I believe an argument could have been made that it was the right call if they had publicized it. Seeing as how it was implemented in the background, I am less inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.
I'm not too optimistic that this was a "bad" move, just a move by people that have already carefully considered the pros and cons and their conclusion was to make the move, meaning they found more pros than cons.
You're really twisting what happened here. It wasn't so much "yanked" as it was "replaced". I was initially against the idea, but soon got around to it. It was a very risky and daring move by the government, but it was a good one.
So did anyone with a pulse. :) The only part that garnered widespread opposition was the sixth point ("the most important reason"). Apple later reversed course on that particular position.
If I'm not mistaken their opposition was on principle not whether it was needed or not. So the fact that we are in a new cold war era does not change that Equation.
The principle is still the same. The only way for this "change of mind" is if their opposition was due to "it's not needed because US has no rivals".
Or what most probably happened, they realised that if they want to keep workign on this field there is no escape from those kind of implications and They don't have the big bad wolf Google to blame anymore.
The reason this worked out right (still crossing fingers) in my opinion, was because much of the tech community were on the same side in this one. But there are other occasions where this would have been a mess. So, the message would not have been clear. The congress and media would have thought "some people say yes, some people say no... nothing new".
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