Tim Cook Demands Bloomberg Retract Chinese Spy Chip Story

Apple tree CEO Tim Cook is demanding that Bloomberg retract a story that says China secretly planted spy chips into the company's servers.

"There is no truth in their story about Apple," Cook told BuzzFeed in an interview. "They need to practice that right thing and retract it."

Cook made the statement every bit the security community has been casting serious incertitude on a Bloomberg Businessweek piece from Oct. four that claims Prc has been exploiting the country'southward manufacturing supply chain to secretly plant the spy fries. Servers sold to most 30 companies were tampered with, including those used past Apple and Amazon, according to Bloomberg's report, which cites 17 anonymous sources.

Bloomberg has faced stiff pushback from the affected companies, including Amazon, and The states government officials, who say they've found no bear witness of the secret Chinese spy chip. Apple itself began investigating Bloomberg's merits in Oct 2022.

China Spy Security Chip

"We turned the company upside downwards," Cook tells BuzzFeed. "Email searches, information heart records, fiscal records, shipment records. We really forensically whipped through the visitor to dig very deep and each time we came back to the same decision: This did not happen. There'due south no truth to this."

Cook's comments announced to be the starting time fourth dimension Apple has publicly called on a media organisation to pull a news story. Nevertheless, Bloomberg told PCMag the publication stands by its reporting.

"Bloomberg Businessweek'due south investigation is the event of more than a year of reporting, during which we conducted more than 100 interviews," Bloomberg said in an email. "Seventeen individual sources, including government officials and insiders at the companies, confirmed the manipulation of hardware and other elements of the attacks."

Security experts say the supply chain attack outlined in Bloomberg's written report is certainly plausible. The Pentagon has besides recognized that People's republic of china's control of the world's manufacturing represents a potential national security threat.

Yet, no It security story has faced so many blanket denials from beyond the tech industry and the government. On Thursday, United states Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told CyberScoop he'southward seen no bear witness of China planting spy chips into manufactured servers.

One senior official with the Usa National Security Agency also said he was "befuddled" past the claims in Bloomberg's story. "I have pretty neat access, [and even so] I don't have a lead to pull from the government side," NSA advisor Rob Joyce reportedly said final week.

"I take grave concerns almost where this has taken us," Joyce added. "I worry that we're chasing shadows right at present."