Repeating myself from another thread but… China. Conjecture, admittedly: 1. Apple cannot lose the Chinese market. Huge and more important fastest growing geo

Repeating myself from another thread but… China. Conjecture, admittedly: 1. Apple cannot lose the Chinese market. Huge and more important fastest growing geo for the company. 2. China is self deprecating elements of its own tech sector (aggressive crackdowns on both established companies like tencent and Alibaba as well as individual web sites). They are clearly cleaning house from a surveillance and control perspective. Apple is not immune, but it’s an American behemoth, so open door crackdowns are impossible. I don’t think Apple’s CSAM push and China’s crackdown are purely coincidental. Who can argue with stemming child abuse? It’s the type of hot button issue that affords broad acceptance for intrusive tech. The leap from scanning for abuse to scanning for anti regime content is more like a tiny step. It seems obvious from afar that the company adamant about refusal to unlock a potential terrorist’s iPhone on privacy principles (with the attendant marketing benefits) would so suddenly force push (and therefore ensure collection massive training data with or without opt-in for Chinas v2.0) such a boldly invasive feature addition. Turns out vertical integration is both gift and curse (dependent on the whims of the integrator) for on-device privacy and autonomy.