Get this straight - it was essentially bribing four of their workers to make an "authenic" iPod that had added functionality to secretly gather it. An overpriced pork bespoke hardware hacking project, not adding bugs to every iPod produced or anything. If anything they would be annoyed not grateful over the covert poaching and they certainly would get blocked if they tried to sue anyone over it but the losses were petty/background cost of doing business anyway.
There isn't any factual basis where that incident contribuites to that fallacious narrative. If I were a plumber and doing work on a CIA building they might do a background check so deep that it finds and analyzes any colon polyps to ensure I won't
be planting any bugs in the plumbing but it doesn't mean "I am pretty much the CIA."
Even less - it was asking for some tech support from Apple to learn how to hack Apple Hardware with their own (Bechtel) engineers - the actual hardware/software was done by Bechtel. Given this particular engineer is talking about it - they didn't have to undergo security clearance (if they had, they wouldn't be talking about it. Ever.)
All apple did was provide a little bit of JTAG/Build/Source Code support. The rest was up to a third party.
There isn't any factual basis where that incident contribuites to that fallacious narrative. If I were a plumber and doing work on a CIA building they might do a background check so deep that it finds and analyzes any colon polyps to ensure I won't be planting any bugs in the plumbing but it doesn't mean "I am pretty much the CIA."