As much as I don't care about tiktok going away, and acknowledge the privacy and security risks, there's something about banning a highly popular website that doesn't sit right with me. Is there precedent in the USA for anything like this?
It still seems like security theater to me, which is particularly unfortunate because it is a real security threat.
I don't agree that this is security theater. Divestment will put the entity which controls TikTok under the jurisdiction of U.S. law, and no, it isn't obvious that the company would still legally be able to export data to the CCP. I also don't understand arguing against a measure on the basis that it won't work well enough - you have to argue that the measure itself is bad.
I would definitely be more okay with allowing Chinese websites/apps in the US if China wasn't banning so many Western ones: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_...
In the case here, it's ostensibly being done with national security considerations in mind. What remains to be determined is whether or not these concerns are valid. But the idea that "free" means the government has no power to ban things, including apps, borders naïvety.
Pretty soon you have "China doesn't let people say bad things about their leader, neither should we"
and
"China uses force to take things from other countries, why shouldn't we"
Your ideals and morals should be strong enough they don't change based on a bad actor.
This is and has been the case even for non-adversary countries, and is bread-and-butter foreign policy
Your justification is literally "They're doing it to us, so we should do it to them".
Apply that logic to everything China does. Do you want to behave like them?
Wait a few years and it will be about reciprocating other things China does.
It's not simple "but he hit me first" logic: it's macroeconomics with an actual strategy in mind.
Reciprocating =/= literal copying.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/27/us-pushes-chinese-owner-of-g...
Personally think the data protection issue are overblown. The ability to influence through disinformation campaings, whether for CPC, Russia or whomever is their friend, is a way bigger thing for me.