Washington

"The point, however, isn’t to condemn Cook or Apple. It’s to convey the predicament they’re in. At the turn of the millennium, Washington made a bet on China—a bet that free trade would liberalize the country and perhaps catalyze the creation of the world’s biggest democracy. Instead, trade enriched China and empowered its rulers. Cook shouldn’t be blamed by politicians for enmeshing Apple’s operations in China two decades ago, but he has erred by doubling down over the past decade despite mounting evidence that Xi has been ramping up repression at home and taking a more combative stance in international affairs. “You can say that we read them wrong, that we misunderstood China. But Jack Ma read China wrong, too. Every entrepreneur read China wrong,” says a supply chain expert who has lived in the country. “You look at what Deng Xiaoping and Hu Jintao were promoting—the [business class] didn’t see this coming. Xi changed the game completely. He’s another Putin in the making.” This person adds, “Look, I’m not a Cook fan. But you have to be sympathetic. He didn’t know what he was dealing with. Nobody did.”"

"Washington immediately saw the plan as a rebuke of open markets and economic interdependence. “The program,” wrote the US Council on Foreign Relations, “aims to use government subsidies, mobilize state-owned enterprises, and pursue intellectual property acquisition to catch up with—and then surpass—Western technological prowess in advanced industries.” The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, which counts Apple as a member, would later characterize the plan to Congress as “an aggressive by-hook-or-by-crook strategy that involves serially manipulating the marketplace and wantonly stealing and coercing transfer of American know-how.”"

"As Cupertino attempts to diversify to India for manufacturing, TSMC is in the process of diversifying chip fabrication to the United States, with direct aid from Washington. In May 2020, TSMC announced a major investment to build an advanced semiconductor fabrication facility, or fab, in Phoenix, Arizona, and by 2024 the plans had expanded to include three new fabs for a total cost of more than $65 billion, underscoring pressure from its customers and the seriousness of Washington’s efforts. The three fabs will be the “largest foreign direct investments in a greenfield project in US history,” TSMC says. However, amid reports of culture clashes and a shortage of American talent to fill 6,000 planned roles, the start of production was delayed by a year to early 2025."

"The problem was, shareholder-first capitalism enabled—indeed, even encouraged—corporations to ignore, if not undermine, the national interest. Executives found that they could focus on actions to reap short-term benefits—gambits such as cutting costs and outsourcing jobs to Asia—and ignore wider societal impact. As this book has demonstrated, Cupertino’s interests have significantly diverged from Washington’s since the death of Steve Jobs; the wider implications could end up tarnishing Cook’s legacy."

"I would be interrupting a successful career, uprooting my family, and giving up a comfortable and relatively predictable lifestyle for the vagaries of Washington. But my country called, and I was raised in an era when if your country called, be it to fight a foreign enemy or serve in government, you answered the call—with pride and honor and gratitude and respect. If you truly love your country and if you fear for freedom, can you stand by and see the battle lost without joining the fight? Inconceivable."

"Kaiser went on to describe a road to entrepreneurial success in terms that diverged from America's well-worn, self-made path, instead passing through the nation's capital along the way: "That is the first place you build it, and you keep steadily there all the time while you are making aircraft and while you are making ships, because you have got any number of people to see people who control the things that you need. . . . You have got to help them get the things. Anybody can come in and say, `Goodness, I need this. Don't you see how badly I need it?' Anybody can do that, but you have got to come to Washington and say, `Here is a way. Now I know this is right, see if I am right,' and if he thinks you are right he is tickled to death you came." 2"

"Kaiser, however, offered his listeners a different lesson than they may have expected to hear: "Every time I take anybody to a shipyard, they want to see the ways and they think that is the shipyard. Well, that isn't the shipyard at all, and when you go to an aircraft plant, you want to see the garage they keep the planes in or build them in. That isn't the aircraft plant. I will tell you where the aircraft plant is and where the shipyard is: it starts in Washington.""

"Kaiser pursued entry into the metals industries and other defense work using a personal, idiosyncratic approach to government officials rather than an institutional and hierarchical one. At one point during the war, one of Kaiser's managers complained about "the Navy." Kaiser responded: "You know there is no such thing as the U.S. Navy! It's just Page 11 a bunch of guys down there in Washington. Now which one is your problem?''"

"Right now, everything feels far away, as he travels through the USA accompanied by his publicity man on a rather unplanned hunt for new business ideas. The journey has taken him from New York all the way down to New Orleans, then back up to Philadelphia and Washington, and finally across the continent heading towards California."