The way that Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio so meaningfully resisted the government that he was convicted of insider trading for telling people his company would be successful when it actually relied on a government contract that was pulled in retaliation, which he couldn't use as a defense in court because of national security concerns? For which he served four years in prison, and Qwest no longer exists? That sort of meaningfully resist?

The message to me from that case is clear—if the US government tells you to jump, you answer, how high.

You had to go back 12 years for your example. I think that speaks pretty loudly to the differences between countries.

Correct, it's been twelve years. Nacchio was the most recent person stupid enough to say no to the US government. They made an example of him. In recent years, US telecom CEOs know they should quietly say yes, and not put up a fight.

Hmmm, didn't Apple through Tim Cook resist the US government regarding the unlocking of iPhone's?

No, this is totally different.

There is no reason to believe that the NSA doesn’t have the ability to access iPhones [0]. Either through explicit help from Apple or otherwise.

Tim Cook’s stance was within the fiction of constitutional order. The FBI wanted to pretend that they couldn’t access the phone and bully Apple to give them access. This is to:

1. Legitimize their own access 2. Be able to, more easily, use the courts to punish someone (instead of droning a foreigner)

That last one is important. The DEA is known to use (unconstitutional) parallel construction to prosecute drug smugglers. If they have legitimate access to your phone, it’s easier to pretend that they obtained their evidence legitimately.

Tim Cook also has an interest in maintaining the aura that iPhones protect your safety. There’s no reason for you to believe that w/out having the source.

[0] or do you believe that no one working on the iPhone has secrets that the NSA can’t leverage? Or that the richest security service can’t manufacture custom chips as needed to clone the devices SSD? Or hasn’t capped the chips in the iPhone already? Or run it through the most through fuzzer?

Right now there are companies that want to sell to Hussein, but a single executive directive can stop that.

He’d get a bullet in China.

>US companies can meaningfully resist the US government

That doesn't seem to be the case but the narrative. There were enough leaks, document dumps, and whistleblower revelations to dismiss this narrative.

Sure, for the US having competition is a problem but sometimes the US citizen should zoom out on Maps and Google some labels they see. Literally, most of the people do not live in the USA and you can confirm that by Googling labels in the maps, things like "France", "Germany", "Turkey", "Azerbaican", "China", "Japan". You will notice that these are lands that are somewhat similar to the USA but are not the USA but using the stuff made or operated in the USA.

For people looking from that part of the world, the "Chinese are spying on us" panic is met with "Oh really, that's so bad. Poor thing" level of simphaty.

"meaningfully resist" are there many examples of that? I remember Qwest CEO meaningfully resisting did not work out too well.

The US has a national security letters. There is no meaningfully resisting. You do what they say and cant tell anyone about it.

>US companies can meaningfully resist the US government

This ideation is moot if there are members of the US government on staff, committed to 'finishing the patriotic mission' of their spook-agency masters.

> I don't think anti Chinese sentiment [...]

I don't see any. The 'anti-' prefix is about human rights, possible issues of IP theft and various immoral activities etc. It's the behaviour, emphatically not the country.

> China exists and its not going to disappear

Good. It would be a genuine loss to all humanity's heritage if it did.