One reason we managed to put together an outstanding team to create the iPod was that our team could get relatively outsized stock and bonus plans that they couldn’t get anywhere else at Apple. The other important reason was that we had Steve Jobs fully behind us. Those two things allowed us to recruit amazing people—even though we couldn’t tell them what they’d be working on before they signed on—and survive the internal antibodies. Steve

gave our tiny team an unfair advantage—gave us air cover and dropped bombs if anyone messed with us. There were times when the internal antibodies at Apple tried to expel us from the organization—we’d constantly hear “We have other priorities, we’ll help you if we have time.” Or “Why are we doing this project—it’s not core to our business.” But as long as our team was making reasonable (or unreasonable but important) requests, the teams who were stalling us would get a call from Steve. “If they’re asking for something, then give it to them for Christ’s sake! This is very important for the company!

In 2007, Apple imported nearly all of the high-valued components— display screen glass from the United States, camera modules from Japan, memory chips from South Korea, sensors from Germany— to Shenzhen. China’s contribution consisted mostly of the labour involved in assembling foreign products, which was around 4 percent of the phone’s final value. One former Apple executive told me that the iPhone supply chain grew more “red” over the next decade as it incorporated domestically produced components— meaning that it incorporated more Chinese components.

US manufacturing employment peaked in 1980 at nineteen million workers. In 2000, it still had seventeen million. Then it collapsed over the next decade, in part due to China, in part due to technology changes, and especially after the global financial crisis, when the workforce fell to just eleven million in 2010. In 2025, the United States has around thirteen million manufacturing workers.

Everything starts from the recognition that something has gone quite wrong in US technology. Too many people have argued away the strategic importance of manufacturing. And the solution has to involve reconstituting its communities of engineering practice that prioritize process knowledge. It means attempting to build up every segment of manufacturing: training workers and creating incentives for manufacturers in order to relearn mass production.

This scenario sounds a bit fantastic, but if the iPhone were built in the United States rather than Shenzhen, then an American city— say Detroit, Cleveland, or Pittsburgh— might be hailed as the hardware capital of the world.

Germany and Japan are mighty exporters with, respectively, eight million and ten million manufacturing workers. A country doesn’t need so many people to have a robust semiconductor industry: A few hundred thousand highly trained workers are enough. In 2025, China will graduate more than twice as many PhDs in STEM fields as the United States— and many in American universities are Chinese nationals likely to repatriate.