The New York Times Just Published Some Bizarre Race Science About Asian Women
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"Young Chinese women have small fingers," the article reads, "and that has made them a valuable contributor to iPhone production because they are more nimble at installing screws and other miniature parts in the small device, supply chain experts said."
This 100% reads like LLM output; it's confidently wrong, isn't using proper news copy syntax, and got weirdly vague as it trailed off ("the small device").
NYT is publishing AI articles.
Wasn't this also the argument for child labor? "Small children can fit into tight spaces easier, lets use them to unjam dangerous machinery"
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What stood out for me was this line:
— so it could be, whether the NYT understood it or not, that its "experts" were simply winking at the reality that it's hard to build affordable gadgets in a country with robust labor rights.
Robust labour rights? An American is talking about "robust labor rights"!? If someone from the EU had written that I'd have gone "fair enough". But against an American employer?
Let's put it this way: I've worked in China for 25 years. I turned down a job in the USA shortly before moving here (about two years before). There's a reason for this (and it wasn't just the gun in the job interview).
Yep exactly!
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I guess the NYT no longer has an editor on staff? Who the fuck let that go to print, also who writes something like that into an article - that little paragraph where the NYT claims that "industry experts" said Chinese girls are better at assembling phones reads like cringe AI slop.
I feel like literally one person proofreading that should have been enough for them to go, "maybe don't print the stupid racist thing about small fingers."
Authors name is "Tripp" and if he's a real person he 100% used AI to write it.
I'm guessing his grandfather was/is loaded and connected. I've never met a man in my life who goes by "Tripp" and isn't an insufferable douche coasting off generational wealth.
The crazy part is he just "wrote" a book about Apple, and there's a good chance Apple execs he talked to really said that stupid racist thing.
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That’s it. That’s the only reason.
Manufacturing labour costs are far cheaper outside of China but the skills aren't available. While labour costs are always a factor, the US just doesn't have enough skilled manufacturing engineers or the supply chain you get somewhere like Shenzen.
Neither did China until Apple trained them
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So, NYT, do the Swiss all have micro hands? How do you explain Swiss watchmaking? For that matter, how about American watchmaking? America used to make all kinds of tiny wristwatches, including movements. There is also a few current American watchmakers, with a few building intricate movements.
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Yeah, that's weird.
The reason iPhones are impractical to make in the US has nothing to do with anatomy or genetics, it's purely labor costs. You can hire someone to work for very little and for very long in China, you can't do that in the US. That's it. That's the only reason.
Well it's also about supply chains. All the components are also made in China so you'd end up ordering the parts and then having to wait a month or more for them to be shipped to the US. If you want to avoid delays that means maintaining a significant stockpile of parts in the US that you may or may not ever actually use.
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What's important to note is all the pieces that get screwed together are still made over there...
We can pay tariffs on all the pieces and screw them together here, but that's going to essentially have the same tariff costs as a completed iPhone.
Having someone screw the pieces together here would also raise costs due to labor costs. But they're two completely different things.
Quick edit:
Times author is legitimately named "Trip" and started out as a sports writer before pivoting to "apple, bourbon, and beer".
These days it might just be AI, but if it's a human it's almost certainly a nepo hire...
They could even waive the tariffs and it would still be impractical to assemble in the US. The only way it's practical here is with near full automation, and even then it's probably still cheaper in China.
Labor and land are just so much cheaper there.
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China ain't the cheapest anymore and has not been for a while.
No, but it's substantially cheaper than the US and cheap enough that moving operations isn't practical. Companies are moving to other south Asian countries, but China remains a staple for reasonably competent and reasonably cheap labor.
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Wasn't this also the argument for child labor? "Small children can fit into tight spaces easier, lets use them to unjam dangerous machinery"
But the children yearn for the mines!
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They could even waive the tariffs and it would still be impractical to assemble in the US. The only way it's practical here is with near full automation, and even then it's probably still cheaper in China.
Labor and land are just so much cheaper there.
Apple spent literal decades training workers over there, and the Chinese government busted up Apple and all their workers went to competitors...
Like, sure, someone has to assemble the screws but it didn't take Apple 20 years of investment to just teach them to use a screwdriver. It's skilled labor.
Jon Stewart had some guy that wrote a book on it a week or two ago.
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Yeah def what I was thinking. It’s strange that instead of admitting to this they’re just rolling with it saying it’s based off something they read.
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That’s it. That’s the only reason.
Manufacturing labour costs are far cheaper outside of China but the skills aren't available. While labour costs are always a factor, the US just doesn't have enough skilled manufacturing engineers or the supply chain you get somewhere like Shenzen.
The US had and has plenty, which is why manufacturing started in the US and migrated out once processes standardized enough to bring in less competent labor. Then labor became more competent, so more companies moved their operations there. A lot of US manufacturing engineers work with Chinese manufacturing facilities, because that's where the labor is.
If the US wants to bring manufacturing back, it needs to be cheaper to do it domestically. That means automation, better materials transportation, and cheap raw materials.
I don't see the point. Instead of bringing back manufacturing, improve education and focus on higher value work.
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The worst garbage imperial propagandists pushing racist pseudo-science in service to capitalism? Genocidal fascists promoting colonialism? I'm shocked!!! SHOCKED!!!! \s
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Apple spent literal decades training workers over there, and the Chinese government busted up Apple and all their workers went to competitors...
Like, sure, someone has to assemble the screws but it didn't take Apple 20 years of investment to just teach them to use a screwdriver. It's skilled labor.
Jon Stewart had some guy that wrote a book on it a week or two ago.
There's some skilled labor, sure, but most of it is processes, and those can be replicated elsewhere. Apple brought the processes and refined them with local labor. But none of it is so special that it can't be replicated elsewhere in a couple years (assuming facilities exist).
Look at phone repair, you can go to any mall and a teenager can disassemble and reassemble your phone with only a month or so of training. Making that process efficient is the hard part, and that only requires a few skilled jobs in a factory of thousands. The vast majority of jobs in assembly are pretty unskilled.
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People are just now waking up to realize a pro genocide & pro wealth disparity publication isn't moral?
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There's some skilled labor, sure, but most of it is processes, and those can be replicated elsewhere. Apple brought the processes and refined them with local labor. But none of it is so special that it can't be replicated elsewhere in a couple years (assuming facilities exist).
Look at phone repair, you can go to any mall and a teenager can disassemble and reassemble your phone with only a month or so of training. Making that process efficient is the hard part, and that only requires a few skilled jobs in a factory of thousands. The vast majority of jobs in assembly are pretty unskilled.
and those can be replicated elsewhere
Apple isn't in the process of spending billions over decades to train people just to install screws...
Like, fuck Apple, I've never owned a single Apple product. But they wouldn't have spent that much for so long to train people for unskilled labor.
Quick edit:
Apple in China[1] is a 2025 book by Patrick McGee[2][3][4] (Financial Times reporter[5] from 2013 to 2023[6]), about how Apple Inc. invested in China in order to build iPhones and other technology, and by doing so helped China become more competitive. In the book, McGee says that under Tim Cook Apple invested $275 billion over five years from 2016. McGee compares this to the Marshall Plan as this is in excess of other corporate spending. McGee says the Marshall Plan was about half Apple's investment, in real terms.
275,000,000,000 over five years...
That's 55 billion a year, for five years straight.
It doesn't cost that much to train someone to put a screw in
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"All the crap that fits, we print."
It takes tiny hands to fit all the type on the page.
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We can't claim that everything weird is written by AI, because there are weird human writers too. Although even if not AI, "experts claim" is such a dodgy source, that alone makes it untrustworthy.
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Wasn't this also the argument for child labor? "Small children can fit into tight spaces easier, lets use them to unjam dangerous machinery"
Probably scrapped articles with “labor in Asia” to get this spat out
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Neither did China until Apple trained them
Shenzen's supply chain is hardly all on Apple's behalf or behest.
