I’d be curious to see what the audit paper trail looks like for this. Companies like Apple now have third party due diligence programs in place. Said plainly, their legal teams purchase software solutions that track their vendors, their vendor’s vendors, and their vendor’s vendor’s vendors.

Apple’s legal team is pretty robust, and I’d be shocked if they didn’t hand over a bunch of TPDD documentation to auditors to try to say “here’s all the records of us inspecting our vendors and their vendors.”

Apple will likely point to the vendor, blame them for criminal or unethical practices, and then showcase their paper trail and their system of vetting controls. Companies don’t have to be perfect, but they generally have to show that they made a legitimate and good faith attempt to work with vendors that are above board.