Trump gives Microsoft 45 days to clinch TikTok deal
reuters.com
reuters.com
You see arguments all the time that start with "CCP is evil, X is Chinese, therefore...", which would basically justify any and every action against all Chinese entities.
Meanwhile, if you have even close to a clue about what's going on in China you'd know that ByteDance is bending over backwards trying to position itself as a multinational corporation with independence from the Chinese government, all in utter futility of course. That action actually drew the ire from the mouthpieces of the party.
Some rumors say that the reason TikTok announced the potential deal so fast is to make it so that the Chinese government won't intervene and turn it into another Huawei situation. Well, that kind of reasoning seems to be based on a purely fictional assumption that the US government is still operating on principal or in good faith.
But in any case. I did not say ByteDance is substantially moving towards independence from the Chinese government (what does that even mean, should it disobey laws in the country it's operating in?) and I'm not privy to any inside information as to how tightly integrated it is with the party. I'm just saying that it is trying to position itself as such.
On a side note, neither Google or Facebook could comply with the Chinese law that require their servers to be hosted inside China. But I'm not saying that justifies TikTok's business in the US either.
Do laws exist that prevent US companies from providing data to foreign law enforcement in the other countries where they operate? Because from my limited experience with Chinese passport holders, if the Ministry of State Security asks you to do something, you do it. Unless they're planning to remove admin access from every TikTok employee with a Chinese passport it doesn't really matter where the data is hosted.
Note: Yes, the US gov can do the same thing to US companies to some extent. But this about ByteDance and the CCP. And I think the assumption that you can't trust a Chinese based comapny (because of the CCP) is justified.
If ByteDance is letting the Chinese government use their other app, Douyin, as a propaganda platform for the CCP and banning entire races from using it in their native language on their direction: https://www.codastory.com/authoritarian-tech/xinjiang-china-...
And entering joint ventures with CCP owned media companies https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bytedance-filing/bytedanc...
... then why shouldn't people assume they're not independent of the CCP?
Which gets us back to square one about comparing the danger of each.
It's the US Government doing this. The US Government probably doesn't view itself as a threat.
Having it be a US-controlled app does not reduce those risks.
Is there a way to prove after Snowden that there is no direct data pipe between Microsoft data centers and NSA
Same is true for Microsoft.
World powers’ signals intelligence services don’t only monitor domestic or domestically-owned traffic.
No, you didn't even attempt to. You addressed a concern about US government monitoring of Microsoft (which seems to be based on the same false premise that intelligence services only monitor domestic entities).
My point, which you did not address, is that transfer to a US owner doesn't somehow mean you have a guarantee that the PRC intelligence apparatus isn't monitoring it, just as it currently being owned by a Chinese entity doesn't provide a guarantee that the NSA isn't monitoring it.
Well, there is a counter proof. One of ByteDance's app (com.ss.android.essay.joke) was shutdown by CCP in 2018. Bytedance is a victim of governments bullies.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/technology/china-toutiao-...
> Vulgar content on the Neihan Duanzi app had “caused strong dislike among internet users,” a brief notice from the State Administration of Radio and Television said. The company was told to clean up its other platforms, too.
If bytedance does what CCP says there won't be any app shutdown in the first place.
This may seem like a tragic misattribution, but I think the more widely this is understood the clearer it is how much of a pure practical liability an oppressive totalitarian regime is (in addition to the pure evilness of it in Carse’s infinite game sense).
If you are trying to build a business not liable to be exploited by CCP, you have to build it elsewhere. Considering regime specifics, namely nonexistent freedoms and checks as far as government intervening in corporations’ private business, CCP can be pretty much considered a “parent company” of any business, and it has eroded trust in itself for some credible reasons.
All companies operating in China are 100% controlled by the Chinese government, because there is nothing the Chinese government is actually prevented from doing, and with regard to access to information, the PLA can essentially ask for anything for any reason without appeal. The legislature is more of a propaganda ritual than an actual legislature.
One need not prove that TikTok is particularly controlled by the Chinese government.
This seems kind of tonedeaf to say when you consider what is happening to Hong Kong right now. Why should anyone believe that ByteDance, a mere 100B dollar company, can have independence from the CCP, when that same government is seemingly itching to have to tanks rolling down Hong Kong?
You know they're running concentration camps directly comparable to Nazi Germany right? Like they're mid-genocide right now.
Yes any and every action against all Chinese entities is justified. Total economic blockade is the least the rest of the world should be doing.
Pretty sure EU car manufacturers like Daimler or VW would like to buy up Tesla's European operations for cheap. Just need the government to simply declare them to be a national security threat and force them to sell or lose access to the largest market on the planet.
I have no dog in this fight, but isn't there at least a little evidence that TikTok may be collecting data on a large scale? I haven't been following it all that closely, but I thought that's what the original bans for military members was about.
Edit: So, yes, but that’s ok because others were too.
There's a gigantic list of apps that were revealed to be accessing things like the clipboard in iOS 14. I just installed the beta, and I found that my credit union's app reads the clipboard every time I open it. My third-party reddit app does the same thing.
TikTok doing it isn't really even news. There are dozens to hundreds of apps doing it, and it's likely a bug.
Any time a firm, app, or organization does something to offend or inconvenience the man, he launches an attack against it. There's certainly a pattern of this behaviour.
But it's nothing new really, just happened to become a "mainstream headline" now. Another thing that most people don't even realise, is that on android, every app can access the clipboard. Many apps do it continually, even in the background.
I think I have some past comments here on HN explaining more about how I restrict this type of behaviour if you're interested.
By default TikTok requires no permissions and doesn't even ask for a phone number to register.
It is kind of easy to build a user data profile on Android because the user doesn't even know that all of these datapoints can be gathered without any permissions. The actual implememtation of the permission system really is more "for show" imo.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qjd8bq/how-to-survive-a-n...
It’s quite frankly baffling that people can’t see why one of the most popular social media platforms wouldn’t be considered a national security risk, especially after what we saw during the last presidential election.
(1) The CCP is a secretive, authoritarian government with an established disregard for human rights. (2) China already imposes draconian restrictions on American (and EU!) companies, far in excess of the proposed restrictions on TikTok, e.g. forced "joint ventures" with Chinese firms resulting in wholesale theft of IP. (3) Unlike the EU, China is involved in a wide-reaching and pre-existing geopolitical power struggle with the US.
I remember that in WW2 both the Nazis and U.S. put people in camps, so they must have been morally equivalent.
I'm not sure there are recent examples of US actions that even compare in scale or scope.
-- edit:
This also doesn't even get into the scale of the nation state cyber espionage activities. If you work in any government agency, or work with the government, your networks are under constant attacks.
Big claims like that's require evidence? Do you have any? The UN human rights commissioner has been repeatedly invited to Xinjiang for years yet still hasn't gone.
Why are a large group of Muslim countries publicly supporting China's efforts in the region to reduce extremism?[1]
The more you look past the sabre rattlers the shakier all this supposedly common knowledge looks. Trace it back far enough and it all leads to Adrian Zenz, whom the BBC called a "world leading expert on Xinjiang", except Zenz can't read or speak Chinese, he's an Evangelical missionary whose "scientific" paper on Xinjiang that's so often quoted by the media contains strange Bible references, his published books are on how to survive the coming rapture and contain lot of bigoted statements against homosexuals.
Just wondering if Zenz is your source here?
2019: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/01/china-visit-xinjiang-...
2020: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-xinjiang-rights-idU...
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-xinjiang-rights-idU...
Secondly IRAQ war or Afghanistan regime changes kill MILLIONS. Gitmo. Hypocritical at best. CIA has funded guerilla efforts to sabotage BRI if you want to know what that truly is about
As far as I know, Microsoft has so far avoided being on that hot seat. So why, now, get involved in the shit show that is social media? I still don’t understand why Trump has a beef with TikTok specifically, but if the rumors are true that this is payback for the prank they pulled on his first political rally, isn’t this whole thing political in nature? What if TikTok users continue to mess with Trump? I can imagine Trump now set his crosshairs on Microsoft. I don’t understand why you’d willingly put yourself in the middle of a controversy to buy a company that doesn’t exactly align with your current businesses. What am I missing?
... except force sale of successful Chinese companies to allies of Trump.
If moderating TikTok is too much of a hassle, they'll probably just mismanage it into irrelevancy (having already accomplished their primary objective of satisfying the American government that TikTok isn't a threat to American interests (either commercial or national security.))
I’ve never used TikTok and I’m really not a fan of any social media company but the way this whole situation is being handled feels decidedly un-American and frankly unfair to TikTok/ByteDance.
Why do people side with China so easily?
I’m not saying TikTok should be allowed. I’m just wondering why, if Chinese surveillance is such a clear and present danger to our national security, we’re only talking about TikTok.
I’m suspicious of any government action in the name of “national security” and I’m infinitely more suspicious when that action is specifically targeted without any logic or reason that can be articulated beyond “national security”.
And not once have human rights been mentioned with respect to TikTok so we both know that has nothing at all to do with it.
> 2009 - NSA offering 'billions' for Skype eavesdrop solution [1]
> 2011 - Microsoft buys Skype for $8.5 billion. Why, exactly? [2]
> 2012 - Skype replaces P2P supernodes with Linux boxes hosted by Microsoft [3]
> 2013 - Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages Subhead: Skype worked to enable Prism collection of video calls [4]
> 1. https://www.theregister.com/2009/02/12/nsa_offers_billions_f...
> 2. https://www.wired.com/2011/05/microsoft-buys-skype-2/
> 3. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/05/skype...
> 4. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-...
Now that they have the capability, they would have to comply with court orders, like every other communications company based in the US.
Indeed, they would not cooperate “like this”, (they’ve been suing them to shield customer data, in fact) but they obviously would comply with US law.
Microsoft hasn't been immune to social media fever, it's just been somewhere between unsuccessful and unlucky. (Which maybe makes it "lucky" for not being on that "hot seat" you describe, but certainly not for lack of trying. Parts of Xbox have been and are on that "hot seat", though.) If Microsoft is thinking anything about TikTok, it's probably that it could get a good deal on a strong competitor in an actively highly competitive social media space. (Whether or not that can translate to success or luck, given Microsoft's track record to date is another question entirely.)
* Bing / Ads / AI: Microsoft used to power FB ads after they invested in 2007. GPT-3 has shown that there's a lot that is probably happening within the AI division of these large tech companies. Adding a consumer social media product like TikTok will probably help them test models + gather information to train their models.
* LinkedIn / GitHub: Microsoft has two social websites targeted toward the professional crowd. Adding a consumer product may allow them a higher % of coverage of social activity that starts to rival FB and even surpass Google.
* Xbox / Minecraft: Consumer brands that have been reasonably successful under Microsoft. Some good tie-ins with TikTok could help boost all three brands.
Microsoft big purchases outside media ones that have mostly if not completely been divested are aQuantive, Skype, Yammer, Nokia, Mojang, GitHub.
- Many of their big 90s acquisitions like Hotmail and Vision were part of their core products. - Nokia, Danger were for their phone business. - aQuantive was a response to Yahoo, Google buying up advertising properties - Yammer was for their central enterprise moves - Mojang along with a number of other gaming purchases like Rare Obsidian, and backend companies are for their strong gaming division. - GitHub fits in with their Azure and developer focus. - Skype could’ve fit in better and did try and was for their cohesive enterprise and all in one attempts. It fits too.
- LinkedIn is the only one you can really say was a big purchase without the same level of synergy or drop in support to the company.
Microsoft is as far from a conglomerate as you can get.
-
If you want tech conglomerates, look at Tencent. Their portfolio is absolutely absurd. Even SoftBank outside the vision fund is a tech conglomerate.
These are mostly problems in the media. In the real world, most users love these platforms: https://jakeseliger.com/2018/11/14/is-there-an-actual-facebo....
There's a big gap between the media world and the real world.
We have seen this with Skype and LinkedIn. They are acquiring an exisitng user base and the data that goes with it. Microsoft was even on of the early investors in Facebook at a point when Facebook had no proven business plan, but had many users.
It is arguable Microsoft has been trying to transform into a data collection company. Aside from these acquisitions, we see them aggressively pushing their Windows users to accept telemetry, automatic upgrades and a view of MS software as a subscription service.
Some would argue that Skype was a controversial company when Microsoft acquired it. One could argue that MS solved a problem for those who were uncomfortable with the growth of Skype. After the acquisition, Skype was no longer controversial (except perhaps to a small number of technically savvy users who disliked the architectural changes MS made).
Perhaps the same could be said of TikTok. For some, TikTok is a controversial company. If MS acquires it, will TikTok continue to be controversial? Let's wait and see.
When Microsoft aquires a company it does not necessarily mean that whatever the company has been doing will continue. For example, the company behind the T-Mobile Sidekick, Danger, was perhaps the first cloud-syncing smartphone and its founder went on to create Android at Google. Microsoft acquired Danger. It did not then become a MS product. Most people have never even heard of Danger. The OS, which was NetBSD-based, was something MS could not work with. Did we get a next-generation NetBSD-based phone from MS? No, we got s series of successive failures to create a Windows smartphone instead.
Microsoft as a dependable steward of technology created by others is still unproven. Look at Internet Explorer, originally created using the Mosaic code from the U. of Illinois. After so many years of work developing it as their own browser, they now abandon it for Chrome.
Perhaps this is why their acquisition of Github has some people concerned.
I'd say that the short video format is unsuitable for politics but twitter exists so quality of argumentation is obviously irrelevant.
Zuckerberg. TikTok is eating Facebook's lunch and Zuckerberg sees Trump as the easiest remedy.
TikTok isn’t eating Facebook’s lunch either. They are co existing as the top tier social media companies.
You tell me if these below are worth 50B or not: - An exponentially growing company that's already generating 3B profit https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/27/tiktok-bytedance-profit.html - Taking the 800m deal away from Google Cloud (almost 10% of the Google Cloud annual revenue): https://www.theinformation.com/articles/tiktok-agreed-to-buy... https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-cloud-hits-a-10b-annual... - The knowhow of creating a viral social media in genz. The potential to compete against F and G in ads.
Say Microsoft buys it for $80B. Even if TikTok peters out and Microsoft gets back half that in profits, they’ll benefit in other ways through that time and the remaining loss is the cost of taking a well calculated risk. There’s no downside to this deal at all if it will cost close to the rumored $60B price tag.
To your point of competing in ads. They’ll still be far from FB and Google, but it should solidify them as a strong number 3 alongside LinkedIn, Bing, and their properties. Followed by Amazon before a drop off for Verizon, Twitter, and probably something I’m forgetting. Maybe Iac if including all their property spin offs (assuming they have stakes in them).
A man can dream. This gives a tiny bit more potential for a Google Adsense competitor. Still waiting for FB and/or Microsoft to try it. Yep I remember Yahoo failing. I think Yahoo tried Analytics too. Wouldn’t mind Microsoft Analytics against Google’s (when you need an industry standard analytics to show traffic)
Any business decision riding hard on political hopes and dreams isn't really a safe investment this decade, no matter which side it's favoring.
Strategically the fact that Microsoft isn't political is one of the advantages - everyone knows Facebook is the living emobdiment of a psychopath. But trying to convince people that those nerds who sell Office are secretly pushing a political agenda is going to be a tough sell. Microsoft isn't like Google, Apple or Twitter- they're not advertising a political ideology as part of their company image.
I’ve never had a problem with Facebook any more than Microsoft in the 90s or Google or Amazon for the past decade+.
I find Twitter and Snapchat worse [at times] personally. Jack and Ev screwed over Noah Glass so egregiously. Jack being the worst of it. Then they attempted to white wash over the history. Jack had a made up story of how he came up with Twitter. The rest have lied for so long about other aspects even though Noah is the one that began the initial proper work of Twitter on his laptop. That sort of personal behavior and to never make any sort of amend for it.
I find that to be worse than anything Facebook or Zuckerberg have done. I always find these sort of personal cruel behavior to be the worst. Related examples are the Snapchat founders screwing over the third, Larry Ellison + Steve Jobs screwing over people including not giving stock to many first employees. Jobs doing it in Pixar and Apple.
The context of this and the rest of your original post made it sound like you believe the statement as well. This comment appears to reinforce that.
Again, I’m not sure how many people care about all the things you listed beyond the current trend to say how evil or bad FB and Zuckerberg are.
The same trend began with Bezos a few years ago when he became the richest person and has continued.
Companies most in people’s lives will naturally have the most attention. So their rich founder CEOs will get the brunt of negativity too.
I don’t think the average person understands it.
Facebook, Google, Twitter all get heat from a very small portion of the population for not moderating their platform enough that is true. What is also true is that as far as I know we have no proof that these accusations have any impact on their bottom line.
Facebook is the big bad social network that was caught playing with its users' feed to see how it would impact their mood. That is straight evil yet I would be willing to bet it never had any significant impact on their ad revenues.
My aunt won't stop being on Facebook because of some controversy, the same way that my younger siblings don't care if you can see some alt-right content in a dark corner of TikTok.
How is this different from AB testing?
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/fa... "creeped out"
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebook... "disturbed"
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/29/facebook-... "scandalous", "spooky" and "disturbing"
Forget about Trump's dislike of TikTok for that prank, and instead think in terms of national security: TikTok was literally copying keystrokes on peoples phones and, presumably, using it for some purpose. It's not far fetched to think it was sent "home" to the parent company, which is obligated to turn data over to the Chinese government.
Making Microsoft in charge of it in the US solves that issue. This obviously introduces the issue of MS's data collection on users, but we already have that issue with TikTok, only with the downside that it may benefit a hostile foreign government.
Amazon is there though yeah.
Maybe we’ll have Salesforce swoop in and try to merge. Like the wanting to buy Twitter :).
go try to find illegal or nude content on it. you can't!
This is how you can tell when a right leaning group is significantly more authoritarian over liberty. Which is a divergence from many recent right leaning administrations in America (see: tea partiers) and the rest of the western world.
Not to mention its oddly similar to the thing they are accusing the Chinese of doing.
I would think some Indian firm might want Tik Tok? Not really sure why no deal has been made there?
Since when does one need permission of USA President to make the deal?
I mean sure he could block the app in states, but I figure microsoft could still use it outside ?
Since 1975 [1].
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Foreign_Investm...
Only this time American business interests told him that there was money in Tiktok so that it would be profitable for them to get their hands on it instead of killing it outright. And so... They have made Bytedance "an offer they cannot refuse". From the Godfather to international geopolitics it's all the same.
Edit: This will bring back very bad historical memories to the Chinese.
No easy sideloading on iOS, so if it is removed from the store you can’t have it on your iPhone.
This is the opposite situation: TikTok is a foreign company that's considering a US company as an investor/acquirer.
The president can review foreign investments and determine if there is a nation security risk. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) does the reviews.
1. TikTok is actually not cooperating with the Chinese gov't (and maybe this is the CCP's way of showing them that it goes both ways).
2. The CCP is allowing the US gov't to destroy its own credibility and moral high ground. These threads are usually solidly anti-China but there is a clear stream of discomfort now, with the realization that if national security can be used to override the law, and everything can be a national security threat, then how strong is the foundation of law?
EDIT: A few of the replies have suggested 3) TikTok is simply not that valuable. Which makes all the ruckus being raised by banning it, whether by the US or by India, even sillier?
Just my own conspiracy minded pov. Also, most government and related businesses have already taken the steps to advise their employees don't use the app, and don't have it on devices that come into their offices.
What do you ask Chinese government to do with an oversea entity. CCP do not have the same influence as US government...
Also wouldn't that open US services like facebook and snapchat to the similar treatment by other governments? Why would the US jeopardize their industry like this?
Something doesn't add up.
The current administration has demonstrated how enormously corrupt they are, and we have seen a little bit of circumstantial evidence of "cooperation" between the CCP and the first family. But who knows just how deep that rabbit hole goes?
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/technology/china-toutiao-...
> The country’s top media regulator on Tuesday ordered the company, Bytedance, to shut down its app for sharing jokes and silly videos. Vulgar content on the Neihan Duanzi app had “caused strong dislike among internet users,” a brief notice from the State Administration of Radio and Television said. The company was told to clean up its other platforms, too.
I'm pretty sure that when OP talked about cooperating with Chinese govt. He was talking about what is hinted by trump, that they are doing massive clendestine surveillance on US citizens on behalf of CCP.
(Which incidentally, we now know that some US companies are doing exactly that for the US govt.)
I don't see the POTUS doing anything that is outside the law. I haven't seen it happen once. Heck, even an impeachment investigation didn't even find any broken laws.
The way I see it is the majority in the house abrogated their responsibility.
The House conducted a House investigation to determine if there were grounds for impeachment. They concluded there were, and they drew up articles of impeachment.
The next step is the actual impeachment trial, where the Senate has the authority to compel witnesses to testify under oath under threat of contempt. The House lacks this power over the other branches of government (i.e. as White House counsel explained, they would not comply with any members of the White House staff being called before House committees).
But since the Senate chose to call no witnesses, no witnesses were compelled to testify under oath in an impeachment trial.
There's a reason Congress has the approval of only 1 in 4 Americans polled.
Not as exactly clear-cut as this time around.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_of_Bill_Clinton#:~....
They've actually been in discussions to purchase for months now. But the U.S. government comes along and says, actually, you better complete it soon, or the value of the U.S. business will be zero.
If they want access to the US market, perhaps they should take that up with their own government.
But they didn't. What's happening to them is similar to what happened to Grindr.
I believe the gravity of this hasn't been appreciated yet.
An open mind that considers other viewpoints is one that can outplay opponents. Literal thinkers can be led in circles.
Your idea that MS gets a stronger position is a bit orthogonal to what may be the real hold up. Insofar as your idea assumes both that ByteDance cares, and that MS wants Tik Tok, then your idea is sound.
But I'm no longer certain either is true. Is ByteDance a business? Or an out of date intelligence front that their people are simply winding down? Does MS want Tik Tok? Or has Trump decided that's the best outcome for him, and pressured MS to buy Tik Tok?
Is it time to consider the very real possibility that MS doesn't even want Tik Tok? And never really did?
Also, MS is being a little naive here as well. We are in uncharted territory, but did they think they would get away with tap dancing for a few months to pacify Trump and then coming back and saying, "Sorry we can't get it done"?
TikTok has a huge amount of use, right, it is hugely popular? Microsoft in general is known to be trying to get into "social" more, for obvious reasons. You can make a conspiracy story about anything, but I think the occam's razor answer is that, yes, Microsoft actually wants TikTok. Doesn't it appear to be a very valuable property matching MS's known acquisition strategies? Why wouldn't they want it, there's nothing odd about them wanting it that needs some other mystery explanation, is there?
When companies merge, they pay taxes on the value of the capital, stock or assets acquired during the process of a merger
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/1702
I do not know on what basis they could therefore demand any payments, though.
- secure the purchase - let it run independently like LinkedIn - move cloud components to Azure - leverage Microsoft compliance with regulators and data retention / collection plans - let tweens and teens do their thing
Profit.
Obviously it's easy to make Apple and Google remove it from their app stores but couldn't ByteDance just release a new app called TokTik or something similar? Could ByteDance just reincorporate as a different company if the ban was at the company level? Would the order ban apps with > X Number of users when owned by foreign investors?
Seems like this isn't something the president can actually do.
The short answer is that yes, it could be banned, but it would take a concerted effort by the White House.
Only certain sectors in China have joint-venture requirements. Over time, more and more sectors are being freed from those requirements. These sorts of regulations are allowed for developing countries under WTO rules.
You cannot do business without a local partners in many industries (read: a "joint" venture in which the local "partner" will acquire your IP and eventually compete with you down the road). Foreign ownership is restricted. It was big news when China mildly liberalized its laws earlier this year and only as a gesture in the ongoing trade disputes.
Of course another company could come forward to buy it but it seems it's MS that has a foot on the door already
Editorial control over what a significant fraction of people see is significant power over those people. Even seemingly benign editorial actions could have serious effects.
Facebook and Twitter are clearly being pressured by all political sides to favor content they want favored and disfavor content they want disfavored. What does that look like when the CCP weighs in on what American TikTok users see? Maybe prioritizing posts about protests or just petty crime (even more so than the internet tends to do by itself)?
I think there are endless ways to get creative and subtle here that could cause problems.
You all think he's playing 2D checkers but he's really at Spock's chess level.
1) Say whatever he feels like
2) If there's bad news, say something controversial to try and jam the news cycle.
He's already had to back-peddle on claiming mail-in ballots increase voter fraud (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.com/amp/news/2020/...), probably because someone clued him in that the biggest user demographic for mail-in voting is the elderly, most of whom vote Republican.
What he has is a cult of personality that sucks in the gullible. It was effective at selling sub-par steaks, but serves him less well as head of the US Executive for successfully running his office.
If you believe he's playing some kind of hyper-chess feel free to provide evidence.
https://www.quora.com/How-many-Obama-Executive-Orders-were-s...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/the-r...
More importantly, I don't know what a list of Obama EOs struck down by courts has to do with Trump's Presidency. It's entirely possible they were both bad at being President. Trump's failures are particularly interesting, to my mind, because of how often he torpedoes himself; he may have pulled off ending protections for immigrants from Haiti, Sudan, and Central American countries if he hadn't chosen to call them "shithole countries," opening up the spectre of his EO being racially motivated.
It's not 4D chess; he says what he wants and doesn't notice that a President is held accountable to his own words. it'd be funny watching his self-torpedoing buffoon act if he wasn't the President of the United States of America.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/here-s-full-lis...
Which one has been overturned?
Edit: Holy mackeral! For a bumbling idiot he sure does tackle a lot of issues.
Blocked by the courts, and now moot as the census has happened.
He also needed two bites at the apple to get 13769 legal; the first two are overturned executive orders.
I wouldn't be terribly surprised if some folks at Microsoft were "encouraged" to pursue those deals to keep them out of other hands.
This is the first step of what many on HN have been wanting - for the government to be more heavy handed toward tech.
To everyone’s surprise, politicians are corrupt and self serving.
What does subtract here mean?
The only other companies, in tech, that could offer to pay 100B:
AAPL, MSFT, FB, AMZN, GOOG.
Once you exit FAAMG, the next largest company is Berkshire Hathaway with a 500B valuation. I don't see Buffet paying 1/5th of his own company for TikTok.
Among FAAMG, the other 4 just got grilled by Congress over Antitrust. FB & GOOG would likely never get approved it. I don't see AAPL owning a social network, given the privacy concerns around it. That leaves AMZN, who has Twitch as a "sister" platform. However I don't see Bezos getting away with acquiring a high profile company like TikTok, as he's currently enemy #1. That leaves MSFT who has been trying to get into social media but has kept failing (most recent of which was Mixer, which pretty much funneled millions into top streamers for nothing).
[1] https://www.csis.org/blogs/trustee-china-hand/tiktok-clock-s...
1. The word "erratic" suggests that there is error, rather than deliberate behavior to make the news and to throw enemies off guard.
2. You pointed out that the actions were in fact started by CFIUS, which is a disappointment to anybody who wants to see the actions as being driven by vanity or malice or corruption or similar.
This is a long standing problem with the size, scope, and complexity of our federal government.
One of the things I do "enjoy" about Trump is how his actions gets everyone to argue for a less powerful federal government. It would be nice if these structural arguments weren't dependent on who was in the White House, but it is nice to hear them anyway.
These powers are precedented—-this is how antitrust law works. The U.S. has had similar procedures in CFIUS since 1975 [1][2], which is likely how U.S. would enforce this decision.
Keep in mind, it’s not sell or close. It’s an order to unwind the Musical.ly acquisition [3] or face sanctions.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Foreign_Investm...
Since 1988, when the Congress passed a law saying “all foreign investments that might affect national security may be reviewed and if deemed to pose a threat to security, the President of the United States may block the investment” [1].
Delegating a power doesn’t remove one of that power. And CFIUS pre-dates Exon-Flores, so the Congress giving the President, not CFIUS, these powers is relevant.
We can have a discussion as to whether we like or dislike this action. (I am not a fan.) But suggesting it’s unprecedented or a breakdown of the rule of law is hyperbolic.
CFIUS has a 90-day timeline, but that’s a creature of executive action. Exon-Florio requires no similar timeline.
Similarly, ByteDance had the choice to seek CFIUS review and approval in 2017 before they closed the Musical.ly deal, but chose not to. So CFIUS is intervening now.
Congress can change this any time it wants.
Yet and still this is the same government that for some strange reason many on HN trust to “regulate tech”.
This is patently false—the U.S. has been losing court cases left and right [1].
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/why-trump-...
Not a valid argument for equivalence with Xi’s regime.
Gorsuch recently ruled against Trump on gay rights [1]. As have several Bush appointees on other matters.
Party isn’t a perfect prism for predicting court opinions.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/15/us/politics/gorsuch-supre...
It is not reasonable to expect things to either have opinions or not. An adult should have the sophistication to read something and understand what is opinion and what is fact. I get that many adults these days apparently lack that ability, but that doesn't excuse it.
This is the only way to truly fight back to their own anti-competitive practices. Either that, or outright banning them from doing business until they change their own laws, and honestly I much prefer the second option, even though I can tolerate the current solution proposed by Trump.
There are other ways, like enacting laws mandating data storage be in the US.
The only way out is to move engineering, SRE, and testing out of China and hard-fork the codebase.
1. That is illegal.
2. Theoretically this also currently applies to Google, Microsoft, Google (any company which has devs in China) and is a solved problem. Almost all people don't have physical access to data, and those who do need to go through access reviews to do anything.
> Two pieces of legislation are of particular concern to governments — the 2017 National Intelligence Law and the 2014 Counter-Espionage Law. Article 7 of the first law states that "any organization or citizen shall support, assist and cooperate with the state intelligence work in accordance with the law," adding that the the state "protects" any individual and organization that aids it.
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/05/huawei-would-have-to-give-da...
I see. That's a fair point.
The notion that TikTok is a threat to national security is ridiculous. Truly, “national security” has lost its meaning.
Geolocation data, including: longitude, latitude, and time zone
Device information, including: Android ID, International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI), Address Book Access, Device carrier region, Device region, Device type, Device OS version, Device language, Device connection type, and Mobile network code
App information, including: App name
https://www.proofpoint.com/au/corporate-blog/post/understand...
2) The world trusts US companies because unlike China the US is not a dictatorship, has a functioning, independent judiciary and generally abides by international law. So there is a far greater level of trust there because there are legal mechanisms to prevent breaches.
I feel like this always get short shrift in whataboutism discussions.
In China, everything is by law in service and subordinate to the Party.
In the US, not.
That seems like a pretty big difference.
Also, the discussion was about national security and you are giving different arguments here. How is this related to national security?
If you tell me you believe they are equal, I'll take your word for it. While the United States has plenty of flaws, I think they are still far more trusted when it comes to human rights.
Legal mechanisms exist everywhere and can be broken if not by selective enforcement but also by the voters.
In China they can do it anytime Xi Jinping snaps his fingers.
That's why countries do not trust China.
If the military is doing things that civilians commonly do then maybe, you know, they should stop that.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42853072
And the military has already acknowledged that they have a problem with the rampant use of private devices. So any app that harvests a lot of real-time location data can be a problem.
Also if I was the Chinese government I absolutely would be analysing audio/video and capturing contacts for any phones at known military GPS locations.
Anyway, maybe ban the military from installing apps or using civilian phones if it’s a problem??
That article you linked to was not even about TikTock it was about some other app. So removing TikTock is not going to fix the problem.
And every day governments around the world block mergers and acquisitions on competition grounds and block companies from being involved in sensitive projects e.g. Huawei.
How is it possible for someone to prove that they have no foreign government ties?
Are there any evidence backing the "foreign government tie"?
But a first step would be to get rid of its internal committee of the Chinese Communist Party. And to stop making joint venture with government agencies.
To put it in other words, if there was a dedicated spot for the US secretary of defence on the board of Google, how fast do you think other countries would take some actions against Google ?
Good point, I don't know they have JVs with government agencies before, had to do some research on this.
> get rid of its internal committee of the Chinese Communist Party
This is hard, if not impossible, if you meant "党委" ("party committee") or "党支部" ("party branch"), because CCP demands any organization with more than 3 party members SHOULD have one. ("should" should be interpreted roughly as the same word in RFC Requirement Levels) And just like they usually have no problem if people chose to deny joining the party but may hassle you forever if you quit, if you try to shutdown an existing "committee" it would be seen as hostile.
That being said, most of the mid-to-large-sized startups are actively ignoring these requirements until being forced, because apparently even if you are required to do so, you have to go through a hairy application process. And the "committee" in most corps (including mega corps) are essentially an empty shell, a symbolic thing to make CCP happy, so corps usually have no motivation to change the status quo.
Yet CCP do extremely care about these symbolic stuff, it is even forcing foreign companies to do this, IIRC Disney agreed to do so.
If I were TikTok I'd be shopping the company to europeans just to avoid any further headaches. They'd still get access to the US market but wouldn't have to deal with the headache of a sale to a US company.
There's no authority -- presidential, or otherwise -- to "ban" TikTok, nor enforce a sale of a foreign entity to an American (The foreign investment act is about selling American companies to foreign companies, not Americans buying foreign countries.), nor is there any way for the federal government to get a cut of any sale.
It's just typical Trump talking out of his ass.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/08/03/trump-mic...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_ma...
I realize the people who have lived most of their lives in the US don't see the downsides of its hegemony, but rest assured that it is seen far more clearly elsewhere.
No thanks. It's been a while since the US government perpetrated a genocide. China, not so much.
I agree with you there are plenty of downsides to the hegemony. China being #2 does not need any pity either. So what's wrong with the US pushing back on China?
Open wide the doors of immigration to top tier talent through out the world and ensure they can settle in the U.S. if desired without waiting lists of up to 100 years.
Restore trusts between government and the people through electoral reform that ensure a more proportional representation with respects to the demographic and population changes of the last 50 years.
Why is Covid out of control? Because nobody believes anything coming out the White House. If Trump said tomorrow there is a viable vaccine how much of the population will be willing to take it?
You know. The things that made America attractive in the first place. American strength comes from within. The real story of the last 20 years isn't why China has gotten so much stronger, sure that was going to happen one way or another but it's beyond your control. What you can control and should ask is why America has gotten so weak. Why out of a nation of 300 million with such great talent, the very best that could be found for national leadership was a failed New York real estate developer?
If you try to the bottom with China you won't win.
(I am 100% in agreement with you that the US should fix its flaws.)
Second of all, TikTok is basically a Vine clone, but became more successful because of rapid innovations developed in the large and very competitive Chinese market. If the US did all of what grandparent suggested, there would not have been a TikTok to worry about in the first place because it would have been developed here.
[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/china-rocks-the-us-not-so-...
China bans apps when the Chinese government disagrees with it. What would your suggestion be for the regarding Chinese apps in the US?
If there are value differences between countries that truly rise to a level that can be considered existential or a threat to national security, these rules will automatically work to discriminate and protect long-term local interests in a way that isn't arbitrary. And if there are not differences, then why should anything be done anyway? Let the winners win.
At the moment there is skepticism due to the US never having consistently demonstrated the values it purportedly cares about during all of globalization, not domestically, certainly not abroad. So the fuss about China becomes one of sour grapes more or less, coming to fore because the profits are no longer justifying the loss of competitive advantage. It is an about-face built on opportunism, not strength and moral backbone. Negative reactions built on those grounds will never be as effective as positive and morally defensible ones.
Regardless, my question is about China continuing to force transfer of private company IP, bans apps as it see fit, not respecting copyright, etc. How do you as United States and Europe deal with it?
[1]https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/07/15/how-big-...
Facebook by all means is already banned.
> The US has permanently lost China's technologists and entrepreneurs at this point.
What? We never had them. China's economy is closed and state-controlled.
Well except Tesla and ExxonMobil just setup their WOFE in China.
The point of this reply is not to pass judgement on this action. The point is that plenty of business is done between China and America despite the ban. Plenty of business will continue after TikTok.
The primary indicator I saw is the diminishing sentiment towards the injustice suffered by TikTok.
At the very beginning, the sentiment that TikTok were mistreated was quite popular. Or even was the minstream [1,2].
Now, the sentiment has shifted that "why MSFT buy TikTok, why not TikTok sell to FB/Google". Like what's shown here.
To this date, except the broad claim that "TikTok is owned by a Chinese company, and Chinese government will force TikTok to share private information", there isn't a single evidence that is even remotely relevant to national security.
I am seeing a lot of US company executives are preparing to break from China very unpleasantly in the near future...
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24016938 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23832183 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23755863