Week of June 16th, 2025
The only ‘Made in America’ smartphone maker has a message for Apple about manufacturing in the Trump tariff era.
Todd Weaver has an important message for Apple as it faces growing demands by President Donald Trump to reshore some of its smartphone production: Don’t listen to the conventional wisdom.
Experts have long said that manufacturing iPhones in the U.S., rather than Asia, as Apple does, would be logistically impossible and ridiculously expensive. But Weaver argues companies can indeed do it successfully, and at a similar or only slightly higher cost—if given several years to navigate the inevitable complications.
Weaver should know: His startup, Purism, is among the few, if not the only business, that assembles smartphones in the U.S. In fact, the U.S. pedigree is the main selling point of his company’s Made in America device, the Liberty Phone.
Read more at Purism: https://puri.sm/posts/fortune-com-features-purism-and-the-made-in-america-liberty-phone/
The Threat Beneath: The Invisible Operating Systems Inside Your Devices
Beneath the surface of nearly every modern computer lies a hidden threat—one most users never see or control.
Today’s Intel and AMD processors ship with embedded subsystems like the Intel Management Engine (ME) and AMD’s Platform Security Processor (PSP)—proprietary, low-level firmware environments that operate outside and below your main operating system.
These subsystems have privileged access to your computer’s memory, peripherals, network interfaces—potentially even when the device is idle or powered off but plugged in.
This means they can bypass traditional software defenses like antivirus, firewalls, and even OS-level encryption.
Once compromised, they offer nation-state attackers a stealth foothold deep within your system.
Read more at Purism: https://puri.sm/posts/hidden-operating-systems-in-chips-vs-secure-auditable-oses-a-cybersecurity-comparison/
It’s not just the Librem 5 or The Liberty Phone's hardware that’s modular.
The OS itself is incredibly modular and fully editable to your will.
Our defaults and preinstalled apps are well thought out and secure, but it’s just our suggestion of software to use, not a requirement by any means.
This freedom gives the product owner full control of the device.
A good example of software modularity is the onscreen keyboard.
Our default keyboard does the job, but there are other options. You can swap it out for OSK to take advantage of its advanced features that still need to be brought to our default.
Using OSK you can get cool features like word correction, character popovers, and cursor movement via long press on space. To get it installed, just follow the steps here.
Control by Design- The Product Owner has Control Over Default Apps
Default apps can all be edited, removed, or replaced. For example, our text messaging client Chatty works with the mmcli backend and is well-documented. Once you stop the default messaging client, you can make your own texting system with these basics.
Read more at Purism: https://puri.sm/posts/retain-your-control-and-customize-everything-with-modular-software/