Where did Apple manufacture its phones?

1. Highest-end silicon is not strictly necessary. Most people here can surely appreciate just how fast microprocessors in general are today?

2. The export controls have exceptions, loopholes, and people with strong wills.[1][2]

3. China is slowly but steadily freeing itself from import dependence.[3]

[1]: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/08/21/203241/china-keeps-...

[2]: https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/23/09/09/1849221/huawei-sh...

[3]: https://mobile.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23071327&cid=638...

For most of history, China wasn't the wealthy superpower it has been since around 2020.

There is an argument that China has the world's largest economy and it is nestled in the middle of the region that is best known for high-tech manufacturing. It is still possible that they'll fumble this somehow, but the fundamentals are solidly on the side of China becoming the place to do AI training.

Export controls for GPUs that are exclusively manufactured a hundred miles off of China’s coast in Taiwan, a nation that the CCP considers to be part of China, and that it has explicit plans to take by military force in the coming years?

It’s not as secure and stable of a situation as you present.