Supply chains are essential infrastructure—and the iPhone's supply chain sits at the center of U.S.–China competition. As Washington reassesses economic security, this episode explores what it looks like when market incentives collide with geopolitical reality. Frank Cilluffo speaks with Patrick McGee, author of Apple in China, about his reporting on Apple's deep manufacturing reliance on China—and what that reveals about leverage, resilience, and risk. They explore how industrial capacity is built through repetition, why diversification is harder than headlines suggest, and how concentrated production creates choke points that can ripple far beyond consumer tech. The result is a clear, practical case study in why supply chains matter for critical infrastructure, national security, and long-term competition.

Main Topics Covered

• How "learning by doing" powered China's rise in high-end electronics manufacturing
• The "epic transfer of technology" behind Apple's scale and China's supply-chain competence
• Xi Jinping's post-2013 pressure campaign and Apple's strategic recalibration in China
• Why supply-chain diversification is slower than headlines suggest, especially in India
• The "red supply chain" and how Apple suppliers became capability multipliers
• Taiwan/TSMC as a single-point-of-failure risk—and the AI chip-export debate it echoes

Key Quotes

"China isn't dependent on Apple in the way that Apple is inarguably dependent on China. My big worry in a certain sense is that the student has become the master." — Patrick McGee

"If you just take the $55 billion that they invested in 2015 alone, which was 22% of revenue … and just go from let's say the birth of the iPhone 2007–2025, you're talking about a trillion dollars that Apple's invested in China." — Patrick McGee

"None of those phones are really being made in India, they're just being assembled there. The joke that one manufacturing design engineer told me was that the phones are assembled in China, disassembled in China and sent to India for reassembly." — Patrick McGee

"Our narrative is essentially that Apple exploits Chinese workers. In a certain sense, that's the only narrative about Apple in China we've had in the past two decades. And I flip that on its head…[China is] getting more out of the relationship. It's a story about China exploiting Apple. — Patrick McGee

"I think there still is a mindset that China is an imitator, not an innovator. I think we should recognize that… is not the case." — Frank Cilluffo

Relevant Links and Resources

Apple in China (Patrick McGee's book)

McCrary Institute' Code Red report on "Typhoon" threat actors (Vault/Salt/Flax)

Anthropic's Dario Amodei's essay: "The Adolescence of Technology"

Guest Bio Patrick McGee is a Financial Times journalist and the author of Apple in China, covering geopolitics, technology, and global supply chains.