EU freezes/takes over all Apple assets in EU

Most value/assets are in the US, I don't see how Apple in the EU would have enough interesting assets to refund. If 30% of the 450M inhabitants in the EU have an iPhone and the purchase price was 1000 Euro on average, that would be 135B Euro. I would be surprised if they have a fraction of that in the EU as assets. The primary useful asset I could think of is if the iOS source code was also stored somewhere in the EU. I guess in war it would be fair game to fork it. Wouldn't help with the existing iPhones, since the EU doesn't have the signing keys, but you could bootstrap a new phone ecosystem (and even revert Liquid Glass :p).

If the money isn't enough for the refunds, a finance mechanism can be created that will be settle after the war.

There are huge assumptions in this, like the EU wins the war, the war doesn't end in a sort-of cold war, Apple cannot get away from liability because it was not their decision, etc.

The returned devices may be sold to 3rd party markets if Apple isn't cooperating.

Flooding a 3rd-party market with over 100M second hand iPhones would drive down the prices by an extreme amount.

Well how convenient that Apple has about $135B in European accounts(that peaked at 200B)! To avoid taxes US companies tend to keep a lot of money in the markets they sell their products.

You don’t go to war with the association of losing it, obviously the risk will ve priced and I don’t think that the risk will be that big considering that US hasn’t won any wars since WW2. Even if doesn’t cover all the costs, national security and independence doesn’t have to come for free.