Why Didn't the Founding Fathers Address These Problems Right at the Start?

Howdy.

I am working on part two of my OSINT column, which details my quest to find the pickup truck that nearly killed my dad and brother last week.

Things have also been hectic on my news beat in Southern Orange County regarding ICE. As you know, DHS and ICE want to establish a concentration camp just under ten minutes from my parents' house.

ICE has now also stealthily set up offices in nearby New Windsor, and no one, including the town supervisor, was aware of it.

I’m trying to catch my breath. There’s a lot to cover and write about, and I’m just one person.

That’s why this episode’s show notes were delayed; they should have run on Friday morning. To make it up to you, I’ll share a section I cut from How to Protect Yourself From Fascists & Weirdos, a free book available as a PDF or MP3 when you sign up for our newsletter. The book has a maximum of 20,000 words, and I exceeded that limit.

To trim it down and keep it more focused on actual tactics, I had to remove portions like the one below. However, just because this section won’t be in the final book doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it. I’ll share another cut section with you next week—if not sooner.

Before we get to that, though, I want to point out that we don’t cover the material below from the book excerpt in this week’s episode.

This week’s episode discusses the billions of dollars Apple has poured into China, enabling Xi Jinping’s authoritarian rule. It’s a compelling story expertly covered by Patrick McGee, the author of Apple in China. Patrick joined us to discuss how guilty we should all feel for purchasing Apple products and much more. You can listen to the episode by pressing play above or, of course, on your favorite podcasting app. The show notes for today’s episode are below the excerpt from How to Protect Yourself From Fascists & Weirdos.

"Truth, Justice, and the American Way."

The truth about America is that we have never treated everyone equally. That's acknowledged in the preamble of the Constitution, where it says, "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union..." Since this was a document written by lawyers, it's important to take note of the wording: "more perfect," not "perfect." This is a follow-up to the Declaration of Independence, which states, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

Again, take a look at that wording: pursuit of happiness, not happiness. Both documents acknowledge that the proto-country—and then the actual country—had flaws—big ones. However, it should be acknowledged that the Founding Fathers, despite any flaws, crafted both documents with an eye toward the future. With hope that their words may eventually become true. And then safeguarded by a virtuous citizenry. One that puts our shared humanity above any toxic political ideology.

This is especially important to note after the killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota, in January of 2026. The philosophy of the fascists and weirdos is that a multi-racial, multi-ethnic Democracy cannot work — not in America, not anywhere in the world — because our differences will make us tear each other apart. That the people who say they believe in such things are only "virtue signaling," and don't really believe them. Renee Good and Alex Pretti, as well as Marimar Martinez, who is a US Citizen that was shot in Chicago by CBP and then falsely smeared as a terrorist — and any more heroes like them to come — have demonstrated the beliefs of the fascists and weirdos to be false. Americans, and those around the world, overwhelmingly love and care for their neighbors, regardless of who they are or where they came from. And we've all seen the footage to prove it.

Never forget that while the ICE officers who shot and killed Pretti and Good then mocked their victims, Good had said to to her murderer, "I'm not mad at you." Her killer called her a "fucking bitch." Pretti's last words were to the woman he saved from their savagery, asking her if she was ok. His killers taunted the people still filming his murder after they shot him.

Americans have demonstrated, through three of the largest mass mobilizations in our history in 2025 — with Hands Off and both No Kings events — that matter how precarious our own lives may be, that we will come out for our neighbors and total strangers because we are the virtuous citizens our Founders dreamed of.

That brings us to a question that always come up. Why didn't the Founding Fathers just address these problems right at the start? Why did our first president, George Washington, own slaves and enforce such horrors as the Fugitive Slave Act? All while simultaneously writing to John Mercer in 1786 to say that he “never meant ... to possess another slave by purchase; it being among my first wishes to see some plan adopted by which slavery in this country may be abolished."

First, we have to cut off people who will say Washington and Lincoln were "men of their time." Back when both men lived, there were plenty of people who thought slavery should have been abolished, that we live in peace with each tribe we could, and that women should have the right to vote. And both men did shitty things. We mentioned the Fugitive Slave Act already with Washington; and in Lincoln's case, he oversaw America's largest mass execution. Which saw 38 Sioux men hanged. (To his credit, far more would have died had Lincoln not intervened, saving 265 of them. When Lincoln was told he should have hanged more, after protests broke out upon him giving clemency to the 265 Sioux, Lincoln is claimed to have said, "I could not afford to hang men for votes.")

So don't listen to people who try to explain away stuff like slavery and genocide by saying "they were men of their time." They all knew what was going on around them, and that it was wrong.

But ... George Washington and Abraham Lincoln grew and changed over time in their opinions and beliefs. Remember: We're not talking about fictional characters here. As hot as Wonder Woman is, she's always going to be Wonder Woman. She doesn't change. She's a construct. And if she does change, it's only until the readers lose interest. Then she's right back to classic Wonder Woman. (For proof of this, go to DuckDuckGo and look up Wonder Woman comics from the 1960s where she's just doing some James Bond shit for like, a decade.) What Wonder Woman was in 1941 is what she will be in 2041. In teaching history, often we tend to think of people like Washington and Lincoln in the same way we think about Wonder Woman. But real people aren't constructs. We all have the capacity to wake up tomorrow and choose to do things differently. Washington's opinions changed based on his lived experience. So did Lincolns. This doesn't explain away or excuse anything, it's just important to understand that history is filled with messy, unattractive people who don't often wear leotards to work. Contradictions abound.

But, and this is really important, all because we have the capacity to change doesn't mean some people will. Getting those people to change takes time, patience, opportunity, money, friendship, and love. Something we can be tricked into thinking there's a short supply of. That's to the benefit of the fascists and weirdos, who want us all competing with each other, and saying such cliched, unimaginative things like "it's a dog eat dog world out there." No. It isn't. Cannibalism among dogs is pretty rare, and the minority of people who thrive in a ruthless environment want to do what they can to keep the environment that way. Otherwise, all the people they stepped on could come back and take their spot. Put another way, allowing all of us to be tricked into thinking it's a "dog eat dog world," for a tiny minority of people, is how you get the global climate emergency that'll eventually kill us all.

Fascism is dependent on revisionist history to spread its corrosive "winner take all" ideology. For that reason, we need to get oriented as to where we are and how we got here.

America Version 1.0: 1609 to 1788

This period, commonly taught in school as the Colonial Era through the Revolutionary War, includes the staggering achievement of the ratification of our Constitution. To put this in modern terms, the success of the Americans against the British, and then forming their own successful nation, is like if your high school football team, with you as their quarterback, defeated Tom Brady and his cheating Patriots. Or if you don't like sports metaphors, imagine if an enormous bug flew into your lap and the two of you switched places like Freaky Friday. Now imagine learning that bug is somehow better at managing your responsibilities than you are. America's success had the same kind of odds. Remember that the next time someone tells you overthrowing a fascist is impossible. Little in this world is. And things stay the way they are only when we let them.

Regrettably, America 1.0 is also when America's project of genocide, colonialism, and slavery begins. Worse still, they never really end either. The three just kind of mutate and remain a cancerous part of America's DNA. Egged on by the 30% of the population who support that kind of behavior. This 30% worships a non-existent version of the past and believes in a world where White Anglo-Saxon Protestant men rule. To them, a multiracial, multi-ethnic democracy was and remains something to be feared. Not embraced. That's how you wind up with words like "woke" and "DEI" being used as slurs, instead of principles we should defend. Ones meant to counteract that cancerous part of our DNA. That 30% was there at the start. They'll be there at the end too, but so will we.

This is a pet hypothesis of mine, and I think smarter people out there can and should test this. But here it is: There's always been about 30% to 35% of the American population that consists of what we call fascists and weirdos.

You see them consistently and statistically in poll after poll involving Lord Goldemort. No matter what crazy thing he said or did, there was always 30% to 35% of Americans who support it. These are the fascists and weirdos we're talking about in this book. We are not talking about your neighbor who may be conservative. We are not talking about the person who voted for Lord Goldemort because they were upset about the high cost of living. We are not talking about people who voted for him because they thought the three alternatives in 2016, 2020, and 2024 sucked. We're not talking about those people when we talk about the fascists and weirdos. When we say "fascists & weirdos" we're talking specifically about the 30% "ride or die" supporters who back every single crazy thing. No matter what. Why? Because to them, it's not about politics. It's not about immigration. It's about war. To them, it's about a toxic social identity—MAGA, Groypers, whatever the White Supremacists want to call themselves by the time you read this. The name will change, but the hate will remain. This 30% believes it's at war with the rest of America.

The truth of the matter is that White Supremacists have been around since the beginning of America. That's why we're discussing them here at the top. And throughout our history, every time they've popped up, we've smacked them back down. Until 2025. Then they smacked back. And for once, it wasn't in the form of domestic terrorism—the thing they frequently accuse peaceful protestors of—because as the FBI itself said in 2022, that white supremacists are "the primary threat" to the citizens of the United States. According to the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism's Global Terrorism Database, white supremacists have killed more people than so-called "Islamic extremists" since 9/11. 80% of murders in the United States linked to extremists have been tied directly to white supremacists, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

In one poll taken in March of 2025, the PEW Research Center pointed out that 32% of Americans wanted all immigrants in the country illegally to be deported. A Gallup Poll published on November 18th, 2024, showed that 33% of Americans wanted no change to gun control laws. Now, granted, you can make polls say whatever you want. Depending on how you word the question. That's why polls are generally considered unreliable, unless you're a political or marketing consultant with something to sell. You can also pick and choose which polls you want to use, leaving out others with more inconvenient numbers. However, we offer this hypothesis because of the consistency demonstrated by that 30% for Lord Goldemort over the last decade. Regardless of the source of the poll, we bet you can, and will, see this for yourself in any future polls released as long as he's around.

America Version 2.0: 1798 to 1861

This is what you usually breeze through in school, which is a problem because this period explains how we wound up where we are today. It starts with America's first, not definitely not the last, law targeting immigrants: The Alien and Sedition Act. And the era ends with the beginning of the Civil War at Fort Sumter—a conflagration that didn’t conclude until January 20, 2025. That's what we meant when we said the white supremacists continued to stick their heads up out of the sand throughout our nation's history. They wanted to control who did, and didn't, come to America right from our first presidential election when people could vote. (Washington was elected through a convention of delegates.) Often requiring us to smack them back down. Sometimes we did. More often than not, like on January 6th, 2021, we didn't. The 30% of fascists and weirdos have always been at war with our country, and its various versions. That's how you get Nazi compounds in Idaho, the KKK's reign of terror across the South, and crazed lunatics shooting up grocery stores, Walmart, and synagogues today. They only had an army once (1861-1865) but if you look closely at the MAGA literature, you can see frequent calls for Civil War and to kill protestors and anyone brave enough to document the behavior of the fascists.

With America Version 2.0, the Constitution and our Republic, as designed by the “Founding Fathers,” came to an end on April 12, 1861. So, any time you hear someone say, "But that's not what the Founders intended!" you can safely remind them that that America died in 1861. While there's a lot to be learned from the Founders, from 1861 to 2025, you're living in Abraham Lincoln's America, not George Washington's.

During America Version 2.0, the nation feeds its darkest impulses. Genocide is not a term to use lightly, but that's exactly what was on the mind of President James K. Polk and his wife as they concocted a genocidal war on Mexico—one motivated solely by Polk’s desire for California and Texas. Not to put too fine a point on this: But more than a few soldiers in the Mexican-American War refused to come home until they had a chance to kill a Mexican. This period also sees the Trail of Tears and the rapid expansion of slavery as America expands its territory because of the invasion of Mexico. While the Civil War had a high probability of occurring at some point, the Mexican American War specifically accelerates things with the acquisition of what used to be a big ass chunk of Mexico. This is also where our demonization of Mexican people, or anyone who doesn't speak English, really amped up. We feel, this undercurrent of bigotry against Mexico evolved into the actions of the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE.)

One other thing about this era, and it's really important: This period is defined by The Slave Power, which we'll discuss after we conclude our timeline here. What they want, they get, and while there is resistance to them, it’s stifled in much the same way today's resistance is, with abolitionists and others being called radical lunatics, among other colorful slanders from the Slave Power, those who financially benefited from slavery in the North, and the media outlets and institutions they all controlled.

Congress also saw its first murder during this time. So not only did the Slave Power stifle activism against them, they actively killed people who dissented—much like Renée Good was murdered by ICE agents for simply filming their actions on January 7, 2026. So, it's wrong to think there was no push back and that America was simply racist and evil during this time. It wasn't. The government was.

Just like you today, there were advocates who wanted equality, abolition, and peaceful coexistence with our Native and Mexican brothers and sisters. However, they didn’t have any power, and remember: America was still a heavily regimented, agrarian society at this time. So, they did what they could. Was it enough? No. It never is.

But we shouldn’t forget about people like Sojourner Truth and William Lloyd Garrison either. We should remember that we have more power today than any of our fellow Americans did during this and the Colonial Period. For starters, we can communicate and send money and resources to each other instantly. That means we can rapidly organize, empowered in part by an infrastructure that allows us to easily travel. It wasn’t so easy to get from place to place back then.

What I’m saying is, context matters. When you teach history, you teach all of it—not to denigrate or shame, but to discuss and explore why these dark things happened so that they can never happen again. (That's why we started here in this book.) It's equally important; however, to not only highlight the injustice, but the many unsung people who stood against it.

I'll have another (former) book excerpt to share soon. Until Friday ...

Hello. Farewell. Hello. Farewell.

-BJ Mendelson

You can follow me here on Bluesky

Show Notes

Stupid Sexy Privacy Show Notes For Season 1, Episode 24

Episode Title: How Apple Poured Billions Into a Fascist Regime: No, Not Us. The Other One

Guests: Patrick McGee, author of "Apple In China"

Episode Summary: If you want to make yourself safe from fascists and weirdos, you have to shrink your online footprint. This week, Rosie tells you how, while BJ interviews Patrick McGee, author of the fantastic new book, "Apple In China." Patrick discusses the astronomical amount of money Apple poured into China, helping turn the country into the 21st Century's new superpower, and whether or not you should feel bad buying a Mac.

Highlights From Our Privacy Tips This Week

-The less you use your phone, the less data you create for fascists and weirdos to track you with. So take some time, once a month, to clean off any unnecessary or unused apps.

-Once you remove your unused apps, take out your privacy notebook and write down the apps you've decided to keep. Then write down why you decided to keep the apps that you did. If you can't come up with a good reason to keep those remaining apps, you should delete them immediately.

-Once you're done with this exercise, remove all of the remaining apps from your home screen. Your home screen should always be blank.

-If you keep any social media apps on your phone, we recommend logging out of them so that there's some friction between mindlessly going to your phone to use them.

-Additional wellness settings for Android and iPhone users can be found here.

Highlights From Our Interview with Patrick McGee

-Given how much Apple has invested in building up China's manufacturing and technological capabilities, much of which has led to President Xi's dominance in the global sphere, should we not be purchasing Apple products anymore? Stupid Sexy Privacy recommends, for most people in most cases, the best most secure device for them is a Mac. But if you already own one, our recommendation is that you hold on and use it for as long as you can, so you don't have to get a new one any time soon. (You can and should also consider canceling Apple services and replacing them with third parties. For example, instead of Apple Music, use Tidal.)

-After World War 2, the United States invested 13.3 billion (today about $150 billion) into Europe as part of the Marshall Plan. Apple has invested at least double this amount of money into China's infrastructure and up-skilling their workforce. This is a national scandal that's received very little press coverage, but something everyone should be talking about given China's constant threatening of Taiwan and crackdown on democracy and freedom in Hong Kong.

-Has the Student Become The Master? (In other words, does China still need Apple?) Patrick doesn't think so, and we agree. That's bad news for Apple, and maybe bad news for us when it comes to how well China can process raw material compared to most other nations on Earth.

Resources (NO Affiliate Links. This is what we use.)

Our Sponsor: DuckDuckGo <--Our Recommended Browser and VPN

Get Your Privacy Notebook: Get your Leuchtturm1917 notebook here.

-BitWarden.com (Password Manager: easier to use, costs money)

- KeepPassXC (Password Manager: free, harder to use, but more secure)

-Slnt Privacy Stickers for Phones and Laptops

-Slnt Faraday bag for your Stranger Danger phone.

-Mic-Lock Microphone Blockers

-Mic-Lock Camera Finder Pro

-BitDefender (best anti-virus for most people across most devices)

-Stop using SMS and WhatsApp, start using Signal.

-Use Element instead of Slack for group coordination

-Use StopGenAI's Guide to getting Generative AI out of your life.

--Use cash whenever possible. If you have to buy something online, try to use Privacy.com to shield your actual credit or debit card when making purchases online.

Get In Touch: You can contact us here

Want the full transcript for this week's episode?

Easy. All you gotta do is sign-up for our newsletter. If you do, you'll also get a .mp3 and .pdf of our new book, "How to Protect Yourself From Fascists & Weirdos" as soon as it's ready. It's free.

But if you'd like to comment on StupidSexyPrivacy.com posts, or if you just want to support our work, you can support us by becoming a paid subscriber. It's $2 per month or $24 for the year.

Transcript: Stupid Sexy Privacy, Season 1, Episode 24

A Word From Our Sponsor: DuckDuckGo

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Stupid Sexy Privacy Intro

Rosie: Welcome to another edition of Stupid Sexy Privacy. 

Andrew: A podcast miniseries sponsored by our friends at DuckDuckGo. 

Rosie: I’m your host, Rosie Tran. 

You may have seen me on Rosie Tran Presents, which is now available on Amazon Prime.

Andrew: And I’m your co-producer, Andrew VanVoorhis. With us, as always, is Bonzo the Snow Monkey.

Bonzo: Monkey sound!

Rosie: I’m pretty sure that’s not what a Japanese Macaque sounds like.

Andrew: Oh it’s not. Not even close.

Rosie: Let’s hope there aren’t any zooologists listening.

Bonzo: Monkey Sound!

Rosie: Ok. I’m ALSO pretty sure that’s not what a Snow Monkey sounds like.

*Clear hers throat*

Rosie: Over the course of this miniseries, we’re going to offer you short, actionable tips to protect your data, your privacy, and yourself from fascists and weirdos.

These tips were sourced by our fearless leader — he really hates when we call him that — BJ Mendelson. 

Episodes 1 through 33 were written a couple of years ago. 

But since a lot of that advice is still relevant, we thought it would be worth sharing again for those who missed it.

Andrew: And if you have heard these episodes before, you should know we’ve gone back and updated a bunch of them.

Even adding some brand new interviews and privacy tips along the way.

Rosie: That’s right. So before we get into today’s episode, make sure you visit StupidSexyPrivacy.com and subscribe to our newsletter.

Andrew: This way you can get updates on the show, and be the first to know when new episodes are released in 2026.

Rosie: And if you sign-up for the newsletter, you’ll also get a free pdf and mp3 copy of BJ and Amanda King’s new book, “How to Protect Yourself From Fascists & Weirdos.” All you have to do is visit StupidSexyPrivacy.com

Andrew: StupidSexyPrivacy.com

Rosie: That’s what I just said. StupidSexyPrivacy.com

Andrew: I know, but repetition is the key to success. You know what else is?

Rosie: What?

Bonzo: Another, different, monkey sound!

Rosie: I’m really glad this show isn’t on YouTube, because they’d pull it down like, immediately.

Andrew: I know. Google sucks.

Rosie: And on that note, let’s get to today’s privacy tip!

This Week's Privacy Tip

Rosie Tran, host of Stupid Sexy Privacy: This week is part of our two-part digital detox spiel. The reason we cover this is simple. Everyone listening to the show has a smartphone. And the odds are good you probably use it more than you'd like. Well, there are also some excellent privacy reasons to cut back on how often you use your smartphone. Specifically, the more you use it, the more data it collects and shares with other parties. This includes the location data of everywhere you go. And we mean everywhere.

And while we're not suggesting you ditch your smartphone and get yourself a jitterbug, if we can get you to use your phone just a little bit less, we've successfully shrunk your online footprint. And that helps to keep you and your family safe from fascist and weirdos.

So let's start with a simple exercise and a few helpful tips. When was the last time you went through all the apps on your phone? And I mean, really went through them. It's probably been a while, huh? So take a few minutes after listening to this podcast and break out your smartphone and privacy notebook.

Because this week you're going to go through every app on your phone and uninstall the ones you're not using. Does that include your social media apps? We'll get to that, but you'll definitely want to uninstall Twitter. Twitter is now a cesspool for the alt-right and their friends together, which is different from the cesspool that it was before, because this time Elon Musk peed in the cesspool and then filled it with Nazis.

Unused apps on your phone expose you to security vulnerabilities, so the fewer of them you have, the better. We recommend setting some time aside once a month to clean out your phone.

This will establish a good habit of removing unused apps regularly. Doing so will help keep you and your friends and family safe from any security breaches caused by those apps.

In step two of this exercise, we want you to think critically about the apps you want to keep. Once you remove your unused apps, take out your privacy notebook and write down the apps you've decided to keep. Then write down why you decided to keep the apps that you did. If you can't come up with a good reason to keep those remaining apps, you should delete them immediately. We can't stress how important this exercise is.

Writing down why you kept the apps and that you did helps to clarify in your mind why you have them in the first place.

This is also a good opportunity if you use certain apps way too much to write down how often you like to use them. Once you've done that, both Apple and Android phones have features that will let you limit how long you can use certain apps each day. We'll link to how to do that in this episode's show notes.

Okay, let's wrap up today's episode with a couple of quick digital detox tips. Once you're done with this exercise, remove all of the remaining apps from your home screen. Your home screen should always be blank.

This adds an extra layer of friction when you mindlessly reach for your phone.

And speaking of friction, if you're going to keep any social media apps on your phone, make sure you sign out of them.

While removing social media apps from your phone entirely is the best practice, we know that might not always be possible. Signing out of these apps will prevent you from looking at them without purpose, which honestly is most of the time why we go to look at these things.

Social media apps can be a lot of fun, but you also don't want to give them all of your time and data. That's because none of these companies can be trusted. Just ask BJ.

He wrote a book about that, like, a decade ago.

Our Interview with Patrick McGee, author of "Apple In China"

BJ Mendelson, c0-producer of Stupid Sexy Privacy: Hey Patrick, would you like to take a moment just to introduce yourself to our audience?

Patrick McGee, author of "Apple in China": I'm Patrick McGee, I'm the author of Apple in China, the capture of the world's greatest company.

BJ: And let me ask you, because I've been working as like, I got my start as a tech journalist and typically Apple always has like this halo around it. So I was really blown away and enthusiastic about your book because I kind of felt like you didn't approach Apple in the sense that it was like this holy subject. And so I just wanted to ask you a bit about that.

Patrick: Yeah, that's funny. I agree. First of all, I mean, I think journalists sort of fall into this trap and I'm including myself in this. So if it's an indictment, it's a self indictment as well as of, you know, Apple is this like iconic company and your stories tend to revolve very much like within the narrative that Apple has set. Right? So, you know, in the week leading up to an iPhone, people are writing stories about what the latest iPhone is going to be. And it's sort of like if Ferrari was being covered by a bunch of YouTubers. You're really playing Ferrari's game if what you're focusing on is like the beauty of the hardware and like how fast it accelerates or whatever. But like that wouldn't really be getting to like the business of Ferrari whatsoever. And that's how I feel about most Apple reporting. It's either it's either gadget reviews, which have their value to be clear, but I don't think that's business reporting, or they're trying to sort of get ahead of Apple's narrative sort of press fast forward on Apple's own press releases. And I don't see a whole lot of value in that either. So instead I wanted to look at, you know, in a sort of sense that the narrative of Apple that doesn't come out of the PR department.

BJ: Right. And so I'm glad you mentioned that because I feel like even today, so I'll give you an example and then I'll get into our questions that we have. Our default recommendation for most people is that for most people, in most cases, the most secure user-friendly computer you can use is a Mac. But I'm finding that even then I'm still kind of cringing at recommending them after what I've read in your book. So do you find... after completing the research and the publication of the that you're kind of like, okay, maybe I'm not so quick to recommend an Apple product?

Patrick: I have to say, I didn't really think about this much when I was writing the book. It just wasn't the subject of the book. And yet I've been asked it so many times afterwards that, I mean, it has occurred to me that maybe I should dump all my Apple products and get Samsung products. I don't know. This is maybe a cop out. But when Steve Jobs came back in 1997, he had this line, right? I got these sort of private meeting notes and he said, people love Mac, the product, but they hate Apple, the company. And if I can make that same distinction, you know, I find certain Apple practices very problematic, but the products are fantastic. And so it's a question as to whether or not one can hold that dichotomy without just being a hypocrite, I suppose.

BJ: Exactly. I kind of feel like it's sort of like the situation with X, right? Where I've gone and I've deleted my X account just on moral and ethical grounds. But we've also talked to and interviewed people who said, you know, we don't like X, but we can't because of X, Y, and Z, right? Because there's an expectation that we have to use it, or I'm a politician and every politician in my party uses it. So we can't get rid of it. And I feel like it's kind of that similar situation of there's a cringiness, but there's still like a ... I kind of have to use this thing.

Patrick: Yeah, totally. mean, as someone who still uses X, it's noticeable, let's say, that people like you have left and not in a good way. Right? So it's like, it's not like people leaving in droves has like, had pulled the platform into oblivion. It's probably just as important as it was before. And yet the discourse is just deteriorated substantially. So it's unclear to me why that's a win for society.

BJ: Right. Now, let me get into a bit of the details because I didn't, and this is like ... I like to think that I'm a relatively knowledgeable person, but I don't think I appreciated the scale of Apple's time in China and investments in China until I read your book. And it was really eye-opening. And I was kind of hoping you might be able to use this great analogy of like the 1948 Marshall Plan. Right? Which followed the Allied victory in World War II to rebuild Europe and Apple, would actually go on to invest more than double the total amount spent by the Allied powers in China. Do I have that right? Walk us a little through that.

Patrick: You're actually underestimating it, which is an insane thing to say. So let me just back up a little bit because I think when people talk about Apple investments in China, or at least when they hear us talk about it, I think they're scratching their heads. Like, what are we even talking about? Because honestly, nobody had really ever written about, in a sense, what I think be the core revelation of the book, which is that Apple has this team of people called MD (manufacturing design.) And their whole role is to sort of to go out across Asia, but increasingly in China over the last decade, to basically find factories that have like a good workforce and perhaps like a foundational competence, let's say, where they can go and sort of whip the workforce into shape and get them up to Apple quality levels. And then the operations team comes in to basically build scale and resilience. And the resilience is actually through investing in their biggest rivals so that the supplier once it has its new found Apple skill set doesn't sort of use it against Apple to hike margins.

So the whole idea that Apple isn't sort of finding competence in China, but actually building the competence in China, that's really the core to the narrative. And in wanting to explain how that came about, you sort of had to give several paragraphs, or I'm sorry, several chapters rather, of what Apple was doing before it quote unquote, discovers what's possible in China, which isn't really until around 2003.

Right? So they're doing the same strategy, but it's in Korea to build the iMac. It's in the Czech Republic. It's in Wales. It's in Mexico. It's in all these places for seven or eight years when Apple first adopts outsourcing before they sort of go full bore into China. Their consolidation period into China really starts with the iPod Mini, which is really the first iPod that Foxconn does. It's previously done by a company in Taiwan called Inventek. And the iPod Mini, as people might remember, I mean, it's just wildly successful. It's in part because the iTunes store is open to Windows around that time for the first time. And then that leads to the iPod Nano. The iPod Nano, I mean, Foxconn begins doing like 100,000 units a day. I mean, this is just a sort of scale that you just didn't see in consumer electronics before. You might've seen it in cell phones, but cell phones built by Nokia were sort of like shitty little plastic things that were glued together.

Whereas if people remember the iPod Nano, I mean, it would still be a marvel even if you were looking at it today, given how small it is versus like a smartphone. And so Apple ends up making these enormous investments, not only into the people, but into machinery and processes as they do more and more consolidation into China. So by 2015, their investments are $55 billion per year.

And this is sort of a study put together by Apple to give to big wigs like Tim Cook, because they realize that they have these political problems in China that could basically be solved. This is like their thesis. If Beijing really understands that while it's true, Apple doesn't have any joint ventures in the country, they are having America's top engineers sleeping on the factory floor of dozens, if not hundreds of factories to get all these companies up to Apple quality and speed and cost. And so if they realize that Apple is the biggest catalyst, catalyzing force of made in China in 2025, then Beijing will get off their backs. So they do this study, they realize that they're investing $55 billion a year. Really obviously simplifying here, Tim Cook basically recognizes the value of their thesis and basically multiplies the number by five years and goes to Beijing to pledge that over the next five years, we will spend $275 billion a year in China.

That's mostly wages for people, they have up to 3 million people in the Chinese workforce per year, as well as the machinery and processes on the factory floor.

Now, the reason I say you understated it is because you're, well, I'm only talking about the five year period, right? But in the $55 billion per year in 2015, that's only 22% of Apple revenue. And so I don't have all the figures for this, but if I just say, okay, let's just use an Excel sheet and take 22 % of Apple's revenue from, let's say the birth of the iPhone to the present, then you're talking north of $800 billion.

So that's speculative on my part, but I don't know why it would be sort of greater or smaller than 22% of revenue. There's no sort of big reason why that would have changed one way or the other. So we're talking multiple Marshall plans worth of investments if you're really recognizing that Apple's been in China for more than two decades.

BJ: And then just for people at home, remember a billion is a thousand million. I found that people, it's such a large amount that it's hard to conceptualize.

Patrick: Yes, and actually I would have lots of conversations with Apple people about this. So one person told me that he had an eight year old son, and that to get his son to sort of recognize just what a difference is between a million and a billion, he basically said, look, son, if you just started counting one, two, three, you know, one second, every one number, every word. Sorry. oh gosh. I hope you can edit this ... one word every second and you're not eating or sleeping or anything like that.

And even if the numbers big, you're still saying one per second. would take you about 10 days, I think 11 or 12 days to get to a million. It would take you 32 years to get to a billion. Right. The difference between million and a billion is so hard to conceptualize. And this is a company that rakes in more than a billion dollars a day in revenue.

BJ: So I guess the logical follow up to that is, and you did such a great job of addressing it towards the end of the book, how dependent would you say Apple is on China today?

Patrick: I mean, it's hard to, I don't even know what word you would use where it would be like, that's a little much, you know, like if, if, if, if China somehow canceled Apple's export license, and I'm not suggesting that's a realistic possibility. There's all sorts of reasons why they wouldn't do it. But I mean, I don't think there would be iPhones, certainly not in the quantities that they routinely push out, you know, for multiple years. I mean, it's, you know, sometimes people say how much more expensive would it be if you could build it in the US but the point is you couldn't build it in the US. We just don't have the workforce, the infrastructure, the skill sets, the, quote unquote, tacit knowledge behind all the processes and everything. It's not a cost question. It's a capability question. And no place on the planet is capable of turning out more than a quarter billion iPhones per year than China. So Apple's counter to this ... not that they're in debate with me, but if they put out their own documents, right?

What they'll say is "iPhones are made everywhere or Apple products are made everywhere." And they'll cite that they have, you know, partners in 50 countries. And what that's completely obfuscating is that the 50 country thing is kind of real in that there's a whole bunch of companies that do have some role in Apple's supply chain. But the vast majority of those operations are foreign enterprises operating within China. Because if you think about the iPhone going from around 5 million units in 2007, to 230 million units by 2015, it would make no sense to orchestrate production from 50 different supplying countries and have all of those products arriving for your just-in-time production system on a daily basis. Getting through customs and just fingers crossed that it arrives in the factory on time. So all of those companies were basically incentivized by Apple, but frankly, by China, to work within the borders of China. And they could do so at lower cost, with subsidies, with lower tariffs. All sorts of incentives to operate there. So it's just not really all that credible to say that the phones are built everywhere. China is playing a different role than any other nation on the planet is, including the United States or Apple.

BJ: Now let's look at it from the other side. How dependent would you say China would be on Apple's presence there?

Patrick: I think that's a great question, but honestly, I don't really think they are. I mean, one thing I worry about is that the student has become the master. I mean, one thing I would say is sometimes people either, um, uh, misinterpret what I say, or they just, maybe have taken something or are vastly simplified. And so, and so what they think I'm saying is that I'm not giving China or the Chinese people credit for, we're sort of doing what they accomplished over the last 25 years. And the irony of this is that's part of my book is actually trying to give China so much credit. Like my whole point is that we sort of have a narrative of Apple designing this, conceiving that, and haven't given any thought to how the products are actually made. And of course, because they're basically all made in China, you have to give absolutely loads of credit to the supply chain, which is a lot of Chinese companies, but it's also a lot of Taiwanese companies. And why are there Taiwanese companies operating in China? Well, that's Beijing and sort federal policymakers and local policymakers luring in foreign enterprises, foreign capital, sort of motivating them to build factories in the country. Because, you know, when Deng Xiaoping takes power in the late 1970s in China, China's poorer than Sub-Saharan Africa. They certainly don't know how to build stuff, not for the world market. They don't even really understand how capitalism works. And so in a sort of humble approach to recognizing this, they really tap into the Chinese diaspora. So in particular, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

And they have these corporations come over and basically set up shop and sort of the kingmaker among them for the Apple story is Foxconn. And that's Terry Guo, who I think of as something like the Henry Ford of Asia. So I'm trying to give him and Foxconn and the Taiwanese and the Chinese laborers all kinds of credit in actually performing to the task that Apple sets for them. But the quality standards, the quantity standards, I just everything that Apple sets in motion is just in a league of its own. Nobody comes close to having the sort of ... You know, what I want to say, like the obsessiveness that the maniacal thing that you think about with Steve Jobs. If you see the Hollywood version of Steve Jobs, really what the story is, is just taking that culture, right? That sense of engineering perfection, that imperfection of defects and stuff, sorry, intolerance of defects, and just transplanting that to what becomes hundreds of factories in China, right? That's the story.

Book Ad Break

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Our Interview With Patrick Continued

BJ: Yeah, and I think he did a really good job of highlighting throughout the book the work ethic of the people in China and the ingenuity that they've demonstrated. I think you did a great job of highlighting it. Because I also think people, I don't know if we're around the same age or not, but I'm an elder millennial. So I think about how different China was for my grandfather's generation, That fought in World War II and the state that they found themselves in coming out of that war. Versus where they [China] are today. And it's just in such a short amount of time, they've been able to do marvels, right? I mean, they've got trains that are faster, they've got infrastructure that would just ... I'm saying this as I think about a sewage plant next to my parents' house that's slowly falling apart. It's not to say that they don't have those issues there, but they've certainly approached it as you've highlighted with this engineering mindset as opposed to like... the American mindset which is more legalistic or law based.

Patrick: Yeah, we're getting into Dan Wong, breakneck territory here, right? The engineering state versus the lawyerly society. Yeah. I look, I quote the Chinese scholar Yi Wen saying that what China accomplished in a generation is what took place over 150 to 200 years in either Great Britain or America. And, you know, if we can find that to 30 years, that's probably true. If you extend that out though, for another 10 years, then you have to sort of concede that not only did they accomplish that, they went beyond it, right? Because, if if you want to go on a great high speed rail train, you're not going to New Jersey. Right? You're going to China. I mean, I've been on the trains in China and it's absolutely phenomenal how smooth they are and how fast they are. You can get from Beijing to Xi'an, you know, just within a 10 day trip as I did a few years ago. Like, sorry, that's understating it. Like, I mean, you can get like really into the middle of the country like with ease with Wi-Fi as you're there, as if you're in Germany or something, but you're going over like a vast, vast distance just to be able to travel around. And if you think about the repercussions of what that means for all their logistics, you know, not just the manufacturing, but then getting it everywhere, it's phenomenal. I think there's so much infrastructure that China has that is just, not only does it exceed America, but by far exceeds what countries like India are capable of. So when people say, well, isn't Apple diversifying to India? It's like ... Even if Apple's putting the resources into India and they're not, frankly, India is not putting the resources into competing with China.

Like the basic statistic these days from UNIDO and an arm of United Nations is that China by around last year, maybe the year before, had something like one third of global manufacturing. So that's like real dominance. But by 2030, they're going to have 45 % of global manufacturing.

It's really hard to fathom. This is just their thing. And the way that LeBron James just thinks and dreams about basketball and has done for decades, that's what China, the whole nation has been doing for manufacturing.

BJ: Yeah. And I think it's incredible. And, you know, I kind of wish the geopolitical environment was better and friendlier because I think that there's so much that we could do together, right? As opposed to this constant saber rattling that, you know, I was going to say Republicans, but it's also on the Democratic side as well.

Let me ask you a little bit about that though, because it seems like there's this shift in the book, right? Where Xi comes into power and that sort of changes things for Apple. And was hoping you might be able to highlight a little bit of that.

Patrick: I this is really bad of me. You said something that made me think of something I just read yesterday from Dan Wong, who I'd mentioned. And I briefly decided to look that up. Then once you finished your question, realized I don't, I don't actually know what the question was, but let me read this first. This is Dan Wong. This is in his 2025 letter, which I think was published about a week ago. says Beijing has been preparing for cold war without eagerness for waging it while the US wants to wage a cold war without preparing for it. That's devastating and that's so true.

BJ: That is dead on, that is absolutely dead on. And it's heartbreaking, right? Cause you're talking about the fate of billions of people on both sides of the Pacific. And it's been a frustration of mine, but I'm glad that we got onto the topic because throughout the book. So it seems like there's two key turning points, right? One is when Xi comes to power and the other seems to be when Tim Cook comes to power. Like Cook seems to understand ... I don't want to say that like, he knows how to play friendly with fascists, but there certainly seems to be a bit on his part where he knows how to manage relations with people who are dictators, right? Like, so we saw that with President Trump with like the solid gold. I don't even know what it was that he came to.

Patrick: It was a plaque. He gave him a plaque (Cook gave to Trump.)

BJ: Thank you guys, the solid gold plaque. But I'm wondering like in your research, and I know it's a big question, but ... Would you say that those were two key turning points in like the evolution of China and Apple was Xi and Cook?

Patrick: They're sort of separate issues, but let me I like that you're putting them together. So let me try to put them together. So when Xi Jinping comes to power in late November 2012 and then officially becomes president in March 2013, I talked to loads of people who were working for Apple at this time, and they would say, "we really didn't know anything about China." Like the educated guess from outside the organization was that Apple had really cracked the code on how to operate in China, because after all, by that point, they were already the world's most valuable company. Right? Something like 90 percent of their operations were in China. And their China business, like selling iPhones to the locals, had gone from something like a billion dollars in 2008. So, like actually for Apple, that's pretty negligible, to something like $22 billion within four years. Right. So you just think of their growth going up 22% in a matter of four years. So just extraordinary. And yet they actually really didn't understand China. It was sort of like, they built a global product and the Chinese happened to go Gaga over it.

And insofar as the operations were all there, it was because they were basing their operations like in carve outs from like, quote unquote, real China, right? So in other words, were placed there in places like Shenzhen, which wasn't really like, you know, it almost like was jurisdictionally a different place, like, under a different law, right? This was where capitalism was an experiment for China. And then once that went well, it sort of went to other parts of the country.

But the leader in China from 2003 to 2013 is Hu Jintao. he was such a sort of, I don't want to say incapable leader, you could say. I mean, there's criticism I have in the book where a critic calls him a woman with Chinese, I'm sorry, "a woman with bound feet." And it's because he just didn't like sort of lay down the law in sort of a heavy-handed way. So that period, that decade where Apple becomes so successful in China, it's kind of an outlier decade. It's a time when multinationals could use China like a playground. So they hadn't really cracked China so much as they were operating in such a way with such secrecy that Beijing didn't really know what they were up to. And nobody was really evaluating what Apple was doing. And then as soon as Xi Jinping comes into power, Apple is on the defensive. And there's this massive sort of nationwide television show that attacks Apple for allegedly treating consumers differently in China than from the rest of the world.

And I've talked to people that like, you know, literally watched this footage as part of an Apple team in a hotel room because it had been flagged that it was going to be a big deal. And everyone was sort of flabbergasted. They didn't really understand what was going on and why was China in a sense attacking Apple. And this is the prologue of the book, as you'll recall, but listeners might not know. And it really is a wake-up call where Apple's beginning to realize like, if we don't sort of get our shit in order, like we could be blacklisted and that's not an idle threat. Like Facebook and Google are already blacklisted at that point. And not only is it a massive growth driver for the company, but all of their operations are there.

So Tim Cook is the person who needs, basically is, you know, I mean, Steve Jobs has passed away around 18 months prior. And so he's the man leading the company. And he has to basically figure out how to play nice with the regime because it's already clear that there's really not a backup option, that China is the only place capable of fulfilling the demands as Apple makes them. And so what do you do? And that's a sort of entire part of the book, like four or five chapters going through that narrative. But I think Tim Cook is absolutely decisive, certainly in playing that role. But the book is probably more about the people on the ground who are actually sort of like finding the facts and getting the message to Cook rather than it is Cook himself.

BJ: Right. Yeah. I have to say like every time I read, we get some long books, but what I loved about yours was after I was done reading, I was like, I have no notes. Like it's so, it's so well researched that I was like, okay. I feel like this is, this is excellent. Let me ask you, because I'm going to, I'm going to run out of time in a few minutes here. So what question haven't you been asked about the book that you would love to touch on?

Patrick: I don't know. I've done more than 100 interviews. think I've been asked a lot of questions. (laughs)

Well, I'll put it this way. Because podcasts are, by their nature, you know, 30 minutes, maybe up to two hours or something, for a book with this much density and detail. I'm only ever really giving the high level view, you know, like as a person who also listens to podcasts, I'll listen to an author talk about their book. And then I think, you know, OK, that's good. Like I think I've got a broad understanding of the book.

I don't know that I need to invest 10 or 12 hours in actually reading it. And, know, I'm sure every author would say this, but like, I really feel like, no, like if you only listen to a podcast, you don't know any of the characters in the book, right? Cause there's all sorts of characters and scenes that sort of propel the narrative forward in time. And it's sort of written in a way where hopefully every time you finish a chapter or even a section, you just want to keep reading it. And people have told me it's written like a novel and that it's "unputdownable" and all that kind of stuff. And I love hearing that, but. That was so intentional on my part that there's no chapters where like, that was a weird, you know, detour from the narrative or something like that, right? Like it's structured very well. And so what the thing that I don't get asked about per se is just about the characters, right? We could have a, we could, we could just talk about John Ford or Jackie Haynes or I don't know, Chip Hills or something like that. Like these are all people that are instrumental in Apple's history in China, but by the nature of a podcast, I just don't, I just don't have the time to get into their fascinating narrative.

BJ: Right, yeah, oh, I know. Usually you've got time to maybe touch on like three or four things in a podcast interview. Let me ask you real quick, so speaking of that, if I understand this correctly, there's a part in the book where Apple* had a direct line to the guy who runs the app store. Do I have that right?

(Reader note: BJ meant to say China, not apple in this question.)

Patrick: This is a funny anecdote from Bill Shoemaker. He ran the app store for, I think, six years, something like 2010 to 2016. So, I mean, basically, if I remember his story right, because this part's not in the book, he had basically gotten the job because he was an app developer and he kept pestering Steve Jobs with questions about why is the policy this and why is the policy that ... And Steve Jobs eventually just thought these questions were good enough that he's like, can you just come work for Apple and you can handle these things instead of asking me to do it? I'm busy with other stuff, which is kind of hilarious. And then, you know, as time goes on, there's a there's an app store essentially globally, right? I mean, each country has its own app store, but essentially everything's being dictated by Cupertino. And this is the policy and it gets proliferated or diffused around every country.

But China was different. In China, they had to have person who had a direct line to the Chinese government and to local officials and stuff. And this was totally unique. You you didn't have this in Russia or Canada or anywhere else. And so there's just these interesting narratives where China is essentially, you know, it has like hackers, I suppose you'd call them, like state back packers who are finding vulnerabilities in the app store. And they're doing things like uploading games into the app store where the game says, hey, it'd be great to share this with your contacts. You give us permission to send this to your contacts. And as soon as you're like, 'sounds good', it's basically then realizing we've got your contacts. And every time you play this game in which ... what's the brick game called where you're playing pong on the bottom and you're hitting things on the top?

BJ: Oh god ... Snood?

Patrick: I can't think of it. The irony is that ... Breakout! Breakout. The irony, by the way, and I don't mention this in the book, Steve Jobs and Steve and Steve Wozniak had an instrumental role creating that game in the late 1970s.

Anyway, there's a Chinese version of this game. And every time you hit a brick, one of your contacts was just randomly being deleted.

And so in their meetings with with Apple, Chinese authorities would basically just like demonstrate this. And it was just like a flex of power, like they weren't hiding it. It was just their way of saying like, this is the type of ownership we have over over you. And there were lots of instances of that. So, yeah, I mean, good call. I've never been asked about that in any of the hundred interviews.

But I have to tell you, the reason I put it in there is because sometimes people think, well, you know, China asks certain things of Apple and yeah, they have to abide by the laws and regulations of every country. But, you know, this happens everywhere. So like, why are we singling it out?

And my point is, well, no, like I talked to a guy who owns the app store, like at the behest of Steve Jobs for six years, and he says that China was the only place on the planet where there was a particular individual who had to like go through, this going to work for the China app store and so on and so forth. So that was totally unique to Apple and sorry, totally unique to China.

BJ: Yeah, I mean, the relationship between them is fascinating. And like I said, the book is so well researched that I can't recommend it enough. Would you be so kind as to let us know where to find it?

Patrick: I do have a website, appleinchina.com, but of course it's on Amazon and basically in any bookstore. Yeah, it's done really well in that respect. The audio version is good. I don't read it myself, which may come as a relief to some of the listeners. I'm not a great reader. Maybe I'm an okay speaker, but I might do the epilogue because I just wrote the 5,000 word epilogue that will go in the paperback edition. And I don't know if there's an opportunity to read it, but maybe I'll give it a go. But generally speaking, I'm not great at it. But yeah, no, would encourage people to buy it. I would love for them to connect with me on LinkedIn and tell me what they think.

BJ: That was perfect, thank you.

DuckDuckGo Live Read #7

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Stupid Sexy Privacy Outro

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