Forcing a foreign business to "sell or close" is an insult to the rule of law.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.