[debt]

It's no coincidence this system launched around the same time the whole NSO scandal broke. The NSO leak shows what government-sponsored exploit analysis against a large tech company may yield. I mean the NSO exploit could've worked the same but been a worm; it could've been absolutely devastating for Apple, imagine something like every phone infected. Something like that was possible with that exploit.

Apple has been a thorn in the side of the IC for a long while. IC probably saw an opportunity to gain a bit of leverage themselves via the whole NSO thing, and likely offered their cyber support in exchange of some support from Apple.

I mean c'mon they've been consistently pressed by IC for tooling like what they just launched; it's the least invasive thing(compared to something like a literal backdoor like that NSA_KEY that MS did for Windows) they can offer in exchange for some cybersecurity support from the gov.

idk if that's what's happened, but it's odd Apple would do this at all, and do it right around the time of the NSO thing.