacked and an internal team knows and Cook doesn&amp;#x27;t, which is evidence of U.S. national security having powerful influence inside of Apple.&lt;p&gt;Or, they weren&amp;#x27;t hacked, and Bloomberg is doubling down, which at this point would mean that someone has successfully hacked their journalistic verification processes to an extreme level.&lt;p&gt;In all three of those cases, it points to a level of attacker competence that I&amp;#x27;m not normally inclined to believe in.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>stephenr</author><text>&amp;gt; If there is something like a NSL involved, Apple&amp;#x27;s legal team would have already reviewed it.&lt;p&gt;Apple&amp;#x27;s official statement clearly said, they&amp;#x27;re &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; under any form of NSL or gag order.&lt;p&gt;The prevailing logic seems to be that US courts still believe the government can&amp;#x27;t force you to say something against your will, only prevent you from saying something.</text></comment>