Apple CEO Signed Secret Agreement With China Promising To Help Them, Report Says | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This older, but yet to be published post is finally being presented now as an archivable history of the current events of these days that will become the real history of tomorrow.

Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the The Daily Wire. The author of this post is Hank Berrien.

    According to a new report, Apple CEO Tim Cook secretly signed a $275 billion agreement years ago with the Chinese government in which he promised Apple would aid China's economy and tech industries with investments as well as worker training.

    The Information reported on Tuesday, "iPhone recently became the top-selling smartphone in China, its second-biggest market after the U.S., for the first time in six years. But the company owes much of that success to CEO Tim Cook, who laid the foundation years ago by secretly signing an agreement, estimated to be worth more than $275 billion, with Chinese officials promising Apple would do its part to develop China's economy and technological prowess through investments, business deals and worker training."

    "Cook forged the five-year agreement, which hasn't been previously reported, during the first of a series of in-person visits he made to the country in 2016 to quash a sudden burst of regulatory actions against Apple's business, according to internal Apple documents viewed by The Information," The Information added.

    The Daily Wire reported last June that Cook contacted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to block Congress' efforts to regulate Big Tech firms.

    The New York Times reported:

    The antitrust bills were rushed, he said. They would crimp innovation. And they would hurt consumers by disrupting the services that power Apple's lucrative iPhone, Mr. Cook cautioned at various points, according to five people with knowledge of the conversations. ... The calls by Mr. Cook are part of a forceful and wide-ranging pushback by the tech industry since the proposals were announced this month. Executives, lobbyists, and more than a dozen think tanks and advocacy groups paid by tech companies have swarmed Capitol offices, called and emailed lawmakers and their staff members, and written letters arguing there will be dire consequences for the industry and the country if the ideas become law.

    In June 2019, Cook insisted in an interview with CBS news anchor Norah O'Donnell that Apple was not a monopoly. At the Worldwide Developers Conference, asked if Apple was too big, Cook replied, "No. I don't think so. ... I think scrutiny is fair. I think we should be scrutinized. But if you look at our... any kind of measure about is Apple a monopoly or not, I don't think anybody reasonable is gonna come to the conclusion that Apple's a monopoly. Our share is much more modest. We don't have a dominant position in any market ... You know, our share of smartphones in the U.S. is typically in the high 30s or so, mid-30s. On PCs, it's lower than that."

    He emphasized, "We are not a monopoly."

    When O'Donnell asked about the privacy of Apple users, Cook stated, "We focus on the user. And the user wants the ability to go across numerous properties on the web without being under surveillance. We're moving privacy protections forward."

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