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In an Unprecedented Move, Apple CEO Tim Cook Calls For Bloomberg To Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story (buzzfeednews.com)
John Paczkowski and Joseph Bernstein, reporting for BuzzFeed News: Apple CEO Tim Cook, in an interview with BuzzFeed News, went on the record for the first time to deny allegations that the company was the victim of a hardware-based attack carried out by the Chinese government. And, in an unprecedented move for the company, he called for a retraction of the story that made this claim. Earlier this month Bloomberg Businessweek published an investigation alleging Chinese spies had compromised some 30 US companies by implanting malicious chips into Silicon Valley bound servers during their manufacture in China. The chips, Bloomberg reported, allowed the attackers to create "a stealth doorway" into any network running on a server in which they were embedded. Apple was alleged to be among the companies attacked, and a focal point of the story. [...] "We turned the company upside down," Cook said. "Email searches, datacenter records, financial records, shipment records. We really forensically whipped through the company to dig very deep and each time we came back to the same conclusion: This did not happen. There's no truth to this." A Bloomberg spokesperson said, "We stand by our story and are confident in our reporting and sources."
Nope. You don't understand how US civil suits work.
The plaintiff (Apple/Amazon) only needs to demonstrate that it was harmed and what was said by the defendant was untrue. BUT Bloomberg is a journalistic entity, so the plaintiff is also required to "prove" malicious intent in order to win the lawsuit. It is exceedingly difficult to successfully sue news media in the US.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
you also lose a bit of secrecy if you sue. suddenly things get opened up (even if it's behind an NDA) that you don't necessarily want opened up.
Assuming it's false. And if it is false, why isn't Apple out there actually proving that it's false, rather than oh-so-gently asking for a retraction (pretty please)?
And how do you prove that something never happened? Bloomberg claims that at least three Apple employees informed them that compromised server were found. Both Bloomberg and Apple say that Bloomberg then informed Apple, Apple investigated, and found no evidence of any of this happening. They don't even know which employees, so they can't even ask them. So, there is a giant conspiracy to keep Apple upper management from finding out about this or there is a giant conspiracy keeping not just all Apple employees that know about this from speaking out publically, but also the other "almost 30 companies" that these chips were also found out according to Bloomberg, including Amazon, Elemental, and the US government. Plus the security company in Canada that supposedly found the chips in question when Amazon found strangeness and sent them to be checked out. Amazon has also stated they have found no evidence of this ever happening and have no idea what Bloomberg is talking about, right in the original article.