Apple has been pursuing a “cash neutral” policy for a while by selling bonds in order to do what Meta says they are going to do. I’m no corporate financial whiz but I think that using debt to do those things has some sort of tax advantage.

There also seems to be an effort to show a net zero cash holdings position in order to preempt any political attempts to try to take money that corporations are “just sitting on.” I think there was some rumblings of that when Apple had 100+ billion in the bank. When they got wind of various governments’ ideas of extra taxes on excess cash suddenly share buybacks seemed like a better idea than losing that money altogether.

I can't find any solid information, but is it possible it's largely stuck in Ireland? By borrowing money and paying the interest with out-of-country cash, they should be able to avoid US tax, right?

They don't "need" to. They want to.

They looked around and thought, we don't have much debt compared to other companies, I bet our company value would go down less than $7B if we offer a $7B bond.

If they can give the $7B to investors today, but the stock value goes down less than $7B by taking it out, they are increasing shareholder profit.

This way they would not have to risk failing to issue a bonds at a later time.

perhaps it has greater than $40B of expenses anticipated?

look up the interest tax shield