A few months ago president Xi toured San Francisco. Chinese flags lined streets which were suddenly absent of the usual insane and addicted residents. (If you’ve been to San Francisco recently you know this is fair.) The Chinese president was warmly received even though earlier in the year a Chinese spy balloon floated across the length of the contiguous United States, and even though Beijing had just explicitly said that it would rein in Taiwan one way or another by mid-century. Biden and Newsom shook the Chinese leader’s hand, but it wasn’t the president or the governor that Xi (likely) most wanted to see. Xi was there for the tech titans of Silicon Valley.
Then after dining with the tech CEOs and after doing whatever business needed to be done, it was back across the Pacific Ocean.
Xi knows how to deal with CEOs. Xi is essentially CEO Supreme of all companies in China. No company operates without his and the Communist Party’s approval. Insult his leadership and one may find oneself in very hot water as Alibaba’s CEO Jack Ma found out when he got a little too mouthy. China is the world’s ultimate crony capitalist state. Xi is it’s chief and TikTok is the jewel in China’s social media crown.
Of course TikTok blanches at this characterization. TikTok is completely independent and would never even imagine sharing all of the sensitive data it has, which includes things like biometric markers (faceprints and voice prints) of their users, with the Chinese government. Never ever ever. They triple promise.
Let’s assume that the company hasn’t shared any of its information with the CCP to date. But let’s say a war breaks out in the Straights of Taiwan tomorrow and Xi comes knocking on the company door. What do you think TikTok is going to do?
We are ardent supporters of the First Amendment in the US and of free speech everywhere. The idea that the US would just flat out ban a social medium we find distasteful in the extreme. But if TikTok is essentially a spying app (at least potentially) that is ultimately beholden to a hostile foreign power (which it is), that is an issue worthy of concern.
The US federal government has banned TikTok from its machines. Many states have also. In Montana (home to many nuclear weapons) a ban for everyone, government and citizens, was supposed to go into effect but was recently stopped by a federal judge. The state is appealing that decision. Congress is driving the current effort in a fit of bipartisanship. As we state in the headline Biden has said he would sign a ban into law. (Even though his campaign recently started up a TikTok account.)
Things seem headed is a clear direction.
But would a ban be constitutional? Maybe not. Going all authoritarian to fight authoritarianism doesn’t make much sense. For anyone looking at this situation with a reasonably open mind it is complicated to say the least.
Then we must account for the crony factor.
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