The Inauguration Of Donald J. Trump As The 47th President

Apple CEO Tim Cook at the inauguration of President Donald Trump (Julia Demaree Nikhinson/Getty Images)

Apple’s secret sauce

Apple’s Trump strategy is the same as its strategy for smartphone dominance

It’s all about the packaging.

2/24/25 4:02PM

Today Apple announced it would be spending $500 billion to expand its manufacturing and AI footprint in the US.

It’s a big round number carefully doled out over President Donald Trump’s four years in office and specific to the leader’s areas of interest, the latest political salvo from “10% politician” Tim Cook in a long-running gambit to ingratiate Apple with Trump and inoculate it against his anger.

$500B

It also appears to be the same strategy Apple has long employed as a way to gain product dominance: do something everyone else is doing. Late. In better packaging.

Apple wasn’t the first to invent the personal computer or a digital music player or the smartphone. But it did later come and combine a lot of existing technology into one beautiful, high-performing, well-constructed package that worked intuitively — the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone — and was expertly announced at Apple’s product events.

Now Apple is wielding this strategy to fight against the administration’s preferred stick: tariffs. Apple is facing 10% tariffs on imports from China, where it manufactures the vast majority of its phones, which make up the its biggest revenue source.

These days the coin of the realm is spending big in the US. Like other tech companies, Apple is pledging investment in the US. Unlike most other companies, it has a lot more money to throw around and it knows how to use it.

The Wall Street Journal did a back-of-the-envelope calculation using analyst estimates of operating expenses and capex for the next four years to determine that that eye-watering $500 billion sum is basically what the iPhone maker would have spent anyway.

But with Apple’s gift for packaging flair, it looks like a gift to Trump — a new, beautiful reveal designed just for him.

This strategy has also worked for Cook before. During Trump’s first administration, Apple committed $350 billion to the US economy and was largely exempted from Trump’s tariffs on China. Apple did the same during the Biden administration. Importantly, the latest commitment is its biggest ever.

The move seems to be working again. On Monday, Trump took credit for Apple’s move on Truth Social, saying, “Thank you Tim Cook and Apple!!!”

Chris Stokel-Walker

Bot bias

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Companies are getting AI chatbots to smear their competitors

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Prediction markets have, predictably, been given a boost by the summer of sports

Major platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have seen huge upticks in users of late, thanks in no small part to what’s felt like a recent sporting smorgasbord, with major competitions across hockey, basketball, and soccer soaking up fans’ time (and spending, clearly) at the outset of summer.

While gaming industry groups may not like it, there’s been a huge change in the methods people are using to put money on the big games, with everyone from fortunate NYC bar owners, to a far less fortunate Spanish supporter, turning to prediction markets to try and turn their sports know-how into cold, hard cash.

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

2026 World Cup Reverses Seasonal Lull for Sports Betting Apps

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

South by Southwest Conference and Festivals

Gold Tesla Cybercabs are piling up, but they’re not picking up passengers yet

Low-volume production started in April. Now people are noticing them more and more in the wild.

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TAKING ACCOUNTS

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Britain announces social media ban for under-16s starting early 2027

The UK government plans to use the same model for the restrictions as Australia — but how successful has that case study been so far?

UK Prime Minister Announces Under-16s Social Media Ban

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Anthropic pulls Fable and Mythos access worldwide after Trump administration bars their use by foreign nationals

Only days after releasing two versions of its next-gen AI model, Anthropic has disabled them for users worldwide.

Anthropic says it received a Friday night order from the Trump administration to suspend access to the models for any foreign national (anywhere in the world) — a group that included some Anthropic employees. In response, the company turned off access to everyone.

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5