I'd been saying "there's geopolitical/hidden reasons" for ages. The very first one for me was when Apple did that CSAM stunt. Fortunately the outrage was enough for them to peddle back, but it was such an out-of-left-field thing to do that I struggle to imagine 3 letter agencies weren't involved.

In this case (where Apple has power), my guess would be more along the lines of "Apple's found a lot of vulns and are ready to patch it; agencies offered a concession in exchange (and either arm twisted EU and/or gave them access to the same vulns)".

The funniest thing is there's no reason for any of this to be wrong. Individual parts have been public knowledge for a while, and putting them together doesn't take a lot of logic.

Fun reading, if you haven't read it already:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/08/apple...