With $250B in cash (or whatever it is right now), they could raise a hell of an Army.
How is that never the case when it comes to money or taxes or labor issues or any number of other things they have remarkable control over, but whenever its something good that helps or is valuable to the regular individual they are so impotent or the result is so arbitrarily contingent?
The government is making us take this off the App Store and since we're the only app store, unfortunately this will be the end of whatever for you. Gosh, we're so sad the government will make us do this and we have like zero access to courts or lobbying agencies or god forbid we engage in any dirty tricks like we do everywhere else like everyone else.
Supply lines are expensive. Feeding an army is hard.
Would an Apple army be competitive in a war lasting months, not to mention years, with a mid-level average country’s army?
So presumably something comparable for a few years of conflict, not that I think this is even remotely probable
So far there's no way an international corporation could win a war against a country. Give it a hundred more years though, and things might change.
It would be an entirely unconventional war.(I imagine) I suppose it would have to start with an extensive legal investigation to map out what kind of public attack apple can get away with without jeopardizing their revenue/breaking to many laws in other countries. A secret attack would be more of a finance question (I imagine) but if that can be arranged they can field their own political options or support opposing parties. Farages brexit project only cost a few million.[0] It was poorly hidden and not punished.
(I imagine) Apple could quite legitimately bid on things related to their business model (that they can always modify) and drive up prices, render more than just apple products unavailable and hinder technology companies in the UK sufficiently to make them leave. As long as the effort enjoys plausible deniability anything goes.
After project brexit an attempt to disrupt UK/US relations could also be quite effective (I imagine)
The long game (I imagine) could be to dramatically lower prices of apple products in the UK so that everyone buys them. Then argue the encryption thing doesn't sit well with their agenda and switch everything off and on again and off again. Perhaps something more subtitle, no IOS updates as the update has encryption and no apps for the current OS. They can do that as often as they like.
Investment funds are happy to kill everyone in whatever way possible as long as it makes money.[1](no imagination required)
It's a rather fascinating topic that I should study further (without imagining so much)
[0] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/10/nigel-farage-s...
[1] - https://www.investorsagainstgenocide.org/about/resources/vot...