Is Apple Becoming A War Profiteer?

By, Chris Rossini

Apple has some cozy relationships with the U.S. government.

Last month, CEO Tim Cook had a nice seat at Obama's State of The Union Address:

There's the online Apple Store for Government, where federal employees and military personnel can get special pricing (paging Laurence Vance):

There's having Al "Global Warming Climate Change" Gore on the Board of Directors:

There's the 8 million iPads sold to indoctrination centers (aka "schools"). Gotta make teaching about Honest Abe (paging Tom DiLorenzo) more fun and efficient.

And now (1 month after Obama's speech) news comes out that the U.S. Army has an order for 650,000 iOS devices.

VentureBeat reports:

650,000 iOS devices will certainly put a nice shine on Apple sales this quarter. While it’s impossible to know exactly how much the order totals up to, a quick back-of the envelope calculation shows it could easily be in the neighborhood of $200-250 million:

• 120,000 iPads at $400: $48,000,000
• 100,000 iPad minis at $300: $30,000,000
• 200,000 iPod Touches at $250: $50,000,000
• 210,000 iPhones at $500: $105,000,000

So Apple has a nice crony capitalist arrangement going.

Remember Ron Paul's warning about mixing it up with Uncle Sam: "When one gets in bed with government, one must expect the diseases it spreads."

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