"""What they collect are data on locality, data on what you are streaming toward, what your preferences are, what you are referencing, every bit of behavior that the American side is indulging in becomes available to whoever is watching on the other side."""
Well, shit. If that's the concern, I hope nobody's told them about blogs, YouTube, or the Internet.
Again, the concern is not that that is happening, but that it's happening by people not under control of the US elite. The hyper-partisan news organisations of the US engage in "opinion manipulation" just fine, as does Facebook.
Wow, no. This is not it.
Facebook is not interested in influencing the outcomes of elections, and the US Gov is not using FB to do so directly - other than to ban egregious misinformation and to allow any legit actor to participate.
WeChat/TikTok are organs of the state - they can and are used at will by CCP organs for censorship, control, monitoring etc. - for any reason, at any time, at any whim.
The moral equivalence arguments being made are simply out of touch with the operational realities of companies in the China vs. US/Europe etc..
First - you mean 'graft' not 'grift'.
Second - Trump's indicating that 'the US should get a cut' is just ridiculous and bizarre. He's not getting a cut, so it's not really 'graft' - but it just plays into his deal-making instinct that the US 'is a player and ought to get a piece'. He's just blatantly ignorant. There is 0% chance of this happening, there are 0 people in his circle that would ever conceive of such a thing, it's just one of those 'Trump things' they smile and ignore.
graft: noun, a shoot or twig inserted into a slit on the trunk or stem of a living plant, from which it receives sap.
Edit: Ugh nevermind I found more definitions of graft. Google only showed the plant/medical-related ones by default.
The USA is becoming a banana republic.