12 MACWORLD JUNE 2019
MACUSER TIM COOK’S TIME 100 INTERVIEWhave a PAC. Apple’s probably the only
large company, or one of the very few,
that doesn’t have a PAC. I refuse to have
one because it shouldn’t exist! I think the
people that should be able to donate
are people who can vote.”Cook is right that Apple has no political
action committee pushing dark money to
candidates, but his line that “people that
should be able to donate are people who
can vote” rings a bit hollow. The company
spends millions of dollars a year (go.
macworld.com/mldl) paying lobbying firms
to influence politicians. It may not be a
PAC, and it’s definitely transparent, but it’s
hardly just voting individuals donating to
politicians.
He went so far as to say, “The
company donates zero to political
candidates” and while that is technically
true, some of the money that Apple
spends on lobbying firms like Capitol Tax
Partners (go.macworld.com/cptl) and
Franklin Square Group (go.macworld.com/
frnk) absolutely ends up in the hands of
political candidates—it is ultimately the
very reason for their existence.
ON REGULATION OF THE
TECH SECTOR
“I think that there are some serious
issues with tech. Even though I am a
deeply free market person in mindset,
and believe that some unexpected
things can happen in regulation...we all
have to be intellectually honest. We
have to admit that what we’re doing isn’t
working. That technology needs to be
regulated.
“There are now too many examples
where the “no rails” have resulted in a
great damage to society. When things
are out in society and they don’t
represent the true cost, then you have
to do something about it. You either
have to reflect it from a cost point of
view so that you’re valuing things
properly or you have to regulate it.
“I’ve been on the regulation kick,
which surprised even me, for a while,
because I didn’t see companies laying
the basic rails in place, and then
refusing to step over those.”Cook went on to answer a question
about how confident he was that we’d be
able to end up with smart regulation of the
tech sector.“I’m not confident, is the short version of
the statement.
“I think this is an example where
Europe is more likely to come up with
something. The GDPR isn’t ideal, but
GDPR was a step in the right direction...
this is on the privacy side, obviously. I
don’t think it’s a save-all end-all, I think