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@carnage4life China wanted Google and Facebook to have their data centers there, always under the Damocles’ sword of national security subpoenas etc.—that’s why they left. Apple and Teslas only make their stuff in China, and the business continuity threat to these hardware companies is totally different.

I don’t think this is at all a fair comparison.

@22 People should stop leaping in to defend a $3 trillion mega corporation and instead do an ounce of research.

https://9to5mac.com/2023/01/18/apples-relationship-with-china-2/

@carnage4life absolutely, I wouldn’t at all defend Apple or Tesla, the manufacturing relationship makes hardware makers much more vulnerable to state pressure than pure data/software companies (the capex locked up ).

My goal was to say, all Facebook and Google have is their data. That’s the bulk of their business portfolio. If they need to onshore the data centers and those are nationalized, that’s a qualitatively worse type of threat than seizing factories, even if factories are much more expensive and give states much more leverage?

But I’m totally open to the possibility that this data-Vs-factory calculus is flawed. You’ve probably thought about this a lot more than me.

Edit: as an investor, I applaud everyone’s decision here: I support FB and Google’s decision to not engage, and I support Apple’s decision to build the manufacturing relationships and now diversify them (I suppose I own some Tesla shares thru some index funds )