Apple itself estimates that since 2008 it has trained at least 28 million workers—more people than the entire labor force of California.

Internal documents obtained for this book reveal that Apple’s investments in China reached $55 billion per year by 2015, an astronomical figure that doesn’t include the costs of components in Apple hardware—the so-called Bill of Materials, which would more than double the figure.

The CHIPS and Science Act, which is designed to stimulate computer chip fabrication in America, will cost the US government $52 billion over four years—$3 billion shy of what Apple invested annually in China nearly a decade earlier.

Apple’s business is so large and lucrative that in 2024 its $94 billion of net profit exceeded all revenue at NVIDIA—the chips architect worth $3 trillion that rivals Apple for world’s most valuable company.

“A horse designed by committee will be a camel, and that’s what the G3 all-in-one was,” says Hoenig.

China featured federalism on steroids, contrasting wildly with Soviet Communism. Beijing sets the goals in substance and pace, but it’s up to the provinces, municipalities, and counties to figure out how they meet them.

“As soon as Tesla came, there was a paradigm shift from consumers, and that’s something the Chinese government saw. This was an opportunity to have the entire EV industry in China compete with, and learn from, Tesla.” In China, this phenomenon has been called the catfish effect. The idea is based on the fact that when sardines are caught at sea and placed in a tank for their journey back to shore, they become sedentary and die. But sardines kept alive tend to have better flavor and texture, and thus fetch more money. The story goes that a Norwegian fisherman figured out that if he threw a catfish into the tank, the sardines would keep swimming and fight for survival. The presence of a single predator causes the whole tank of sardines to better themselves.

A manufacturing design engineer at Apple recalled a day when Cook sent a note about the importance of corporate social responsibility. Such notes were meant to convey something important: We care about this at the highest level of Apple. But that same day his more direct bosses were demanding improvements to output. “The two messages were opposed to each other,” he says. But there was no genuine recognition of that. Apple as an organization was a living, breathing manifestation of cognitive dissonance.

Mahe, like Cook, has portrayed these partnerships as “win-win,” seemingly oblivious to a quip that goes back at least a decade: “In China, ‘win-win’ means China wins twice.”