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Comment by iKevinShah | Hacker News Reader

I am neither a US Citizen or a resident BUT this is not only about "geopolitics" but more about National Security too. There's literally a law in China which states you have to provide "crucial information for review" to the government if asked. You(the firm operating in China) cant deny that. Period. That itself is scary, regardless of whether or not politics / geopolitics is involved.

The law (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Internet_Security_Law) :

> Regarding the requirements for spot-checks and certifications, international law firms have warned that companies could be asked to provide source code, encryption, or other crucial information for review by the authorities, increasing the risk of this information being lost, passed on to local competitors, or used by the authorities themselves.

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There is literally a law in every country that follows the same theme. The UK has the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigatory_Powers_Act_2016)... the US uses FISA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig... globally there is Five Eyes and SSEUR (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes) working together on information gathering & intelligence sharing which often includes another member harvesting data when local laws don't permit it.

This is not about national security. This is economic retaliation in a long brewing cold war over influence and power, backed by lobbyists who do not like being left out in the cold due to China's protectionist policies.

Call it what it is and I would be surprised if more people didn't support it. But it is becoming far too common for many aspects of politics that are driven by profit or control hiding behind the guise of national security.

> There's literally a law in China which states you have to provide "crucial information for review" to the government if asked. You(the firm operating in China) cant deny that. Period.

Despite having a Chinese parent, isn't it the case that TikTok itself does not operate in China?

That doesn't stop the parent company from being beholden to CCP's demands.

Facebook is also behold to the US government demands, as we have seen in the hearings during the last few days.

You don't think there's a difference between USA vs CCP? There are many examples of standing up to the government in America. That doesn't happen in China.

It doesn't but sends a good amount of data to China which they have not yet (to my information) clarified. Similar ban was implemented in India, which gives more context to what I am trying to say. Source: https://pib.gov.in/PressReleseDetailm.aspx?PRID=1635206

And parent company will always have the dibs, if you will, on Tiktok. Regardless of whether tiktok is out of China or in.

There is no firewall between TikTok and Bytedance, so basically you can think of them as one company producing 2 apps, one inside China and one outside.

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