Secure phones

I've read a few stories over the past week about China banning iPhones in Government roles.

Naïvely, I thought it might be to do with surveillance from the US, but John Gruber's inside baseball interpolation makes it clear:

How much of it is nationalism — the CCP turning up the dial on the inherently jingoist mindset of a police state — and how much of it, if any, is about the fact that iPhones are secure, and their security is outside the reach of the CCP? The Chinese government surely wants to surveil what government employees do on their phones, and iPhones make that harder.

The talk of global business politics near the end of the article is equally as fascinating:

Perhaps China feels free to antagonize Apple out of the belief that Apple cannot eliminate its dependence upon Chinese manufacturing. But even if that’s true, the message to other companies (say, carmakers) eyeing a move to Chinese assembly would be this: once you grow dependent upon China we’ll screw you like we screwed Apple. China’s intended message to the world isn’t merely that they’re the most capable nation for manufacturing, it’s that they’re also a trustworthy and dependable partner.

This sandbagging of Apple regarding iPhone usage by government employees says the opposite: that China cannot be trusted as a partner.

Link: https://daringfireball.net/2023/09/china_apple_cold_war