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Comment by asdfasgasdgasdg | Hacker News Reader

It'll be interesting to see if the Biden admin has the same security concerns as the Trump admin r.e. TikTok. It's still not totally clear to me whether there was ever a real security concerns or if it was just a fig leaf for a political play. Of course, if Biden stops this process, that would not prove that the motivation was political. It could as easily be the case that declining to force the sale is a political move. Unfortunately, with the lack of transparency in the original decision making, it will be hard to ever know which is which.

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I think most of the hawkish policies against TikTok etc was being driven by people like Peter Navarro and Pompeo who are going to be out of the picture now. Navarro has especially come under flak for being the US government's "China" expert with insufficient knowledge and experience on the subject.

"Security concerns" is an excuse for protectionism. If he does the same it does not necessarily mean that the security concerns are real.

>"Security concerns" is an excuse for protectionism

Is protectionism really a bad thing, especially if it's in retaliation to chinese protectionism?

There's a pretty overwhelming consensus among economists that protectionism is indeed a bad thing.

Tit-for-tat protectionism is also known as a trade war, which is also generally considered to be negative for both parties.

>Tit-for-tat protectionism is also known as a trade war, which is also generally considered to be negative for both parties.

It is, but if you fail to retaliate you're basically advertising to other countries that they can impose protectionist measures, which benefit them and harm you. Did EU/Canada get flak for imposing retaliatory tariffs in response to trump's tarrifs?

Milton Friedman describes how tariffs only cost the imposing country here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkHdq_2EUk4

> There's a pretty overwhelming consensus among economists that protectionism is indeed a bad thing.

So we just let China copy our tech and sell it to us cheaper?

What happens to our workforce and salaries? The same thing that happened to factory workers?

I'm even more worried about their lack of free speech, rigid punishment/enforcement, and Orwellian tracking/social credit. We don't want those things here. But showing that they win makes it more likely to become pervasive.

Edit: Downvotes on everything critical of China.

I think the "copy our tech" angle is interesting from a legal standpoint. Patents and copyrights are a legal framework to prevent importation of infringed materials. I'm not sure the answer, but interesting problem none the less.

> What happens to our workforce and salaries?

Ideally, people could work less and have the same standard of living, which is easier if things are cheaper.

If I was an evil wealthy person interested in perpetuating my position through controlling people, but slavery was outlawed, I'd design a system where work is overvalued so people will be too tired to participate in civic life.

I think you don't understand that US bosses set US salaries, they are the ones choosing to not use US labor.

Unfortunately it’s up to both parties to avoid Tit-for-tat protectionism, a one sided trade war is over time the worst of all three options as there is no reason for the other party to stop. It’s the same reason WWII was less economicly expensive than the Cold War.

> There's a pretty overwhelming consensus among economists that protectionism is indeed a bad thing.

Economists are short-sighted there. Yes, economically, speaking in general protectionism is more harmful than not.

But things like selling essential companies, infrastructure or have foreign and possible hostile players in critical positions is risky.

China restricted access to its markets from the onset. They forced foreign companies to operate JVs to access their market or labour and forced a lot of technology transfers. Their whole HSR industry was built on this model.

Protectionism works depending where your POV is from.

Economists, the famously recognized scientists! Meanwhile protectionism lifted china in less than 30 years to the level of a superpower.

China has a lower per capita GDP then Botswana and Iraq.[1] It's a superpower mainly because it has a huge population.

[1]: https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-per-capita/

The rule of law in our own country is extremely important -- more important than any particular protectionist policy goal. The law does not give the president the power to unilaterally force the sale of assets for the purpose of protectionism. This is leaving aside whether protectionism is good or bad in any particular case. This is why I'm mainly interested in the real reasons why we took this action.

>The rule of law in our own country is extremely important -- more important than any particular protectionist policy goal. The law does not give the president the power to unilaterally force the sale of assets for the purpose of protectionism.

The president might not have the authority to force a sale, but he does have the authority to impose tariffs and maybe even ban it outright (embargos/quotas). At the end of the day the results are the same: you can either sell your US operations to a US company, or we can destroy your US market share by imposing tariffs and/or banning your product.

If the president wants to invoke that authority (assuming you are correct about its extent), then that's his right. What is not his right is to expropriate assets under false pretenses.

Milton Friedman says it is a really bad thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkHdq_2EUk4

He talks more about it in the series, Free to Choose. I forget which video he does so, but all videos are fantastic.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcm84hKEpyZQfhxhVFB8r...

"Security concerns" are security concerns with China. Anything else is naive.

What do you consider to be a real security concern? Isn't it enough that they already have a long history of abusing the rule of law and coercing all businesses into following the party's wishes?

I would argue that, given their history, removing the opportunity of the CCP to make a political play is a valid security concern.

That we're banning TikTok, but not Chinese-manufactured chips and electronics and whatnot, indicates it's a heavily political play.

While I agree dependence on Chinese semiconductors/electronics is probably a bigger security risk overall, what other choice do we have in that industry?

Banning TikTok was only a "heavily political play" because there are strong political forces in place preventing any action from being taken against China. Anything which is able to overcome those forces is bound to be "heavily political". That doesn't necessarily mean the action was the wrong thing to do.

Tiktockers pranked tickets to a Trump rally. Got the Evil Eye after that.

To be clear, I'm interested in the real reason they're doing it, not their ability to backfill a rationalization.

If that's the real reason, well enough. But I am somewhat skeptical that it is. I'm also not sure that the President's power ought to extend to hypothetical, remote concerns like this -- we'll have to see what the courts say.

I don't think it's possible for such a drastic action to be taken just based on a political rationalization or a security rationalization alone. It could only be a combination of factors which allows an action like this.

The security rationalization had existed for a long time already, but only when the political rationalization came into the picture as well was it possible to actually make a move. Does that mean the move was wrong or unjustified?

> I'm also not sure that the President's power ought to extend to hypothetical, remote concerns like this -- we'll have to see what the courts say.

I'm not sure it does. Like you say this is currently being challenged in the courts and TikTok is online right now in the US. The legal process is working, although it was initiated in a messy way in this case.

> The security rationalization had existed for a long time already, but only when the political rationalization came into the picture as well was it possible to actually make a move. Does that mean the move was wrong or unjustified?

It depends on the strength of the various components in the making of the decision, I guess. Again, if the main reason was political or economic, and the presence of the security reason is a fig leaf, then that's not so good.

> I'm interested in the real reason they're doing it

It is as simple as Trump, personally, saw a TV pundit at 6am that said TikTok was bad and the president should do something about it.

Did someone at Facebook PR plant that story in the pundit's program, which is for sale? Sure. I don't know, who do you think gives a single fuck about giant companies fucking each other? Not a single normal person.

What will courts say? The matters could all be resolved in 10 minutes. They're just going to say that if there's a problem, it's with the way the order is written - Trump could issue another order. They articulate no legal problem with the order, because there is no legal problem with the order.

Truthfully, the court's resolution of the matter is the least interesting part here.

The president's power is being used to affect a corporate acquisition. You can go have a debate about mercantilism, it's settled. Nothing of substance to normal people will change because 100% of the spending inside social media apps is surplus, they could disappear tomorrow and absolutely nothing of value would be lost. People would just buy ad inventory elsewhere, as they always had for all of history.

Mark Zuckerberg personally met with government officials to "warn" them about tik tok

I found the lack of discussion of TikTok compared to the amount of heat Twitter and Facebook have been getting before and after the election surprising. Do people disregard it because they think it’s just dance and funny videos on there? There is a lot of political content if you go down that rabbit hole, and it’s ready to be seen by a much more young and impressionable user base compared to FB and Twitter’s.

Russian run '5 minute crafts' clickbait farm tipped their toes into political manipulation on both FB and YT, and it seems nobody picked up this story?!?!?

https://www.lawfareblog.com/biggest-social-media-operation-y...

Forbes even ridiculed the idea completely 2 years ago https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2017/09/22/these-two-...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvqa8dsBtno

Real in the sense that there is some sort of evidence of actions that have crossed the thresholds of legality as per American laws. The data security/privacy community, I think generally don't see TikTok for example as any much more egregious an offender than Instagram for example.

> Isn't it enough that they already have a long history of abusing the rule of law and coercing all businesses into following the party's wishes?

Was this intended to be directed at the CCP? It seems to apply to the US Republican Party to some extent as well [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d22Y7p3tER0

No surprise that China has already banned US social networks then.

I thought he just got offended by dancing teens making fun of him lol

A huge amount of biden's support base is on tiktok and they are fairly politically active as well. I'd think it's political

Too lazy to find the article but I read that Biden's campaign told all staffers to delete TikTok off their phones back in July.

That is an impressive level of laziness. Googling "biden delete tiktok" found the article. https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/27/21341062/biden-staff-dele...

Not sure if the security concerns of a presidential campaign would necessarily extend to banning the app for all contexts in the country, even those where security impinges less.

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