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Comment by AsyncAwait | Hacker News Reader

The problem with this line of reasoning is that there is sufficient evidence to suggest all of Google, Facebook, Oracle, Amazon, Apple's etc. data end up with the NSA.

Should Europe ban all U.S. tech companies based on that?

Given the U.S. is known for "extraordinary renditions", there's reason this data will be misused.

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I can't wait for the next Stratechery post where Ben Thompson decries EU regulation against American business but five minutes later justifies US actions against Wechat.

The general cognitive dissonance from American commentators is astounding. If the rest of the world would treat US business with the suspicion that the US treats Chinese business American companies wouldn't operate anywhere.

ROTW doesn’t treat US businesses like US treats Chinese businesses because the profit vs risk calculation is skewed in favor of profit. It’s the same reason why African countries, with some limited hesitations, are doing business with China.

It’s not cognitive dissonance. It’s advocacy of self interest. The world is not a fair place, where everyone does what’s best for everyone else and reason rules the day. Policy is driven by profit and fear.

Wait until all the tech enthusiasts support this but also get mad at any level of censorship that impacts them.

Fuck this authoritarian bullshit. We SHOULD be better than this.

It's not cognitive dissonance, it's pragmatic geopolitics. We can talk about ideals all we want, but the real world is a matter of power and leverage. China is rapidly gaining power and is on a path to usurp the West. This is part of an attempt to slow that at least so that the transition isn't rapid and traumatic.

That was a bad take in the Cold War, a bad take for Japan and a bad take now. It is a bogeyman of bad extrapolation to justify a power grab for the sake of it. Said actions will cause damage and won't actually and the unsustainable growth will be met with a collapse when reality comes knocking.

The Soviet Union collapsed, so to just say with no explanation that it's a bad take doesn't add much.

In what situation would banning a Chinese social media app hurt America?

The ones that care probably get that data from those companies or from the NSA anyways. However, if each country actually did try to play this game the US currently is with TikTok/WeChat/China, we’d either have no global companies, or all of our data would be shared between any company and the country that requests it.

I don't think you understand, this is geopolitics. This is the clash of ideologies. This is democracies vs dictatorships. This is market economy vs state controlled industries. This is EU, US, Japan, Australia, Canada, UK, Taiwan, India, South Korea vs China, Russia, Turkey, Iran, North Korea.

Those that say EU will side with China and go against US, don't know how geopolitics work. And haven't been paying attention to Europe standing up to China these past few weeks.

Why not? The US sure as hell hasn't sided with democracies give the long list of propped up dictators (although said dictators are treated very disposably). Realpolitik has a long history of holding above whatever affinity "is supposed to" happen like Christian kings allying with distant Sultans and declaring war on their neighbors. Stalinists paid far more attention to Trotskyists than any strain of capitalists. Ideology while it may introduce some irrationalities tends to be a tool of the state instead of the state being a tool of the ideology.

> The US sure as hell hasn't sided with democracies give the long list of propped up

So now NATO doesn’t exist. Because geopolitics is complicated and there aren’t always good decisions to be made. And sometimes helping the enemy of your enemy makes sense, even if they’re still your enemy.

NATO also included dictatorships in its membership. Greece has been a member since 1954. It wasn't pure democracy and was more. The point is they don't always side with democracies not that thet always side with them or against them. "Locality and rivalry" have more to do with than nominal stance although some may be correlated with unfriendly actions like how nations which go communist tend to repeatably have the pattern of expropriating foreign owned and getting embargoed in response.

Essentially automatic "claimed affinity alliances" based upon any shared characteristic never work out in the absolute in practice be it race, bloodline, class, or mode of government.

So what exactly is your point? None of what you’ve said explains why the EU would ever align with China over the US. You just wanted to nitpick?

> Should Europe ban all U.S. tech companies based on that?

That is the logical next step if WeChat is considered a such a danger.

That's your first problem, assuming there is some sort of reciprocal logic at play here.

It's simply about power - we ban things because we can, and we judge the blowback as being not as bad as the alternative.

At least in those countries you are allowed to choose another IM platform if you consider all those as privacy-deficient. In China, you do not have that "luxury".

This is what makes WeChat so dangerous, and also the only way of reaching Chinese citizens and transfer them money for an expat.

Which evidence?

The problem with this line of reasoning is that there is sufficient evidence that all deep states collect information from one another. China, Israel, Russia, U.S. included.

While I am sympathetic to how many people use WeChat to communicate with family members bank home, etc., I am a greater champion of U.S. due process, which is what we see here.

China protects its domestic companies by outright banning Google, Facebook, Twitter. Then it unilaterally censors anything critical to Hong Kong, Uyghurs or its central government.

In basic strategy, one should at least play tit for tat.

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