What exactly is the national security risk with TikTok?
You'd probably say 'potential' but just think about it, banning something for 'potential'. Is that where we are right now?
I do believe it would be best to block all apps owned by the Chinese, but blocking them one by one would work as well, because it’s incredibly difficult and expensive to obtain the userbase that makes the app worth blocking.
We gave an Australian US citizenship so he could get past the limit on foreign ownership of TV stations. He jumped right into bed with US political parties and has a chokehold on one of them by building itself, intentionally, as its media arm.
That said, I think the internet should be free for the most part. If we have to kick them out of the country and deprive them our markets then this should be done by law instead of by authoritarian decree. Google and Apple already have rules against apps that violate laws.
We had these laws and watered them down before because it would benefit a particular political party by putting an influence empire behind it. We just need to update and modernize the laws. Define specific things that are allowed and not allowed.
EG, GDPR-like privacy rules about not sending user data to Asia, with stiff penalties. Restrictions against allowing investment from individual and corporations (and subsidiaries) on a specific watch list, along with defined criteria for getting on that list. EG, Tencent's contending years ago to become the social credit provider for China to help manipulate populace behavior. I'd consider that a human right violation worthy of entry to a list after careful review.
Maybe if we had such things in place, the FBI wouldn't have had to wander around to all of the major US businesses a year or two ago, quietly begging them not to use Kaspersky because it was potentially sending data to Russia. They would either have not been on an approved vendor list due to their sanctions or they could provide sufficient evidence to get them on the list and then demand removal instead of beg for companies to do it voluntarily.
And if strengthening these laws means kicking out Fox News as well, so be it.
And the rest are run by the ultra-rich. They care about the interests of the Americans not much more than the CCP.
Two wrongs don't make a right. Work to improve our system rather than using our failures to normalize CCP oppression and violence.
There's absolutely no need. Facebook cooperates with three-letter agencies, and we expect them to.
I'd think that the guilty party should be prosecuted for doing things like that.
Honestly, given the amount of smearing and disinformation about China and Chinese government in Western media, I can honestly say the ccp is super weak at doing any kind of PR messaging. Half the world still believes the coronavirus is manufacturered by the Wuhan lab and is released to world as a bio weapon. Even when scientists have repeatedly debunked it as a conspiracy theory. It's almost as if ccp isn't even trying at controlling the public opinion. Just let the rumors fly wild. Back in April, I have seen so many videos about this conspiracy theory on Tiktok. Meanwhile, look at how fox news, PragerU and other conservative media are blaming China and defending Trump for things US scientists, public health experts and policy makers have called him on. Look at how they have attacked Dem cities and Dem leaders while promoting themselves as the just and righteous. This looks more like manipulating public opinion and pushing out propaganda to me.
I. e. they claim to have reserved far more tickets than capacity would allow to attend. But that seems to demonstrate that tickets weren't limited by capacity. So how did their action prevent other people from getting tickets?
Various forms of location data gathered from it, e.g. the location of any member of the military that uses it.
Launching pad for zero days if China feels the need to root someones (or many someones) phones.
Massive social graph, massive amounts of behavioral data. Useful, for doing things like identifying who was likely recruited by a spy agency or identifying potential assets that can be turned.
Potential to pressure speech that China prefers, e.g. by rewarding popular creators with money only if they don't say things China likes, or by decreasing the reach of people who say things China dislikes.
Potential for foreign control of the general trends of content people see. E.g. tweaking the algorithm so "it just happens" to suppress the potential to suppress topics china would prefer we didn't talk about (e.g. their "re-education" camps) or to boost topics they would prefer we did (likely things like political infighting).
Most of these involve various levels of overtness. Many of them it probably only makes sense to start doing once you've captured the market (right now it's more important to onboard more people than to push a message). But I would view all of them as real threats if I was the US government.
(my current bibliography only goes back to 1919, but a historical survey in a mid-century work came up with biblical examples of information warfare.)
Trump's problem was that he wanted to hand out free tickets over the internet. Just don't do that.. problem solved.
If that's the limit of TikTok's power.. then I think we're going to be ok.
Are you sure you need an explanation?
You mean one channel out of hundreds?
> controlled by one of the worst governments on Earth,
As opposed to our current channels of information, that are controlled by billionaires that also couldn’t care less about Americans?