Patrick McGee is a business journalist who has written for the Financial Times since 2013, reporting from Hong Kong, Germany, and California. He led the FT’s Apple coverage from 2019 to 2023 and won a San Francisco Press Club Award – best tech article for a newspaper, 2023 – for his deep dive into Apple’s HR problems. His FT magazine cover article, “Inside Peloton’s epic run of bungled calls and bad luck,” received an Honorable Mention for SABEW’s Best in Business Awards, 2022 (co-authored with Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson. Patrick’s focus over the past decade has been on Apple, digital advertising, robotaxis, electric vehicles, the Volkswagen diesel scandal, and connected fitness. Previously, he was a bond reporter at The Wall Street Journal in New York. He has a Master’s in global diplomacy from SOAS, University of London, and a degree in religious studies from the University of Toronto. He resides in the Bay Area. His forthcoming book, Apple in China, draws on 200+ interviews with former Apple executives and engineers to reveal how Cupertino’s choice to anchor its supply chain in China has increasingly made it vulnerable to the regime’s whims. The book is a threedecade history replete with new details, vivid characters, and a disquieting conclusion about the future of Apple and US-China relations. Both an insider’s historical account and a cautionary tale, Apple in China is the first history of Apple to go beyond the biographies of its top executives and set the iPhone’s global domination within an increasingly fraught geopolitical context.
no
661313
00:00
start listening
Episode 416
Patrick McGee
Dangerous Dependency: Apple & the Rise of China | Patrick McGee
Patrick McGee is a business journalist who has written for the Financial Times since 2013, reporting from Hong Kong, Germany, and California. He led the FT’s Apple coverage from 2019 to 2023 and won a San Francisco Press Club Award – best tech article for a newspaper, 2023 – for his deep dive into Apple’s HR problems. His FT magazine cover article, “Inside Peloton’s epic run of bungled calls and bad luck,” received an Honorable Mention for SABEW’s Best in Business Awards, 2022 (co-authored with Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson. Patrick’s focus over the past decade has been on Apple, digital advertising, robotaxis, electric vehicles, the Volkswagen diesel scandal, and connected fitness. Previously, he was a bond reporter at The Wall Street Journal in New York. He has a Master’s in global diplomacy from SOAS, University of London, and a degree in religious studies from the University of Toronto. He resides in the Bay Area. His forthcoming book, Apple in China, draws on 200+ interviews with former Apple executives and engineers to reveal how Cupertino’s choice to anchor its supply chain in China has increasingly made it vulnerable to the regime’s whims. The book is a threedecade history replete with new details, vivid characters, and a disquieting conclusion about the future of Apple and US-China relations. Both an insider’s historical account and a cautionary tale, Apple in China is the first history of Apple to go beyond the biographies of its top executives and set the iPhone’s global domination within an increasingly fraught geopolitical context.
In Episode 416 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Financial Times correspondent Patrick McGee about the parallel rise of modern China alongside iconic American consumer electronics firm Apple—and the geopolitical and national security risks baked into that symbiotic relationship.
Patrick McGee’s book “Apple in China,” tells two stories: (1) The first is about the rise of Apple from near-bankruptcy in the mid-1990s to becoming the world’s most valuable company in a span of only 15 years. (2) The second story is about China, and its historic transformation from being an underdeveloped economy with third world cost structures and armies of unskilled laborers to becoming the world’s largest economy when measured by purchasing power parity with the most advanced manufacturing base in the world.
By the time this episode is over, you will have learned exactly how Apple off-loaded almost all its manufacturing to Asia by the late 1990s and early 2000s and then consolidated that entire operation inside mainland China. You will also learn how the same supply chain mastery that turned Apple into the world’s most valuable company has left it existentially dependent on a single authoritarian state whose political goals now diverge sharply from Washington’s.
It’s an incredible story with profound implications for all of us who depend on China’s manufacturing prowess and intricate supply networks to sustain our way of life. Whether we can extricate ourselves from this web of interdependency—and the extent to which we should even want to—is one of a number of topics we explore extensively in the episode’s second hour.
Subscribe to our premium content—including our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports—by visiting HiddenForces.io/subscribe.
If you’d like to join the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community—with benefits like Q&A calls with guests, exclusive research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners—you can also sign up on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe.
If you enjoyed today’s episode of Hidden Forces, please support the show by:
Patrick McGee is a business journalist who has written for the Financial Times since 2013, reporting from Hong Kong, Germany, and California. He led the FT’s Apple coverage from 2019 to 2023 and won a San Francisco Press Club Award – best tech article for a newspaper, 2023 – for his deep dive into Apple’s HR problems. His FT magazine cover article, “Inside Peloton’s epic run of bungled calls and bad luck,” received an Honorable Mention for SABEW’s Best in Business Awards, 2022 (co-authored with Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson. Patrick’s focus over the past decade has been on Apple, digital advertising, robotaxis, electric vehicles, the Volkswagen diesel scandal, and connected fitness. Previously, he was a bond reporter at The Wall Street Journal in New York. He has a Master’s in global diplomacy from SOAS, University of London, and a degree in religious studies from the University of Toronto. He resides in the Bay Area. His forthcoming book, Apple in China, draws on 200+ interviews with former Apple executives and engineers to reveal how Cupertino’s choice to anchor its supply chain in China has increasingly made it vulnerable to the regime’s whims. The book is a threedecade history replete with new details, vivid characters, and a disquieting conclusion about the future of Apple and US-China relations. Both an insider’s historical account and a cautionary tale, Apple in China is the first history of Apple to go beyond the biographies of its top executives and set the iPhone’s global domination within an increasingly fraught geopolitical context.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
