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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? Because barring a Step

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? Because barring a Stephen Glass scenario, what's fascinating here is that no matter which side is right, this is evidence of some sort of mysterious power play. Either Apple was hacked, they know, and are denying, which is evidence of them being under the thumb of U.S. national security. Or, they were hacked and an internal team knows and Cook doesn't, which is evidence of U.S. national security having powerful influence inside of Apple. Or, they weren'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. In all three of those cases, it points to a level of attacker competence that I'm not normally inclined to believe in.

vitalus 8y ago
I don't agree with the "journalistic process being hacked" as being the only line there, as it implies some deliberate power play by bad actors which would omit said integrity. It seems plausible that it's more along the lines of "journalistic process being broken" for this type of article, that all parties might be acting in good faith and that there is some level of misunderstanding.
- htk 8y ago
  There's also the possibility of the malicious part being the journalist himself.
  - dvlsg 8y ago
    Shouldn't part of the journalistic process include making sure one guy isn't going off the rails and making stuff up? I guess that could be part that's broken.
Barrin92 8y ago
You don't need to resort to spooky forces to imagine why Apple wants to deny an attack on their security. It damages the value of the company, especially in a time when they try to market themselves as security conscious.
- tzakrajs 8y ago
  What damages the company more is leadership that lies about or covers up hard truths they are ethically and legally obligated to share. That would be more damning than a breach.
  - Barrin92 8y ago
    and yet PR departments routinely resort to salami tactics or evasion even if they have obviously messed up. This isn't really out of the ordinary, and I think jumping to conclusions about the US government controlling Apple is a bigger leap.
- simonh 8y ago
  If the Bloomberg story is true 30 US companies were targeted by this hack, not just Apple or Amazon. Adding in the government agencies as well that’s a huge number of people who must know about this, at least in the hundreds and possibly over a thousand. In addition there must be thousands of these hacked boards all over the place, including discarded faulty and test units, to be found and checked by experts. There’s no way all of them could have been accounted for. Also if the US was hacked this way, what about other countries? There must be evidence all over the place. For Apple to believe that they could get away with outright bare faced lying about this, they would have to be very confident none of those people across dozens of ogrganisations would either break ranks or mistakenly corroborate the story, and none of the copious physical evidence would ever be found. The question is, do you believe that’s the sort of risk they are likely to take?
moftz 8y ago
Tim Cook would have to know. If there is something like a NSL involved, Apple'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's best interest to only say true things in the press or at least spin things so they aren'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'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.
- freyr 8y ago
  > An NSL compels you to say nothing. You can neither confirm nor deny anything Ordinarily, yes. But what if this was double secret NSL?
  - stephenr 8y ago
    I'm not sure NSL's are like meat/cheese layers on hamburgers. What's the NSL equivalent of adding bacon?
    - Kalium 8y ago
      Prior restraint, I think.
- athrowaway3z 8y ago
  >> its probably against the law for him to outright lie about the situation in the eyes of the SEC Didn't some leaked documents show that a 'shadow' judicial status has been created ( under post 9/11 histeria ) where, in the interest of national security, firms are allowed and even required to lie about things?
dustingetz 8y ago
It could simply be classified
- nradov 8y ago
  That's not how the classification system works.
  - fermienrico 8y ago
    Can you explain more? Why?
  - bitreality 8y ago
    Nobody here knows how these cases truly work. There's some precedent where you can find gag orders, which make people think that Cook would simply go the "No Comment" route, but to assume those are a blanket procedure for everything is incredibly narrow-minded. When it comes to National Security, combined with the most valuable company in the US, all assumptions should be off the table. Apple has many reasons to publicly dismiss the claims: their business in China, their marketing as a security-conscious company, etc. They also operate under immense secrecy. Apple has unmarked buildings, top secret projects, a culture of secrecy within the company. They are the type of company that would have innovative approaches when dealing with national security matters. It would be odd for Tim Cook to knowingly lie about this situation. If definitive proof came out that the chips were bugged and he had knowledge of it, then he could be punished. But, at the same time, if he were able to prove that he lied in the name of National Security, it could be instantly excusable.
    - nradov 8y ago
      This is paranoid nonsense. There is no federal law or precedent which could force a corporate officer to actively lie.
abalone 8y ago
Gruber made a good point: They aren't quite doubling down as hard as they could.[1] They said their reporters spoke with a lot of people and spent a long time on the story. They checked the boxes in the journalistic process, so to speak. But they didn't detail, like, that there was substantial corroboration of specific details like Apple working with the FBI. That leaves open possibilities that it came from just one source or that the reporters mixed up some details. Whereas the company/govt denials are very detailed and clear to rule out any possibility of misinterpretation. Bloomberg's "double down" is nowhere near that level. [1] https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/10/19/cook-calls-for-bloomberg-retraction https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/10/19/cook-calls-for-...
- GCA10 8y ago
  Also in the mix is the possibility that Bloomberg's "17 sources" consist of a only a few that claim first-hand knowledge, supplemented by a larger circle of people who were briefed about it. If so, the rest of the 17 are just echoing what the inner group told them, without having done substantial independent verification.
  - acqq 8y ago
    Out of the 17 at least one says that the Bloomberg’s article “has no sense.” Apparently Bloomberg first just asked him “what kind of attack were possible” he explained to them that and then he reads the article that claims that exactly that kind of attack was actually performed. But he claims that for the stated goals that attack would be the least practical: https://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/18/10/08/security-researcher-cited-in-bloombergs-china-spy-chip-investigation-casts-doubt-on-storys-veracity https://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/18/10/08/security-r...
  - glenra 8y ago
    My guess is that a lot of the 17 are just adding color or confirming individual parts that don't add up to the whole. For instance, they must have had at least one source who told them about the factory with chinese-speaking workers that orders chinese pastries instead of donuts and has separate meetings/announcements for people who don't speak English. Those details help sell the article - and help create an impression that innocuous immigrant workers who enjoy delicious bright yellow pastries are some kind of nefarious 5th column - but do absolutely nothing to establish the central claim. If they had 3 sources on the donuts-and-meetings thing and include those in the 17 that only leaves 14 for the important stuff, and so on. Dial in far enough and I bet there's only one or two dubious sources for the big picture, while everyone else is in their own little information silos not knowing anything but their own part.
pvg 8y ago
this is evidence of some sort of mysterious power play. Why not just 'reporters talked to a bunch of sources and those sources are wrong or were misinterpreted or were given undue weight/credence by the reporters'. It's unusual and the news org processes are supposed to catch this but it's not that hard to imagine them occasionally failing in some mildly improbable way without any kind of 'hacking to an extreme level' or collusion between companies and spooks.
catchaway727 8y ago
The Clinton administration and CIA tried to deny the China-Boeing technology transfer incident. But others in the CIA were concerned, raised the issue and were later proven right. I asked people in the CIA about the Bloomberg story and their response seemed to indicate that the story is real. There’s immense pressure to deny this story for several reasons.
- nipponese 8y ago
  Care to talk about your background?
  - ColanR 8y ago
    Note that's a new account...I assume the answer to your question is no.
- jackconnor 8y ago
  There's zero evidence at all, none, not one example of any of these hacked devices, it's all "someone I know seems to think this story could be real" which is propelling this whole BS forward based on stupid rumors and hearsay rather than actually evidence. Let's hold ourselves to a higher standards here.
- ddebernardy 8y ago
  > I asked people in the CIA about the Bloomberg story and their response seemed to indicate that the story is real. Like the Bloomberg article, your comment is unsourced - or anonymously so, which is only an infinitesimally larger notch better. (But I presume you were merely being sarcastic; or trolling.)
- nil_pointer 8y ago
  China is Apple's most important market. They have a huge motivation to deny it, as it could cost them doing business there.
  - jsoc815 8y ago
vmchale 8y ago
> Either Apple was hacked, they know, and are denying, which is evidence of them being under the thumb of U.S. national security. You'd think the accusers would be able to produce the chip if that were the case. > Or, they were hacked and an internal team knows and Cook doesn't, which is evidence of U.S. national security having powerful influence inside of Apple. More plausible but again - there should be hard evidence of this.
joering2 8y ago
Or they have NSL letter in progress and Cook was forced to ask them for denial, since we throw so many different scenarios without evidence.
monochromatic 8y ago
Smart money is always on the news media being #fakenews.
ConcernedCoder 8y ago
After spending the last 10 months day trading, my gut tells me that it's probably the later case, where Bloomberg is doubling down, their journalistic verification processes would seem to be next to nothing at this point... not only Bloomberg, but many other "news" outlets. I'm saying this because I've noticed quite a few 'hit' pieces, coming out of these "news" agencies that seem to have no other agenda than affecting the price of publicly traded stock in these companies. One moment "this or that" is the worst possible thing that could happen to company A, and the next moment, it's just not as bad as everyone would have you believe... it's like they themselves want to push the stock price down so they can buy cheap shares, and then pump the price back up again so they can sell at a profit... strangest news cycles I've ever seen on this stuff... and it happens repeatedly all the time... analyst A at Financial Institution B "downgrades" stock X, and then sometime later comes a complete reversal...
MaysonL 8y ago
Gruber's theory that someone in the administration wants to turn up the heat on China and is feeding Bloomberg disinformation, while wild, makes the most sense.
- c3534l 8y ago
  You don't even need to go that far. Someone Bloomberg trusted has his own motivations for not being honest. Maybe that individual wanted to stoke fears of China. Or they were having a laugh. I have no way of knowing at this point.
WillPostForFood 8y ago
In the Rolling Stone UVA rape story, they initially backed the reporter when doubts began to arise (not full double down) before backing away when the story began to collapse. It's a good example to consider here - earnest journalist, eager source stretching the truth to either make a point or please the journalist. The story we published was one woman’s account of a sexual assault at a UVA fraternity in October 2012 – and the subsequent ordeal she experienced at the hands of University administrators in her attempts to work her way through the trauma of that evening. The indifference with which her complaint was met was, we discovered, sadly consistent with the experience of many other UVA women who have tried to report such assaults. Through our extensive reporting and fact–checking, we found Jackie to be entirely credible and courageous and we are proud to have given her disturbing story the attention it deserves. Three days later they retracted the story.
davidkassa 8y ago
Late to the thread, but one of the alternate theories I heard was that it's not the US national security asserting influence, but rather the Chinese government as nearly the entire supply chain and manufacturing exists there.

vitalus 8y ago

I don't agree with the "journalistic process being hacked" as being the only line there, as it implies some deliberate power play by bad actors which would omit said integrity. It seems plausible that it's more along the lines of "journalistic process being broken" for this type of article, that all parties might be acting in good faith and that there is some level of misunderstanding.

htk 8y ago
There's also the possibility of the malicious part being the journalist himself.
- dvlsg 8y ago
  Shouldn't part of the journalistic process include making sure one guy isn't going off the rails and making stuff up? I guess that could be part that's broken.

Barrin92 8y ago

You don't need to resort to spooky forces to imagine why Apple wants to deny an attack on their security. It damages the value of the company, especially in a time when they try to market themselves as security conscious.

tzakrajs 8y ago
What damages the company more is leadership that lies about or covers up hard truths they are ethically and legally obligated to share. That would be more damning than a breach.
- Barrin92 8y ago
  and yet PR departments routinely resort to salami tactics or evasion even if they have obviously messed up. This isn't really out of the ordinary, and I think jumping to conclusions about the US government controlling Apple is a bigger leap.
simonh 8y ago
If the Bloomberg story is true 30 US companies were targeted by this hack, not just Apple or Amazon. Adding in the government agencies as well that’s a huge number of people who must know about this, at least in the hundreds and possibly over a thousand. In addition there must be thousands of these hacked boards all over the place, including discarded faulty and test units, to be found and checked by experts. There’s no way all of them could have been accounted for. Also if the US was hacked this way, what about other countries? There must be evidence all over the place. For Apple to believe that they could get away with outright bare faced lying about this, they would have to be very confident none of those people across dozens of ogrganisations would either break ranks or mistakenly corroborate the story, and none of the copious physical evidence would ever be found. The question is, do you believe that’s the sort of risk they are likely to take?

moftz 8y ago

Tim Cook would have to know. If there is something like a NSL involved, Apple'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's best interest to only say true things in the press or at least spin things so they aren'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'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.

freyr 8y ago
> An NSL compels you to say nothing. You can neither confirm nor deny anything Ordinarily, yes. But what if this was double secret NSL?
- stephenr 8y ago
  I'm not sure NSL's are like meat/cheese layers on hamburgers. What's the NSL equivalent of adding bacon?
  - Kalium 8y ago
    Prior restraint, I think.
athrowaway3z 8y ago
>> its probably against the law for him to outright lie about the situation in the eyes of the SEC Didn't some leaked documents show that a 'shadow' judicial status has been created ( under post 9/11 histeria ) where, in the interest of national security, firms are allowed and even required to lie about things?

dustingetz 8y ago

It could simply be classified

nradov 8y ago
That's not how the classification system works.
- fermienrico 8y ago
  Can you explain more? Why?
- bitreality 8y ago
  Nobody here knows how these cases truly work. There's some precedent where you can find gag orders, which make people think that Cook would simply go the "No Comment" route, but to assume those are a blanket procedure for everything is incredibly narrow-minded. When it comes to National Security, combined with the most valuable company in the US, all assumptions should be off the table. Apple has many reasons to publicly dismiss the claims: their business in China, their marketing as a security-conscious company, etc. They also operate under immense secrecy. Apple has unmarked buildings, top secret projects, a culture of secrecy within the company. They are the type of company that would have innovative approaches when dealing with national security matters. It would be odd for Tim Cook to knowingly lie about this situation. If definitive proof came out that the chips were bugged and he had knowledge of it, then he could be punished. But, at the same time, if he were able to prove that he lied in the name of National Security, it could be instantly excusable.
  - nradov 8y ago
    This is paranoid nonsense. There is no federal law or precedent which could force a corporate officer to actively lie.

abalone 8y ago

Gruber made a good point: They aren't quite doubling down as hard as they could.[1] They said their reporters spoke with a lot of people and spent a long time on the story. They checked the boxes in the journalistic process, so to speak. But they didn't detail, like, that there was substantial corroboration of specific details like Apple working with the FBI. That leaves open possibilities that it came from just one source or that the reporters mixed up some details. Whereas the company/govt denials are very detailed and clear to rule out any possibility of misinterpretation. Bloomberg's "double down" is nowhere near that level. [1] https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/10/19/cook-calls-for-bloomberg-retraction https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/10/19/cook-calls-for-...

GCA10 8y ago
Also in the mix is the possibility that Bloomberg's "17 sources" consist of a only a few that claim first-hand knowledge, supplemented by a larger circle of people who were briefed about it. If so, the rest of the 17 are just echoing what the inner group told them, without having done substantial independent verification.
- acqq 8y ago
  Out of the 17 at least one says that the Bloomberg’s article “has no sense.” Apparently Bloomberg first just asked him “what kind of attack were possible” he explained to them that and then he reads the article that claims that exactly that kind of attack was actually performed. But he claims that for the stated goals that attack would be the least practical: https://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/18/10/08/security-researcher-cited-in-bloombergs-china-spy-chip-investigation-casts-doubt-on-storys-veracity https://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/18/10/08/security-r...
- glenra 8y ago
  My guess is that a lot of the 17 are just adding color or confirming individual parts that don't add up to the whole. For instance, they must have had at least one source who told them about the factory with chinese-speaking workers that orders chinese pastries instead of donuts and has separate meetings/announcements for people who don't speak English. Those details help sell the article - and help create an impression that innocuous immigrant workers who enjoy delicious bright yellow pastries are some kind of nefarious 5th column - but do absolutely nothing to establish the central claim. If they had 3 sources on the donuts-and-meetings thing and include those in the 17 that only leaves 14 for the important stuff, and so on. Dial in far enough and I bet there's only one or two dubious sources for the big picture, while everyone else is in their own little information silos not knowing anything but their own part.

pvg 8y ago

this is evidence of some sort of mysterious power play. Why not just 'reporters talked to a bunch of sources and those sources are wrong or were misinterpreted or were given undue weight/credence by the reporters'. It's unusual and the news org processes are supposed to catch this but it's not that hard to imagine them occasionally failing in some mildly improbable way without any kind of 'hacking to an extreme level' or collusion between companies and spooks.

catchaway727 8y ago

The Clinton administration and CIA tried to deny the China-Boeing technology transfer incident. But others in the CIA were concerned, raised the issue and were later proven right. I asked people in the CIA about the Bloomberg story and their response seemed to indicate that the story is real. There’s immense pressure to deny this story for several reasons.

nipponese 8y ago
Care to talk about your background?
- ColanR 8y ago
  Note that's a new account...I assume the answer to your question is no.
jackconnor 8y ago
There's zero evidence at all, none, not one example of any of these hacked devices, it's all "someone I know seems to think this story could be real" which is propelling this whole BS forward based on stupid rumors and hearsay rather than actually evidence. Let's hold ourselves to a higher standards here.
ddebernardy 8y ago
> I asked people in the CIA about the Bloomberg story and their response seemed to indicate that the story is real. Like the Bloomberg article, your comment is unsourced - or anonymously so, which is only an infinitesimally larger notch better. (But I presume you were merely being sarcastic; or trolling.)
nil_pointer 8y ago
China is Apple's most important market. They have a huge motivation to deny it, as it could cost them doing business there.
- jsoc815 8y ago

vmchale 8y ago

> Either Apple was hacked, they know, and are denying, which is evidence of them being under the thumb of U.S. national security. You'd think the accusers would be able to produce the chip if that were the case. > Or, they were hacked and an internal team knows and Cook doesn't, which is evidence of U.S. national security having powerful influence inside of Apple. More plausible but again - there should be hard evidence of this.

joering2 8y ago

Or they have NSL letter in progress and Cook was forced to ask them for denial, since we throw so many different scenarios without evidence.

monochromatic 8y ago

Smart money is always on the news media being #fakenews.

ConcernedCoder 8y ago

After spending the last 10 months day trading, my gut tells me that it's probably the later case, where Bloomberg is doubling down, their journalistic verification processes would seem to be next to nothing at this point... not only Bloomberg, but many other "news" outlets. I'm saying this because I've noticed quite a few 'hit' pieces, coming out of these "news" agencies that seem to have no other agenda than affecting the price of publicly traded stock in these companies. One moment "this or that" is the worst possible thing that could happen to company A, and the next moment, it's just not as bad as everyone would have you believe... it's like they themselves want to push the stock price down so they can buy cheap shares, and then pump the price back up again so they can sell at a profit... strangest news cycles I've ever seen on this stuff... and it happens repeatedly all the time... analyst A at Financial Institution B "downgrades" stock X, and then sometime later comes a complete reversal...

MaysonL 8y ago

Gruber's theory that someone in the administration wants to turn up the heat on China and is feeding Bloomberg disinformation, while wild, makes the most sense.

c3534l 8y ago
You don't even need to go that far. Someone Bloomberg trusted has his own motivations for not being honest. Maybe that individual wanted to stoke fears of China. Or they were having a laugh. I have no way of knowing at this point.

WillPostForFood 8y ago

In the Rolling Stone UVA rape story, they initially backed the reporter when doubts began to arise (not full double down) before backing away when the story began to collapse. It's a good example to consider here - earnest journalist, eager source stretching the truth to either make a point or please the journalist. The story we published was one woman’s account of a sexual assault at a UVA fraternity in October 2012 – and the subsequent ordeal she experienced at the hands of University administrators in her attempts to work her way through the trauma of that evening. The indifference with which her complaint was met was, we discovered, sadly consistent with the experience of many other UVA women who have tried to report such assaults. Through our extensive reporting and fact–checking, we found Jackie to be entirely credible and courageous and we are proud to have given her disturbing story the attention it deserves. Three days later they retracted the story.

davidkassa 8y ago

Late to the thread, but one of the alternate theories I heard was that it's not the US national security asserting influence, but rather the Chinese government as nearly the entire supply chain and manufacturing exists there.