Apple… The digital Strait of Hormuz

I return to my favourite writer, John Thornhill, and borrow from him that rare glint of insight. When he replaced the Strait of Hormuz with Apple, the analogy seemed exaggerated at first glance, almost too bold. But the more one contemplates it, the more its precision reveals itself. The Strait of Hormuz is not merely a waterway; it is a choke point of power, a bottleneck through which energy flows and from which the world is watched. Apple, in Thornhill’s metaphor, performs the same function—only in the digital geography. When it comes to how artificial intelligence is deployed in consumer services, Apple controls the technological equivalent of the Strait of Hormuz. Not because it is always the most innovative, nor […]