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<p>You are listening to Curiosity Curated Shorts. I am Zong.</p><p>In March of 1996, an Apple executive named Joe O'Sullivan was in a tense, late-night negotiation to sell one of the company’s last major US factories. His bosses in Cupertino wanted the deal done fast. When O'Sullivan pushed back, wanting better terms, he received a chilling phone call from his superior. The message wasn't a threat, but a statement of fact: "if the deal doesn't get done," his boss said, "none of us will get paid on Thursday". Apple, the company that prided itself on building its own computers, was in a "death spiral," just weeks away from running out of cash.</p><p>How did this company go from the brink of bankruptcy to creating the most sophisticated, profitable, and geopolitically critical supply chain on the planet?</p><p>In this short episode, we deconstruct the history of Apple's manufacturing machine. We'll reveal that its success wasn't simply about "outsourcing to China for cheap labor." Based o...