Apple says it will add 20k jobs, spend $500B, produce AI servers in US

They paused the last one they announced, so it's an infinite increase if it happens.

But i expect, once the media cycle dies down, it'll get paused too, and then ignored because can't admit that something didn't work out!

It's a shame hither/thither/whither and their buddies hence/thence/whence are all archaic at this point

Follow those two up with a `yon` and buddy, you got a stew brewin'

> at additional cost to themselves

For now.

PCC is completely different from the ChatGPT integration. ChatGPT is indeed not a privacy-hardened system, but Apple devices only use it for so called “world knowledge” queries and make you confirm when calling out to it, typically involving limited personal data.

PCC is designed to handle extensive personal data, and the auditing is attested by cryptographic proofs provided to software clients, not just white papers read by humans. It is significantly different from what we’ve seen before in the industry, and highly worth the effort to understand it if you are at all involved in server engineering.

The problem with any remote arrangement is that you have to trust Apple that the server side is running all that stuff. Their answer to that is "you can audit us", but I don't see how that would prevent them from switching things in between audits.

As far as local processing goes, though, you're also still fundamentally trusting Apple that the OS binaries you get from them do what they say they do. Since they have all the signing keys, they could easily push an iOS update that extracts all the local data and pushes it to some server somewhere.

Now, I don't think that either of these scenarios is likely to happen if it's down to Apple by itself - they don't really gain anything from doing so. But they could be compelled by a government large and important enough that they can't just pull out. For example, if US demanded such a thing (like it already did in the past), and the executive made a concerted push to force it.

Thank you for the really great response! It answered my main question:

> The craziness is in the architecture that provides cryptographic proof to clients that the server they’re connecting to is running an audited binary and running on secure hardware.

I definitely missed this concept when skimming the links before posting my comment - very very cool!

> open source software requires considerably less trust than closed source. Right?

Of course… but at the same time, I think the difference in the degree of trust I am placing in say, Signal’s end to end encryption and Apple’s (claims of) end-to-end encryption is not as large as it might cursorily seem. Would I be more surprised to read in the news that Apple had secretly embedded some back door than I would be reading in the news that malicious actor managed to push some hidden exploit through to Signal in an otherwise innocent PR? I’m genuinely not sure which would surprise me more, or which event would be more probable, so can I really make any claim as to which is more secure, given the current knowledge I have? Obviously I could think more deeply about this, but superficially, both are requiring pretty large amounts of trust from me - which I don’t think is misplaced in either… though I do personally trust something like signal more at the end of the day based on… what, intuition? A gut feeling?

Yes, I think along similar lines there… but on the other hand, brands need not reflect underlying truths about reality, and in fact often do not. Suppose two years from now, it is revealed by a whistleblower that they were part of a special skunkworks team responsible for creating various backdoors in PCC in order to enable Apple to access the data, train new models on queries, or maybe respond to government requests etc etc, all of which which were subtle, complicated exploits. Maybe Apple denies and discredits, or minimizes, or issues some sort of limited mea culpa. To what extent would it affect Apple’s brand? How long would it stay in the public consciousness? Would people (writ large, not those on HN) care? Perhaps it impacts sales and the stock price, but for how long and to what extent? Obviously there would be some sort of cost to such an event occurring, but would it outweigh whatever benefits that Apple might gain in the meantime? Maybe those benefits have to do with avoiding the wrath of the federal government… who knows. There’s definitely a world where the amoral calculus suggests lying might be better, right? Maybe not ours, but it is plausible. Like you said, discernment is the only tool we have, and it’s difficult to really know what’s going on at the end of the day.

Moscow rules and George Smiley’s tradecraft are probably the only real security… ha!

> 2015 Intel SGX (Skylake)

Might be worth pointing out that SGX was compromised repeatedly and comprehensively by speculative execution attacks, e.g.

https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity18/presentat...

ARM TrustZone launched with the Arm1176JZ-S in 2004.

That is a lot of mumbo-jumbo but what it boils down to is that you cannot run the PCC on your own hardware; you can download some "components" whose hash matches the supposed "transparency log" they publish (and some demo models) but since I can't go into my iPhone to say "set PCC server ip: 192.168.1.42" and see it work, I don't trust it (and it cannot be trusted).

No, that is not the PCC, just some research artifacts.

There is no way to verify that. It's just something they "pinky swear they won't do". The stringent hardware integrity is to protect against supply chain attacks (Apple making sure they fully control the stack down to the hardware and can run any software they want that connects to any external service they desire - such as the CCP, NSA, 3rdPartyAds, etc.)

Maybe, but that's a huge IF. It's assuming

1. JD Vance independent of Trump will have the same policies.

2. JD Vance will have enough popularity for a serious 2028 run. He might fall out favour with Trump as Trump tries to mount a bid for a third term, Trumpism might just generally lose popularity if policies lead to bad outcomes.

3. Dems don't figure their shit out. They should be able to take back some control in mid-terms, and then start to push their own policies, or at least credibly show that the most extreme policies from the exec branch don't have teeth anymore.

Results matter, it's not hard to imagine that Apple considers the real risk of its promise and market position of being the privacy option being undermined by their supply chain risks, and leverage being used against them by privacy unfriendly actors.

> This should be the top comment. Apple are doing business the way business is done, just like last time. Results don’t matter, it’s economic policy via press release. Form over substance.

If the Trump administration has any competence, they will rub those old promises in Apple's face until Cook actually does something meaningful.

[dead]

Salaries are just a small part of the reason industry works in China.

The bigger picture is that China invests in the development of an industrial chain. This has many aspects: infrastructure, education, training, housing, and of course tax incentives. The USA decided to stop investing in practically all of these. Even scientific research, the last area in which the US used to lead, is now in jeopardy from both sides: competition from China and internal cuts.

They could move to Bangladesh or Africa and pay $3k / year. They aren't. China has many advantages beyond cheap wages.

[dead]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company

"The company responded by intensively lobbying the U.S. government to intervene and mounting a misinformation campaign to portray the Guatemalan government as communist.[18] In 1954, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency armed, funded, and trained a military force that deposed the democratically elected government of Guatemala and installed a pro-business military dictatorship.[19]"

This is not a one-time aberration.

> If things keep going the way they are going, that could describe the US just as well in a few short years.

Why do you think so?

I believe the stated purpose of the latest round had to do with fentanyl precursor manufacturing.

Congress needs to step up on this, honestly. The entire idea that the President can unilaterally implement trade policy is as plain a violation of separation of powers I can think of, and SCOTUS is a fan of non-delegation doctrine.

Its not corruption when the president creates US jobs

It is corruption when president outsources and offshores US jobs, though

A couple (from a pool of many) citations:

From the 45 presidency: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-escaped-tariffs-last...

Now: https://9to5mac.com/2024/12/17/analyst-trump-will-waive-appl...

You’re incorrect about history. Mercantilism not only restricted foreign trade, but restricted domestic industrial development by requiring the colonies to sell raw materials to Britain and buy finished goods from the Britain. Tariffs were a core pillar of the Lincoln Republican Party.

There’s been an isolationist wing in tech as long as I’ve been in it (early 2000s). I remember chatting with someone at Cisco/Juniper in the late aughts about Huawei ripping off their router designs down to the silk screening. Of course today Huawei makes their own state of the art routers with their own silicon, and some lower-end Cisco/Juniper gear is white boxed foreign equipment. And of course tech folks were complaining about immigration and outsourcing back in the early 2000s when Republicans were enthusiastically supporting both.

When the people with the money decided it was better spent in places that weren't their own country.

The newborn US imposed a ton of tariffs specifically to escape British control of industry

>> Isn't this why we declared independence in the first place? To get away from the British restricting free trade?

No. I'm not sure where you got that idea. If you look at something like the Boston Tea Party, it wasn't high taxes on tea that were being protested against, it was lowered taxes on tea that undercut the smuggling operations of people like Sam Adams and John Hancock. "No taxation without representation" makes better press than "No undercutting my smuggling operation" though.

In the early years of the US, between 80 and 90 percent of federal revenue came from tariffs. Not exactly free trade.

I want to say “that’s not what isolationism means”, but I realize it starts to feel vague just like the word “fascism”, used when convenient but varies wildly in rhetorical meaning… to be more specific is better, I like what George Washington had to say about it in his farewell address because it shows the nuance of the topic across the spectrum, it’s not as simple as isolation good vs bad:

The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop.

Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.

Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people, under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.

Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice?

It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world, so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But in my opinion it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.

It's always been cool. It's why you can't buy a Kei truck or a BYD car

> When did isolationism become cool?

Ask maybe China.

There was a lot more than that going on and I think you've pretty generally mischaracterized the main problem with the mid-80's era Apple—which had nothing to do with domestic manufacturing and everything to do with not delivering new products that people wanted, at a reasonable price. You can claim overseas manufacturing solved the pricing component of that, but that's not at all clear: other companies were manufacturing in the US at the time and still out-competing Apple.

All of the big PC companies had factories in Texas in the 80's and early 90's, didn't they?

And Dell became a case study of outsourcing everything (and sending your stock and profits soaring the whole time), until you have nothing.

That timeline isn’t even close to accurate. Apple was doing quite well in the 80s when Jobs and Wozniak were there. In the early/mid 90s was when they started going downhill (well after Jobs was gone), and by that time they had already outsourced a lot of their manufacturing (computers in Cork, Ireland and Singapore, and motherboards/components in places like Taiwan).

I don't know about Microsoft, but I'm very clear that the "miracle" operated by Apple was exactly to perfect foreign supply chain at a time when Intel/Dell/HP and others were still heavily focused on the US. The quality of Apple products was already there since the beginning, but they had no way to compete with the PC market until they figured out Asian supply chains.

Developed, sure. Successfully integrated and commercialized, no. Organizations in US and Europe has done a lot of the prerequisite tooling and research. But they haven't successfully integrated it into an operation capable of producing leading nodes, yet.

I would find it hard to believe that there weren’t racial prejudices involved at literally every point of immigration in American history

This need to bend the argument back to the initial English colonization of America is stupid. These mediocre Indian IT drones are not putting everything they own in a boat and washing up here hoping to find a better life. They're the rich B students that could afford the process which become part of an idealized system that American corporations are now bending and exploiting to hire what are essentially indentured servants from a population of people who couldn't get the best jobs in their native country, so they settled on this backup plan.

And they DO have families of their own here (and bring over their in-laws), and a lot of them don't integrate well, for a variety of reasons. At least a third of my neighborhood is Indian. They glare at me on the sidewalk when I wave. And most of them remain inured in their caste system, and are difficult and unpleasant to work with.

Again, all the same arguments about developing our own chips domestically -- which I doubt many people have a problem with -- apply to developing our own, better education pipeline to fully develop domestic software engineers.

First Apple has to prove they have competitive designs. Apple Silicon GPUs simply do not compete with the efficiency of Nvidia's GPU compute architecture: https://browser.geekbench.com/opencl-benchmarks

Apple's obsessive focus with raster efficiency really shot their GPU designs in the foot. It will be interesting to see if they adopt Nvidia-style designs or spend more time trying to force NPU hardware to work.

Nah, surely 80% margins for matrix multiplication on the latest TSMC node will last forever.

Why would Apple want you to have one though?

I think you’re overlooking that the robots require maintenance and facilities which are costlier due to labour costs which will ultimately be passed on to customers.

The US market demand is already depressed. Prices go up, demand will fall further.

Try to impose those prices elsewhere in the world and people will move off of apple products. Apple profits will fall, it will lead to a negative feedback loop.

That could also lead to a depression. I haven't heard a lot of politicians here (Andrew Yang in 2020? does he even count as "a politician"?) with good plans for what to do when automation hits jobs even harder.

In three cities with good weather and they don’t do highways.

For now they are going with the tide, because they don’t want to relocate head office.

If trump’s terrible plans are rolled back there’s no harm.

If they aren’t rolled back they will undergo the costly move to relocate.

The world is a bigger market than USA and just about every other country has cheaper labor and no tariffs.

It’s just logic, I have no emotion tied to this.

That was a typo above (since edited). I meant rare earth materials.

And why hasnt that happen yet instead of Foxconn employing 770K people?

These are the raw materials used by the iPhone

https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/the-metals-inside-your-ipho...

Deepseek seems to prove there's no super secret sauce that makes these models irreproducible outside the US and that the companies here are suffering a bit from the glut of cash/credits leading them to burn tons of extra processing power that could have been optimized away.

The Chinese?

It sounds flippant but the US hasn't got some unassailable moat around chip production or their application.

With the combination of very real geopolitical risk (which was a topic of considerable discussion at a tech conference I attended late last fall) and the current political climate, there's a significant mindset that the US should be pulling back a lot of things to its own borders where practical even if not optimal at the moment.

Tesla makes a lot of promises that it can’t keep and losing money and market share globally.

I doubt Waymo is going to be a big deal in much of the US over the next decade. Even if they do figure out all of the technical issues. People will accept hundreds dying from car crashes. But not one dying from autonomous cars.

> Who can compete with Tesla

BYD says hi.

I'll honestly love to see an Apple Silicon based XServe and comeback of "macOS $VERSION Server" add-on, and maybe an XSAN box.

Doing a Mac Mini sized version for SOHO would be great, too.

One can dream, I guess...