I find that theory very problematic though, because A: it's not terribly necessary B: the government did not particularly jump on this as it would have if this was coordinated propaganda, and let's be honest C: if you want to make that case there's probably 25 equally large, true stories that could be published if the intelligence agencies were willing to burn a few sources or something as they seemed to in this story. It's not as if the espionage status-quo is "nobody's hacking anybody else, because everyone's afraid of the consequences if they do"; what public evidence we have suggests the status quo is more akin to a free-for-all.

Heck, just the HN replies to previous discussion on this story had some comments from people who had jobs for a while detecting espionage on their boards, which were created precisely because some was found prior to that. For instance: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18138699 You could make more hay with that story than a faked-up one. There's no need to lie for propaganda's sake, because the truth would be more than adequate! (The propaganda element would be in the spin and claims about the scale of the problem, not the brute facts, which certainly exist.)

If this ever was government propaganda, they changed their mind before finishing the job and hung Bloomberg out to dry.

At the moment, the best theory that seems to fit all the facts, including the comments from people who were interviewed for the story, is a not-sufficiently-technical reporter very motivated to tell this story (perhaps because of the reward for stories that move the markets?) who compounded confusion upon confusion in a domain they were suffering from Dunning-Kruger until they were able to write that story. And presumably, similar problems in the fact-checking and editorial staff. I'm still not guaranteeing this, but I'm giving it at least 75% at this point.

I like this answer the best but your comment about the government setting up Bloomberg does make me wonder. Bloomberg (the man) may very well be preparing to challenge Trump for the presidency and this could all be the Trump administration playing games.

I'm all for globalism but that's one area where the best strategy is probably to keep production inside the borders. Not that I'd condone misleading the press to create a case for the legislation.

Yes, manufacture the high security chips on one of the many 7nm fabs in the US.

I suppose it also follows that the fab and design should be staffed only as NOFORN? That rules out the lead on the Apple silicon team.

I don’t think you understand how this works. This isn’t a nationalism vs globalism thing.

You're the one that jumped from no foreign production to no "foreign" employees. Of course there's a difference between a factory operating under the supervision of the People's Liberation Army and an immigrant working in a lead role at a company.

My comment is basically a pre-reaction to nationalists who would want to use this situation as an excuse to bring as much manufacturing work home as possible, even if it doesn't make sense (and if this were all a ruse, it would be a good way to get the White House on board.) Granted, it would also be pretty dumb to trust your adversary (from a national defence perspective) to build your weapons for you. Which is what the US is doing to a certain degree. Of course this is about globalism, because it's what lead to this situation in the first place. But nationalism, importantly, is not the solution. That's what I hope people take away from this.

Who is the adversary, though? You assume chinese nationals in the PLA are. Are chinese nationals in California working for Apple the enemy, too? What about chinese nationals in China not in the PLA that just work on the line?

My point via the contrived example is they countries are fictions and so is citizenship and presence in one or “possession” of one is no way a litmus test for “adversary” or even a reasonable proxy.

“China” isn’t a person, and so “China” can’t be an adversary. (Even if it could, that would be dumb, for reasons explained above.)

It's also "the exact kind of story you would want" in order to:

  - PR a HW verification firm.
  - manipulate a stock
  - and many more

The reason I'm wildly speculating in this particular direction is that Bloomberg is claiming lots of unspecified high level government employees are their source.