First published 2025
Apple turned to China for manufacturing after failing to build products efficiently across three continents. The company deployed thousands of engineers, trained millions of workers, and invested hundreds of billions to create an advanced global supply chain. This strategy powered the iPhone's success but simultaneously built up a state-supported Chinese electronics industry that now challenges American technological dominance. Patrick McGee reveals the unintended consequences through over two hundred interviews, exposing internal emails and secretive meetings. Readers encounter the "Gang of Eight" executives managing Beijing relations, a Mormon missionary launching Apple retail in China, and a veteran whose factory reform efforts collapsed under corporate pressure and Xi Jinping's authoritarian rule. The book traces how Apple's pursuit of efficiency entangled the company in the very politics it once opposed, creating vulnerabilities that Beijing could weaponize in the ongoing US-China tech war.
Genres: history, business, politics, economics, non-fiction, technology, 21st-century, current-affairs
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: corporate-politics, investigative-journalism
Setting: China, United States
Period: 21st-century
448 pages · Kindle Edition · Scribner