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Comment by crmd | Hacker News Reader

85% of US teenagers use tiktok. That's 85% of the future generation of US senators, Cabinet members, and Supreme Court justices, of police chiefs, civil rights activists, mayors, CEOs, etc. in their bedrooms right now consuming content curated by, and filming their lives and that of their friends, and uploading the video to data centers, that are controlled by a strategic adversary of the United States. This is, to put it lightly, a huge national security risk.

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In what world does it make sense to allow a country who blocks access to their market unrestricted access to the US market?

If china is a rival to the US, why do they have one of the most favorable trade deals?

A world where we want $29 microwaves and iPhones produced 24/7 and delivered to our doorstep. People in America need China in order to keep living the lives we have.

I'm not so sure that is really true anymore. I think that was the case in the past, when most manufacturing was very labor intensive. But now, so much is automated that things could be made anywhere for almost as cheap. Unfortunately, the US doesn't really have the infrastructure and capabilities to do so now.

A long time ago it was about labour costs but that isn't been true for over 2 decades. manufacturing anywhere outside of China can't compete with China anymore because of critical mass of supply chain. You should visit Shenzen and you will quickly understand why there is no place in the world like it and why there probably never will be.

Hearing that people think you can 'just' replicate Shenzen somewhere else makes me giggle.

Unfortunately for the US it also goes for batteries and other green energy tech that the US turned their back on in favour of oil these past decades. You can't just replicate Xinjiang polysilicon production, without which we can't have PV solar cells, also primarily made in China. CATL is probably the largest manufacturer of EV class batteries in the world. China makes more EVs than the rest of the world many times over, etc.

Now they are also leading in nuclear, rolling out 200GW of next-gen reactors, they have their own fusion experiments.

They have been leading in AI research for the last 10+ years.

The days of China being cheaper are long long gone. You go to China because you can get access to talent, work ethic and optimised supply chain + logistics that can't be bought anywhere else on earth for any price.

That dominance isn't going to be easily displaced because it's the product of decades of investment and R&D.

So effectively they couldn't be made just anywhere, if they can't be made in the US?

If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we’d all have a merry christmas.

> If china is a rival to the US, why do they have one of the most favorable trade deals?

I don't have an answer for you, but when you rephrase the point you're getting at it's easy to see there are plenty of valid reasons, because this is not true:

> There are no reasons for the US to give a favorable trade deal to a country that is otherwise a rival

There is a difference between letting China export low value added products with many producers vs a literal spy in your bedroom.

Is this now US policy too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTCqXlDjx18

You claim you don’t have an answer, but then state that by simple rephrasing the answer is obvious?

Can you specify a specific reason? There are historic examples of trade deals made for this reason such as with the Soviet Union or communist china. However I cannot think of an example where a country has given unilaterally favorable trade terms to a rival except out of fealty/tribute.

One of these countries spent a century preaching to the world the benefits of free trade, the other ridding itself of the capitalist class. So the issue from the point of view of the rest of the world is that the US should practice what they preach even in the one case where that would mean allowing some mild competition to their massive and insanely profitable internet monopolies.

In the world where US controls the petrodollar system. That world.

Because it's not true that they have unrestricted access to the US market, see Huawei, ZTE, etc...

And it's not true they have one of the most favourable trade deals, many tariffs are still in effect.

But surely you see that there is a difference in how China regulates American companies operating in China and vice versa?

Perhaps the US should adopt a tit for tat policy with regards to China in this matter?

What's the importance of means to an end?

US rules the world through a liberal voting political propaganda; a rule-based capitalism market economy; a USD denominated financial structure.

Sure, US blocked Huawei through rule of law; and you think China has no laws to block FB & Google? But behind the cloak of laws regulations, the intention of mutual exclusion is pure and same, nothing different.

> 85% of US teenagers use tiktok. That's 85% of the future generation of US senators, Cabinet members, and Supreme Court justices, of police chiefs, civil rights activists, mayors, CEOs, etc.

What's the basis of social elites are coming uniformly from the population?

I think it's obvious that the social elites in all areas are predominantly from wealthy and affluent families. So the line of thinking of 85% teens corresponding to 85% or some number close elites, is baseless at best, and misleading at worst.

I feel like the 15% that do not use TikTok are more likely to be from lower class or impoverished families. Likely because they have limited access to smartphones or electronics of their own.

I’m sure there are “elite” families who strictly forbid their children from using social media, but I suspect this population is very low. In my own anecdotal experience, the most affluent teens had the most access to drugs and things our parents forbade us from having.

Is there reason to believe that the elite use TikTok at disproportionally lower rates than the rest of the population? If anything, it's probably higher.

So say it’s 50%. That’s not much better.

Yes it is. And it's still baseless.

I do agree about the risk and that cuts both ways, it's why EU and Russia and other countries are taking some precautions about the US companies and govt access to their citizens data.

On the other hand, TikTok is a result of the stagnant US-made social media platforms. TikTok did innovate and gained its market share fair and square.

As I said it multiple times before, I hope US takes the EU approach, that is, regulating the data access and not the Chinese approach of banning.

US is facing this issue for the first time and it is a touchy topic. But please consider the implications, what happens if each political block chooses the banning/blocking approach? Do you want to live in a world with each country having its own separate internet?

A lot of people are quick to rise the pitchforks and believe in the US superiority but ironically they demand government solution upon free market failure. I was genuinely scared about the future of the internet when the Trump admin tried to force acquisition by US tech giant or App Store ban over TikTok. What a relief when it failed.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t TikTok essentially just a more developed version of Vine?

I remember Vines taking off in popularity before it being shut down for a reason I never fully understood.

And where is Vine now? Nothing is blank sheet new, everything is building on top of something and iterates and the truth is, when the US-made social media consolidated on politics and glamour photos TikTok came up with something fun and creative and apparently people love it.

I think the danger is way more in the addictive part.

It is al interessting, and the users are a nice research group.

But here in the Netherlands, 25% of the young people have the chance to become illiterate (yes become, reading/writing/communication skills dropping after primary and/or high school), part of it is the mobile phone, part of it social status and background.

> huge national security risk

National security is the sum total of the individual earned securities of each citizen, no more or less.

The distortion occurs when "national security" becomes the interests of a business elite, or a political party, or the job security of the security services themselves. We lose focus about what "security" really is.

I agree with your point (as I understand it), but to my knowledge there isn't and never has been a division of national apparatus dedicated to defence of culture, national values, and the sanity of our children from insidious foreign propaganda. And as for direct counter-propaganda we are not allowed to direct psyops internally, at least not with a taxpayer's dollar.

The "disappearance of the perimeter", as understood through the lens of the Huawei debacle is an example of how fast this has materialised and ambushed us in the social media age. But to be honest, I see the same problems with Facebook or US companies filtering and amplifying values.

There isn't an easy answer. There are not enough human resources. There is very little common agreement. Nobody wants to open that can of worms. Doing so would mean going up against powerful businesses and I don't think the IC has the stomach for it or can adapt to the changing threats fast enough.

So we just keep pretending "national security" is limited to industrial espionage by the Chinese or hacking by the Russians and so on.

That's why I think individual Digital Self Defence via education is the only option. It needs baking into the curriculum for age 6 upwards.

85% of US teenagers would be debased by the poor and foreign morals of James Joyce, if only we could get them to read Ulysses.

It’s possible that the first generations who read Ulysses were worse off than the ones before—who thought Ulysses was harmful—but still better than the generations now, who don’t read much at all. If today’s next generation spent their time reading literature that was considered obscene 100 years ago, I think we’d all agree they’d be better off than spending 3 hours a day scrolling.

> but still better than the generations now, who don’t read much at all.

By Plato's standards[1], we're doing better than ever!

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaedrus_(dialogue)#Discussion...

Something must be done. Oh, wait: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._One_Book_Call...

The invisible comparison you seem to be making here is to Facebook or Twitter, companies which also do not seem to have my best interests in mind.

Or it will be the 15% that takes those positions while the 85% stay glued to TikTok…

Because presidents, congresspeople, and justices are not known for wild behavior at all.

But that knife cuts both ways; usage numbers for YouTube internationally are I presume quite similar, and that is content curated by a US company in US datacenters &c.

You cannot have an open free global internet without having it be the case that people will use foreign services. If you do not think that's worth the tradeoff then state clearly what you want: for the internet to be cut up into disjointed silos along geopolitical lines.

> 85% of US teenagers use tiktok. That's 85% of the future generation of US senators, Cabinet members, and Supreme Court justices, of police chiefs, civil rights activists, mayors, CEOs, etc

Are we really sure this follows (even if the numbers are correct)?

Because having it all public and on moot’s server in Virginia is so much better

I just can’t make this different enough. I see the difference, just not enough.

4chan always served warrants, lol.

In a scifi tone, it is interesting to extrapolate the personality of teenagers once they take roles in future governments.

should be edited to be: 85% of future generation will open tiktok at least once this month

This might sound like a fallacious argument; but do you think the same about Europeans who consume almost exclusively US media and interact almost exclusively with US social media platforms?

The US (famously) does not have Allies, only temporary allegiances.

If you're discussing ties to government, Twitter and Facebook have members on their boards publicly who are sitting and/or former members of government including, at least in facebooks case: Robert Kimmitt (who was United States Ambassador to Germany from 1991 to 1993, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs from 1989 to 1991, General Counsel of the U.S. Department of the Treasury from 1985 to 1987, and National Security Council Executive Secretary and General Counsel from 1983 to 1985).

Is it different rules for us in Europe? or are you suggesting that we should never have allowed this to happen?

tl;dr: Why is US/China much different from EU/US or US/Japan (whom also makes a resounding impact on our technology and strongly affects our culture in the west).

Europeans are free to quantify the threat which the US poses to European geopolitical concerns, and many European countries have decided to avoid AWS for such reasons.

The US, similarly, ought be free to feel that EU is not the same as China, and allow a different economic relationship with the EU than with China. The US is currently amicable with the EU and is thus willing to treat the EU very differently than with China.

> The US (famously) does not have Allies, only temporary allegiances.

Far from me to defend American imperialism, but this is not true, is it? The USA has a decent list of long standing alliances, that include a variety of countries: Japan, Australia, Canada, UK, South Korea, among others.

> America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/633024-america-has-no-perma...

From Henry Kissinger, US Secretary of State.

By that pessimistic definition, no country can really ever have allies.

The US has a number of nations with which its interests have long aligned with, and are likely to continue to, and are formalized via treaty. I’m ok with calling those alliances.

That might be a perspective, but it feels weird to say it the way Kissinger does if it doesn’t elude to something deeper.

For example: There could be war between Finland and Sweden, but it’s fair to call them allies, in this day and age, they are friends… friends can still fall out. I know he says permanent friends, but permanence in friendship is simply the act of not sabotaging it.

In the same way it might be fair to call the US and Canada allies, but given that the US has been considerably more hostile to the EU, even spying on politicians, I think the quote is more telling than you believe.

A man who is widely reviled by a decent chunk of American population. One of the few issues that both parties and independents agree on is how terrible and damaging this person was.

Am I missing where this is quoted from, or is it like many other quotes where it could be attributed to the person, but nobody really knows?

Edit: if I'm reading right, it seems to be a quote from Dinesh D'Souza's book "What's so great about America" quoted by Henry Kissinger in his book "The White House Years"

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger (Quotes -> 1980's)

Aside from the aforementioned countries, I'd say Israel is quite a strong ally of the United States.

The US is actively NOT doing what Kissinger thinks, in current geopolitical affairs. He doesn't speak for the country and hasn't had an active role in its actions for 45 years.

You're right, and that list also includes European countries like France. You're just quoting a bad actor, no way that he ever opened a history book about the subject.

It may be true but if it's true it's true for all allyships.

Look at the history of Europe and observe the shifting trends of alliances.

America has been to war with Japan, Canada and the UK - which supports the fact that allies can always turn.

> allies can always turn.

But that's not what happened, is it?

Enemies turned into allies. That's quite the opposite of what you said.

Obviously, the reverse is also true (enemies to allies as in my examples). Ultimately it's the opposite of what you said.

The US interference and surveillance in the EU is well-documented and at a massive scale. The Chinese ditto is much smaller though the media attention much bigger.

Hopefully non-US tech finally will lead to reasonable regulation: Storage of citizen's data on national ground and protection against arbitrary surveillance by foreign governments whether perceived friend or for.

Unfortunately the push to simply ban anything Chinese is strong as it has massive commercial interest of old US-tech (Facebook, Google) behind it. But it is not in our (Europeans) interest and I hope our politicians can resist.

> The US interference and surveillance in the EU is well-documented and at a massive scale. The Chinese ditto is much smaller though the media attention much bigger.

Citation needed.

Yes, US/China relations are pretty distinct from US/EU relations.

Why do you think that's the case? Aside from the trade-war that's going on, which is pretty arbirary;

The US has routinely spied on Europe, allowed backdoored technology to make it's way into the continent including to spy on government officials from another sovereign (allegedly allied) nation.

It's hard for me not to draw direct comparisons, because other than the surface level of "everything's fine, we have a common culture and we're all white" - I don't see them as being much different.

Of course you're right, they're not the same, we don't see them the same. But China has arguably done less to the US than the US has done to the EU.

Can you explain it to me?

At enormous expense the US rebuilt Europe (Marshall plan), protected it from Soviet Encroachment (and is still doing so to this day, apparently), and is above all reciprocal with Europe in a way that China is not.

Facebook is not banned in Europe. Spotify is not banned in America. Both are banned in China. On that basis alone both entities have ample cause to limit China's influence in their own domestic spheres.

The rebuilding of Europe was all done with loans not gifts, so it was just a money making cheme

Well for one, there's this thing called NATO. For another there isn't constant saber rattling between the EU and US.

EU and US are both fundamentally liberal democracies and not adversarial. China is an authoritarian single party state which openly declares the US an enemy...

Because of course a two party system is fundamentally different from one party one :-D

... + the liberal institutions + the non-totalitarianism + the actual, real life democracy + historical and political context + ... :D

That’s correct, yes.

I'm assuming there is irony and you mean 2 is not enough. But it's still day and night compared to single party, irony is not an argument in itself.

No, two parties representing largely the same lobbyists and sharing largely the same views are not "night and day" compared to one party. I'd go as far as to say they are exactly the same, except for pretending there's some actual, working opposition.

This was an easier both sides-ism to get away a decade ago. It stretches credulity today.

Not really - they differ in rhetorics, but not in things that matter. Democrats hadn’t denounced any part of religious fundamentalism, for example.

> Democrats hadn’t denounced any part of religious fundamentalism

This is a baffling assertion that takes about ten seconds to debunk. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/at-prayer-breakfast-obama-conde...

That’s not denouncing fundamentalism, that’s just asking to tone it down.

Can you quote a single US senator who openly called “life from conception” what it is, like they called out antivaxers?

What is, according to you, the definition of "life from conception"?

I'm a supporter of abortion but this is going to be fun I think.

The definition doesn’t matter, what matters is what it is: a fringe theory reinvented in late XIX century as part of Catholic hate campaign.

Your point being? As a reminder, we’re talking about democrats failing to condemn extremist ideas.

I was just curious, you were drifting off.

To your point, I think democrats and republicans positions on climate are very different: https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/07/us-support-for-envir...

That would go against your point that they support "largely the same ideas".

> Why do you think that's the case?

The whole history of the XX century

US has the same stance on the Democratic world like the EU.

As it appears, China actually supported war in Europe. As long as it didn't happen during the games.

So yes, China should be under suspicion a lot more than the US from an European viewpoint.

Ps. I'm from Belgium

The Chinese government owns all of its businesses. In the US/EU, businesses are independently owned by private individuals.

You mean to say that the US government isn't spying on data held by large US companies?

We won't really find out until there's a big European social media platform or whatever - I agree with you it's weird, but the obvious response (and you've received it) is along the lines of conjecturing that they wouldn't worry about UK-Tok, Têtebook, or Deutschezon. Maybe that's right. It'd be fun to find out. (Also for other reasons, come on, what's going on that there isn't really even one to name?)

There have been international competitors in key US industries for decades. The most that’s occurred has been bailouts of US heavy industry such as cars. Examples include Toyota, Ericsson, Sony, Hyundai, VW etc.

When there are reciprocal markets between countries with similar approaches to government and law, there isn’t much of a problem. When one country adds tariffs, the other usually just matches them.

Of course but I'm talking about more consumer-facing (and.. 'interactive' in a way car manufacturers aren't) companies, social media, etc.

Closest I can think of are Ocado and Monzo, neither of which (especially the latter) are big enough to compare yet. Perhaps Just Eat (UberEats competitor) too which recently announced US partnership with Amazon. (Veering off-topic here but I've long been surprised that Deliveroo hasn't massively expanded globally? That's the dominant one in London at least, and very quickly ate Just Eat's lunch, which long predated it.)

The majority of the time something successful comes out of the EU, the US buys it wholesale.

Skype, Shazam, iZettle, Mojang etc

I’m not sure it would be different for social networks. (similar to how the match group owns practically all the dating sites and apps; interestingly I just found out that the match group refused to pull out of Russia.)

there is spotify which I think is winning in the us

>This might sound like a fallacious argument; but do you think the same about Europeans who consume almost exclusively US media and interact almost exclusively with US social media platforms?

i'm not OP, but yes.

>Is it different rules for us in Europe? or are you suggesting that we should never have allowed this to happen?

this should never have been allowed to happen.

the mass collection and storage of video, audio, location data, public and private messages, browsing history, topics of interest, sentiments and mood, social graphs, menstrual status, political leanings, and so on, is a travesty. it is an unprecedented and powerful invasion of personal privacy, and it's happening to every online adult and child around the world, and there is essentially no way to opt out, and no expectation that the collected data will ever be deleted.

if it only scares you when china does it, something's weird.

"The US (famously) does not have Allies, only temporary allegiances."

What? Are you a troll or just a cpp bot?

NATO is an alliance, and also the US has many other defense pacts. (AUS, and more). Those are not temporary allegiances (if you call 70 years 'temporary' then you are either trolling or just delusional).

It's roughly a Kissinger quote, so no, GP is not a troll. Note that a recent President was interested in possibly withdrawing from NATO.

The US feels too incompetent to try to manipulate other countries and it feels more like they have a bad culture and they export it to European countries (where kids in half broken and sad schools dream of partying in cool fraternities).

China, on the other hand, sounds perfectly capable and willing of manipulating our society to make it weak and broken, while at the same time forbidding the same content in their land.

I'd argue it even predates tiktok and it could explain why media and politicians are so much worse than 30 years ago. The other explanation is that we got complacent, and all great empires need generational weakness before collapsing.

Probably there's a bit of truth in both.

Not the person you are asking, but I think I have a point that can help shed some light on the matter. I'm going to be speaking from the Canadian side of things, and so I'll be saying 'We' a lot due to the US and Canada tending to trade alike in a lot of ways AFAIK.

Ultimately, it all boils down to known trajectories. The EU and other places in the general area such as the UK, are all known to have histories of their own no doubt. Not just good histories, but bad as well. We trade with Germany, despite WWII. We trade with middle eastern countries, despite having many beliefs and ideologies and laws that are not exactly loved by all to put it lightly. We trade with even out economic adversaries because why not. Cheap labor, etc.

In all of these cases where we trade with any one of these places that someone could make some argument or another that they would be undesirable trade partners for; the future trajectory of that nation is what is the key point of where the decision is based off of to keep trading, or go with sanctions, etc and so forth.

The key to understanding this as I do, is the basis of Canada still trading with China when USA decides not to, or to restrict trade, etc and so forth. This is because our government for the past while now has decided that they wanted to help China get out of its economic slump from the past decades. And so of course since America tends to be a bit hawkish around working with communism in any form, while Canada has more socialist roots established; we tend to be more willing to work with such nations than America tends to. (And this absolutely sometimes pisses them off, government wise so to speak. And the nationalist types...)

Now in the past, most of this would have been water under the bridge, and nothing to be concerned about. Trade is trade, nothing more, nothing less; usually.

But with the advent of all of this digital revolution we are going through, and politics being stuck into everything that has a usable screen; the end result is stuff like this where countries with histories of X thing that Y government doesn't like automatically get extra scrutinized.

Especially when those countries have active militaries that support that kind of regime in said country. Doubly so when that country is in support of those militaries. One might say militia instead, but I fail to see the difference once they own navy vessels. I think this should be a fair opinion on the matter.

Anyways, right or wrong on the military/militia part as I may be, the end point is that we are seeing a rise in more extreme behavior in that country, in this case China and Russia lately; and so it only makes sense to be even more scrutinizing of anything to do with them.

Literally anything, since again; politics is in everything now.

Even us in Canada are starting to pull back from China, even though we are doing it at a slower rate. Our government is trying very hard to basically only enact these kinds of retracting changes only when it is going to hurt their future election outlook the least; or hurts their opponents outlook the most.

As for an example of this in action; Huawei 5G networks are effectively banned in Canada now. It took a while to come into fruition, but it finally happened. Whether or not they were right or wrong to do so is not my hill to fight on right now, but it is a great example of them biding their time til the last moment.

> That's 85% of the future generation of US senators [...]

That is false. Many young people who are material for such position, don't care about tiktok.

TikTok's data centers are in the US.

That doesn’t mean China can’t access the data, and we have no guarantees that there aren’t copies of all that data in China.

Yes. What would be a good way to regulate this; still allowing open and fair competition while protecting the privacy of the broad population?

So if the EU forces Facebook to store EU's citizens data in the EU. What would prevent Facebook copying that data to the US?

Or have some American (potentially working for the NSA) remotely accessing EU data?

Under the US CLOUD Act, three letter agencies can compel Facebook to produce user data wherever in the world it is.

When any other country has a law like that, they are obviously the bad guys.

Via a transparent and public legal process.

In China there is no:

1. Public legal process for data requests 2. Now that I think about it, there are no requests for data at all (they don't have to ask, it's just given) 3. Ability for any Chinese company to say no to gov requests

Surely you don't view these circumstances as the same?

Here is the page for the US CLOUD ACT: https://www.justice.gov/dag/cloudact

Where is the similar page detailing how the CCP balances civil rights with security?

The data centers are running on Oracle cloud - which last I checked was a 100% US company, your entire argument is moot.

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