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>most likely came from a ton of rumors that got conflated, hence why they had to go with anonymous sources Just noting that anonymous sources aren't unknown so

>most likely came from a ton of rumors that got conflated, hence why they had to go with anonymous sources Just noting that anonymous sources aren't unknown sources — if Bloomberg says that these are people working in US Intelligence then they've very likely validated it, but are protecting their identities by request. Also worth noting that Amazon and Apple have a tremendous amount to lose here. That doesn't mean they're lying, but based no what we know, they have more incentive to lie than Bloomberg does. Also possible that they're already working with the government and have been asked to lie about it due to national security. Totally possible that Bloomberg was intentionally mislead or flat-out wrong either way. It just sounds like they've done the due diligence of checking with an abundance of sources, so it would be odd. They've made mistakes before, but I don't know that they've ever made one of this magnitude. The decision to publish or not publish a story like this isn't something that one person working at Bloomberg does on a whim, many people are involved. All other things aside, I tend to trust journalists more than corporations. There's not a lot of room to jump to a conclusion either way. Very solid 'maybe' territory all around.

paxys 8y ago
While something like this will no doubt be damaging to some large American tech companies, it is way worse for China. Are they really going to potentially devastate their entire economy over the long term over such an easy to detect hack?
- mschuster91 8y ago
  > Are they really going to potentially devastate their entire economy over the long term over such an easy to detect hack? That didn't make the NSA afraid of targeted interception campaigns. I believe that secret services are doing everything we normal people dream of already, including stuff such as the hardware injections either in the Supermicro case or in the stuff the NSA did, and a good bunch more which we don't even know of yet. Cyber warfare is all too real now.
- stupidbird 8y ago
  We already know that they're constantly trying to hack American IP. Our economies are symbiotic. Hurting theirs would be hurting our own.
polemic 8y ago
> they have more incentive to lie than Bloomberg does The other way around. Apple and Amazon have very strong incentives to tell the truth. This has significant implications for their business (i.e. stock price) and if there is one thing that executives want to avoid, it's SEC filings based on false information given to the market. Meanwhile, Bloomberg has the reputation of journalists with patchy histories of security news reporting. Perhaps they've been fed a line by government sources, but there is little financial incentive to fix any errors.
simonh 8y ago
Let’s size up the options. Bloomberg is wrong. Apple and Amazing have every incentive to strongly deny the story. Bloomberg is right. Multiple employees up to executive level at 30 US companies and the government know about it and are actively leaking to Bloomberg about it. Numerous boards are out there at 30+ companies as physical evidence. There’s no way Apple and Amazon could risk denying this so strongly. It’s already being widely leaked - according to Bloomberg - the cat is well and truly out of the bag and wailing it’s ass off. It just doesn’t make any sense for Apple and Amazon to put their reputations on the line in that second scenario.
- c3534l 8y ago
  Or the government told them to strongly deny the allegations and the fact that the government can do that is just one of the many powers that we already know get granted to intelligence agencies in secret by rubber-stamp classified court systems not held publicly accountable and already infamous for suppressing criticism of their practices under the guise of national security. If the three letter agencies don't want Bloomberg reporting on a hardware hack, they already have the power to tell Amazon and Apple that they can't legally confirm the story. I see no plausible reason why they couldn't get a judge to tell them they had to make it look sincere.
  - jedieaston 8y ago
    Apple has been known to use warrant canaries and other methods of communicating when they have had to cooperate with intelligence bureaus. They've never come out and lied because the government told them to, at least, not that has been proven.
  - jsjohnst 8y ago
    Do a search on the case law around “compelled speech”. tl;dr the government can force you to not talk, but they can’t force you to blatantly lie either. As an example, check out the difference between the denials of PRISM vs this.
- stupidbird 8y ago
  If they were instructed to do so by the government they would not really have a choice, which would very likely produce leaks. If true, this is vastly different from the government requesting a backdoor or various warrant canaries, this would be an actual national security threat.

paxys 8y ago

While something like this will no doubt be damaging to some large American tech companies, it is way worse for China. Are they really going to potentially devastate their entire economy over the long term over such an easy to detect hack?

mschuster91 8y ago
> Are they really going to potentially devastate their entire economy over the long term over such an easy to detect hack? That didn't make the NSA afraid of targeted interception campaigns. I believe that secret services are doing everything we normal people dream of already, including stuff such as the hardware injections either in the Supermicro case or in the stuff the NSA did, and a good bunch more which we don't even know of yet. Cyber warfare is all too real now.
stupidbird 8y ago
We already know that they're constantly trying to hack American IP. Our economies are symbiotic. Hurting theirs would be hurting our own.

polemic 8y ago

> they have more incentive to lie than Bloomberg does The other way around. Apple and Amazon have very strong incentives to tell the truth. This has significant implications for their business (i.e. stock price) and if there is one thing that executives want to avoid, it's SEC filings based on false information given to the market. Meanwhile, Bloomberg has the reputation of journalists with patchy histories of security news reporting. Perhaps they've been fed a line by government sources, but there is little financial incentive to fix any errors.

simonh 8y ago

Let’s size up the options. Bloomberg is wrong. Apple and Amazing have every incentive to strongly deny the story. Bloomberg is right. Multiple employees up to executive level at 30 US companies and the government know about it and are actively leaking to Bloomberg about it. Numerous boards are out there at 30+ companies as physical evidence. There’s no way Apple and Amazon could risk denying this so strongly. It’s already being widely leaked - according to Bloomberg - the cat is well and truly out of the bag and wailing it’s ass off. It just doesn’t make any sense for Apple and Amazon to put their reputations on the line in that second scenario.

c3534l 8y ago
Or the government told them to strongly deny the allegations and the fact that the government can do that is just one of the many powers that we already know get granted to intelligence agencies in secret by rubber-stamp classified court systems not held publicly accountable and already infamous for suppressing criticism of their practices under the guise of national security. If the three letter agencies don't want Bloomberg reporting on a hardware hack, they already have the power to tell Amazon and Apple that they can't legally confirm the story. I see no plausible reason why they couldn't get a judge to tell them they had to make it look sincere.
- jedieaston 8y ago
  Apple has been known to use warrant canaries and other methods of communicating when they have had to cooperate with intelligence bureaus. They've never come out and lied because the government told them to, at least, not that has been proven.
- jsjohnst 8y ago
  Do a search on the case law around “compelled speech”. tl;dr the government can force you to not talk, but they can’t force you to blatantly lie either. As an example, check out the difference between the denials of PRISM vs this.
stupidbird 8y ago
If they were instructed to do so by the government they would not really have a choice, which would very likely produce leaks. If true, this is vastly different from the government requesting a backdoor or various warrant canaries, this would be an actual national security threat.