Trump's Apple threat is his latest attempt to reshape the global tech supply chain, but could the push for American manufacturing derail big tech's broader shift into physical AI?

Our dear Durbosa is watching that in today's tech check. Good morning, Dee.

Hey, good morning, Carl. Yeah, so the president's pressure on Apple, that could be the first real stress test of whether America is ready to manufacture the future of artificial intelligence.

This is critical as the race moves from software to hardware.

Smartphones are still the gateway device, but everyone from meta to Google to open AI, Tesla,

they're building new form factors designed to embed AI more deeply into the physical world.

There's smart glasses, humanoid robots, robo-taxies.

Even the next iPhone are becoming AI-native devices.

And so that means that the next competitive frontier, it's not just model quality or compute

infrastructure, it's manufacturing capacity.

And Apple may be the first to find out what happens when Washington demands fabrication.

This week, Sam Altman and Johnny Ive, we talked about it a lot, they laid out a vision to ship 100 million AI companions that will move consumers beyond screens,

slated to begin production in 2027 and likely assembled in Vietnam to avoid that China risk,

according to top Apple and supply chain analyst Ming Chi quote.

But if Trump is not satisfied with iPhones made in Vietnam or India,

why would he be any more forgiving of Open AI's next gen device built anywhere but America?

You got meta in Google.

They may be in the same boat

with their next gen AI devices as well. They're smart glasses. They're still manufactured in Asia,

small volume for now, but both are expected to scale as AI becomes, again, more wearable,

more contextual, more physical. Then there's embedded AI, humanoid robots, which Morgan Stanley calls a $5 trillion

opportunity and robotaxies. If Trump forces onshoreing too soon, America risks falling behind

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