Tim Cook wants Bloomberg to retract that Chinese spy chip story

Apple CEO Tim Cook has called upon Bloomberg Businessweek to retract a report that Chinese spies installed tiny microchips designed for espionage on server motherboards sent to the company, BuzzFeed News reports.

“There is no truth in their story about Apple,” Cook told BuzzFeed News. “They need to do the right thing and retract it.”

Bloomberg Businessweek insists that its story, which claimed that hardware maker Supermicro hid chips on server motherboards designed to enable malware to be installed on the computers, is true. Supermicro, Apple, and Amazon, which also allegedly spotted the spy chips, have all denied the claim.

One possibility is that the companies involved have been urged to keep the spy chips under wraps by the U.S. government, but Apple has strenuously insisted that’s not the case. It’s the first time that Apple has called for a retraction of a story about the company, according to BuzzFeed.

“Apple has never found malicious chips in our servers,” the company said in a statement published earlier this month. “Finally, in response to questions we have received from other news organizations since Businessweek published its story, we are not under any kind of gag order or other confidentiality obligations.”