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Comment by newscracker | Hacker News Reader

With all the strong denials so far, my guess is that heads are going to roll at Bloomberg and that there may be retractions. Worst case, Bloomberg gets caught as publishing fake news endangering entire countries and companies, and closes shop in shame. There’s too much at stake for Bloomberg here.

Hopefully someone at the top at Bloomberg is taking this seriously and looking at some quick and decisive actions. These back and forth exchanges don’t seem to be working well in Bloomberg’s favor as far as perceptions are concerned. Bloomberg might also find itself an outcast in the tech circles.

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LOL. Bloomberg is not going to "close shop in shame" over this. I seriously have no idea what set of assumptions you must be using to think that this is even in the realm of possibility. It's like saying "worst case, an asteroid hits us in 20 minutes."

Agreed that they won’t close shop over this, although it could be similar to how Dan Rather stepped down from CBS over the document controversy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy

The thing with the Killian documents case is that, while CBS (presumably) didn't knowingly run a false story, they were very negligent in their sourcing and verification. They wanted the story to be true too much. [ADDED: We don't know at this time whether the same can be said of Bloomberg, assuming the story unravels.]

Other news organizations were also pretty mad at CBS over this. There was a story around W's National Guard service that actually didn't depend on the Killian documents. But once those documents were determined to be fake, it pretty much blew up the reporting around the story generally.

A multi billion dollar business closing down and a longtime employee losing his “head” for the company are two very different things.

.. and return the money to shareholders, right?

Isn’t the editor of Bloomberg the guy that used to be editor at The Economist for about 10 years, that is until 2-3 years ago? I don’t think he would have let something like this get published if he had had just the slightest doubt about the veracity of it all. And yes, I do trust the morals of an editor that I respect and have respected for more than 10 years more than an amoral corporation like Apple which is by law forced to first care about shareholder value, truth and morals be damned.

I'm fairly certain that both Bloomberg and the companies involved have a high degree of confidence that what they're saying is true and have sufficient facts to prove it. That confidence would seem to be misplaced on one side or the other. If anybody had any real doubt they'd let this story die.

never heard about fake news?

>never heard about fake news?

I love that "fake news" is now a license to disbelieve any story that doesn't fit with your personal beliefs. There was fake news one time, now everything is under suspicion.

If this were proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, China would be shown to be guilty of a massive act of corporate espionage.

Surely geopolitical pressure combined with the commercial pressure for that not to happen is enough for Bloomberg to retract its story regardless of truth?

Yes, that’s also possible in making Bloomberg retract the story. But it would take a big hit on its reputation (whatever it is) and also lose a lot of sources. I’d also imagine reporters leaving it for other places, thus making it worse. It seems like there’s no good ending for Bloomberg in this story. One escape route seems to be the nuclear option of revealing some (not all) sources, what they said, when, where, etc. But that also guarantees a mutually assured destruction. I feel bad for the Bloomberg reporters now (assuming they didn’t do this out of malice and dishonesty).

Maybe a closed hearing with all parties involved could bring some closure, with some face saving retraction or statements.

> If this were proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, China would be shown to be guilty of a massive act of corporate espionage.

> Surely geopolitical pressure combined with the commercial pressure for that not to happen is enough for Bloomberg to retract its story regardless of truth?

Perhaps that could also be the source of Apple and Amazon's strong denials. What if they were told on no uncertain terms by the Chinese that if they corroborated Bloomberg's story, they would be shut out from the Chinese market? The PRC could even cripple Apple's international operations by interfering with their manufacturing.

I think Tim Cook would have a very hard time doing anything but deny, if confirmation meant writing off a billion-user market and justifying it to Apple's shareholders.

I wanted to add that I see thoughts that are similar to mine here: [1]

"I’m calling it now. Bloomberg is fucked on this story. The longer they drag this out before a full retraction, the more damage they’re taking to their long-term credibility. Read their statement closely — they’re not saying their story is true or that Apple and Tim Cook are wrong. All they say is they spent a year on the story and spoke to 17 sources multiple times.

And the bottom half of BuzzFeed’s story is even more damning than the top — no one in the security community has been able to verify anything in Bloomberg’s story. Anything at all. And no other news publication has backed the story. Bloomberg is all alone on this."

[1]: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/10/19/cook-calls-for-...

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