Cook came from a PC maker. The game played against Apple for decades prior to that point was Microsoft racing all of the PC makers in China against Apple. So to

Cook came from a PC maker. The game played against Apple for decades prior to that point was Microsoft racing all of the PC makers in China against Apple. So to prevent Google from doing that with iPad and iPhone, Cook bought up all the manufacturing capacity in China, leaving virtually none for Android (or Windows Mobile or WebOS) devices. To navigate out of China politics, the “mastermind” now has to do something that would have been ridiculous to an earlier version of himself —recreate that capacity elsewhere. Better this way, as Microsoft, Google and Amazon are all large enough to do it themselves now (and shut Apple out again, especially if China is taken away from them by the government).