108. How Apple’s former CSO tells a neighbor from a threat (with Thomas Moyer)

Thomas Moyer spent 20 years at Apple, starting under Steve Jobs as an employment lawyer. He became the company’s first Chief Compliance Officer, and then, reluctantly by his own account, took the Chief Security Officer job, which he held for more than 13 years before retiring in January 2026. His first meeting with Tim Cook set the tone for all of it. Two weeks in, he told Tim the company had no legal obligation left on an old agreement with a former employee, and Tim asked him what the right thing to do was. That question runs through the crisis management program Thomas built after the Paris attacks, which by the time he left could reach any Apple employee by text or phone, and through the months Apple spent moving employees and their families west across Ukraine. Since leaving Apple he’s been watching something that worries him. Four groups that would otherwise have nothing to do with each other are pointing at the same target, the tech industry. People worried about their jobs and about power concentrating in tech stand next to environmentalists at the same protests, along with people worried about privacy and people objecting to who tech companies work with. He built a tracker for it, and in its first three weeks it went through about 30,000 articles and logged 99 incidents of opposition to the industry, most of them peaceful and 19 of them sabotage. His answer for the industry starts with listening, and with learning to tell a neighbor from a threat. He explains how Apple did that while building Apple Park in a quiet Cupertino neighborhood, and what he’d tell Flock’s founder about writing its own rules before Congress does. Thomas now runs Seven Elm Strategies, which advises technology and critical infrastructure companies on their security programs and helps startups sell into companies like Apple. His weekly brief on opposition to the tech industry is free at 7elmstrategies.com. [Recorded October 2026. Confirm the date.] Some of the events Thomas mentions were recent at the time. Brought to you by YSecurity.