What if Apple is forced to abandon its values?
Imagine Apple were forced to abandon all its environmental commitments, turn its back on privacy protection, and quietly retire all its diversity and inclusion plans.
What if?
Would the company be the same, and would you trust it more, or trust it less?
What would be the consequences were Apple to cease its work on a circular manufacturing system? To what extent would the billions of Apple devices now in use contribute to industrial pollution?
How would you feel if you knew that everything your smartphone knows about you is also available to your government, other governments, advertising data brokers, and surveillance as a service firms? How would this impact your personal privacy?
To what extent would this threaten business confidence? And what would a dilution of user privacy look like were Apple to engage in it?
There’s a real risk
These are just some of the things I think are at risk as the company faces a toxic storm of different challenges from governments everywhere, including in the US.
The thing is, while the focus tends to be on one particular leader, much of the prevailing US political agenda is precisely the same as what other governments are pushing for, it’s just a matter of which political mannequin happens to be in position to drive those changes through.
In this case, it seems to be America first.
The direction is what matters, not the person leading it.
What happens after this?
I’m not certain it’s particularly pretty. It’s hard to believe the sheer quantity of personal information your smartphone already gathers about you, and the extent of that data is only going to increase as the technology itself evolves.
With AI now established as being an essential component to future tech, energy demands to drive that tech is already straining supply, which in its own way implies higher energy costs generally in response to limited availability.
That need to deliver energy also means all forms of energy generation will be in play, creating other problems in terms of environmental health – including pollution in water supply.
Higher costs as nativism overcomes globalism across supply chains, straining energy infrastructure, increased inequality and the loss of data privacy all loom as real and present threats in the event Apple fails to prevail in its current existential crisis. All these outcomes will emerge at the same time as AI drives decline in some parts of the employment market.
We are not in control
Put it all together and the signs point to a choking, polluted planet with water and energy shortages, collapsing living standards as jobs markets shrink, mass wealth inequality, and surveillance at an unprecedented scale.
All of these things may well still happen if Apple holds onto its many commitments in these fields.
All the same, so long as it is at liberty to hold onto those promises, there’s a chance that a set of better outcomes remains possible – but just as soon as it is forced to fold, those outcomes will be locked in.
It’s easy, in that context, to think that all the political theatre we’ve watched since the (confected?) financial crisis of 2008 has been nothing other than a series of steps, deliberate, or otherwise, along a journey to these particularly unpleasant outcomes.
This is enshittification on steroids. We are not in control.
You can follow me on social media! Join me on BlueSky,  LinkedIn, and Mastodon.
