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I think its fucking fabulous. At a society level, companies and billionaires are outsourcing every goddamn thing they can to anywhere but America and Americans

I think its fucking fabulous. At a society level, companies and billionaires are outsourcing every goddamn thing they can to anywhere but America and Americans, and unfortunately that extends to other Western nations as well now. They only got pissed off because for once, the little guy was winning here and outsmarted the greedy sons of bitches. If you want a powerful Western society, you have to pay Western residents Western wages. Now China is on the rise and clearly the most dangerous threat not just to the United States, but the rest of the Western world, but no one sees it because they want their $999 iPhone that would be $1999 if it were actually assembled in California by people asking for a measly $15 an hour.

zdragnar 6y ago
I'm pretty sure they were pissed off because they are a "critical infrastructure" company whose employee exfiltrated their entire source code. Not to mention, if they were doing any government work, they may have inadvertently let in foreign actors- not great for "critical infrastructure" since management aren't likely to have been the worst hurt had anything gone more wrong. Bear in mind he was getting a 6 figure salary- he was hardly the little guy making under $15 an hour.
xnyan 6y ago
There’s no way that assembly in California or anywhere else in the US would even come close to doubling the price of an iPhone. Assembly cost is not that high[1]. [1]https://www.technologyreview.com/2016/06/09/159456/the-all-american-iphone/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2016/06/09/159456/the-all-a...
- mhh__ 6y ago
  I think the issue would be literally finding the supply chain and engineers to actually make it work.
  - xnyan 6y ago
    Basically, "all" (haha) you have to do to make this happen is hire people who have have already implemented the process you want to replicate somewhere else and then put them under people who have operated comparable industry in your target country of manufacture. I've seen people do it with various degrees of success, IMO it's never worth trying without a really good reason (eg you have a brand advantage for being made in the Japan/Germany/Switzerland/USA and etc) which sometimes you do. I've been a part of electronics manufacturing and I absolutely agree that moving this kind of manufacture has never really been done in the US (specifically, moving an assembly process developed and executed in the east to the USA) especially for a product as complex as a smartphone. That said, I've seen it done at a small scale several times and generally I can say it's quite possible to do it, as long as you can accept a premium of 5-15%.

zdragnar 6y ago

I'm pretty sure they were pissed off because they are a "critical infrastructure" company whose employee exfiltrated their entire source code. Not to mention, if they were doing any government work, they may have inadvertently let in foreign actors- not great for "critical infrastructure" since management aren't likely to have been the worst hurt had anything gone more wrong. Bear in mind he was getting a 6 figure salary- he was hardly the little guy making under $15 an hour.

xnyan 6y ago

There’s no way that assembly in California or anywhere else in the US would even come close to doubling the price of an iPhone. Assembly cost is not that high[1]. [1]https://www.technologyreview.com/2016/06/09/159456/the-all-american-iphone/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2016/06/09/159456/the-all-a...

mhh__ 6y ago
I think the issue would be literally finding the supply chain and engineers to actually make it work.
- xnyan 6y ago
  Basically, "all" (haha) you have to do to make this happen is hire people who have have already implemented the process you want to replicate somewhere else and then put them under people who have operated comparable industry in your target country of manufacture. I've seen people do it with various degrees of success, IMO it's never worth trying without a really good reason (eg you have a brand advantage for being made in the Japan/Germany/Switzerland/USA and etc) which sometimes you do. I've been a part of electronics manufacturing and I absolutely agree that moving this kind of manufacture has never really been done in the US (specifically, moving an assembly process developed and executed in the east to the USA) especially for a product as complex as a smartphone. That said, I've seen it done at a small scale several times and generally I can say it's quite possible to do it, as long as you can accept a premium of 5-15%.