Friends in high places
Trump seeks clemency for…TikTok.
The U.S. Department of Justice asked the Supreme Court late on Friday to reject President-elect Donald Trump’s request to delay implementation of a law that would ban popular social media app TikTok or force its sale by Jan. 19.
Last week, Trump filed a legal brief arguing he should have time after taking office on Jan. 20 to pursue a “political resolution” to the issue. The court is set to hear arguments in the case on Jan. 10. The law, passed in April, requires TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to divest the platform’s U.S. assets or face a ban. TikTok did not immediately comment.
The DOJ said in its filing that Trump’s request could only be granted if ByteDance had established it was likely to succeed on the merits but the company had not done so. DOJ said no one disputes China “seeks to undermine U.S. interests by amassing sensitive data about Americans and engaging in covert and malign influence operations.”
The government asserted that “no one can seriously dispute that (China’s) control of TikTok through ByteDance represents a grave threat to national security: TikTok’s collection of reams of sensitive data about 170 million Americans and their contacts makes it a powerful tool for espionage.”
Ok ok but Trump thinks it’s good for him, so you do the math. National security on the one hand, and Trump on the other.
This goes to show how clueless Trump is when it comes to geopolitics. His sabre-rattling about annexing Canada, buying Greenland and seizing the Panama Canal, stupid and clumsy as it was, at least seemed to signal that he’s got his eye on the global playing field as the West and East get into battle positions once again.
But the social media landscape and Big Data are two of the other major fronts in the new Cold War, and keeping China from controlling a major social media outlet as well as the sensitive user data it generates is in American interests in the same way that keeping China from controlling the Panama Canal and Russia from controlling the Arctic Circle are.
(China has been manoeuvring to control the Canal over the last decade. Russia’s manoeuvres around northern Norway’s Arctic coastal territory are yet more proof that the Arctic Circle, rapidly thawing to reveal untapped resources and new global shipping routes, is the most important geopolitical hot spot of the day. Imagine the Northern Hemisphere as the board game Risk, but centred on the North Pole and you can see why Russia is looking to grab Norway and the US wants to take control over Greenland.)
So Trump’s intervention in the TikTok ruling dispels any doubt that his second term in office will be marked by anything but bumbling self-interest. He’s not fit to lead, especially in this dangerous, pre-war period we’re coming into.
(An interesting tidbit many people don’t know: TikTok isn’t the first Chinese-owned platform the US Government has ordered to sell to Americans for national security reasons. The gay dating app Grindr was created in California, but it was bought by a Chinese company in 2016. A little-known entity called the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) ordered the company to sell it back into American hands, citing the risk that the Chinese government could use sensitive data about men’s sexual orientation and HIV status to blackmail Americans. As for TikTok, it wasn’t merely bought by a Chinese company, it was created there, and is unambiguously used by the Chinese government as an arm of its propaganda machine.)
Oh, Arty, save the Cold War rhetoric for retro disco nights, please.
Golly Gee, China is spying on Americans via TikTok? Guess you’ve never heard of Facebook, Xwitter, Messenger, Youtube, Microsoft, Apple, FBI, CIA, or any company that forces you to sign over your life history on an App before you can ask a basic question.
China and Russia are not the united front they were in the 50s and 60s, they have gone down very different paths. Since the collapse of the USSR, Russia has become a faded Empire seeking a return to its glory days and is following the USA’s playbook of getting what it wants through wars or threats of wars. And look how well that is working out for them in Ukraine. Unless Russia unleashes nukes it is at best a minor irritant to Europe.
China has built a vast military, but as yet is untested and I hope it stays that way. Unlike Russia and the USA, China is expanding its influence and economic interests through diplomacy and aid. It is not invading other countries, overthrowing governments, or subverting democratic elections.
As to China’s ambitions over Taiwan, until the 1st Sino-Japanese War, Taiwan was part of China, ruled by China. It was formally separated from China by Japan in WW2, and after the defeat of Japan and the victory of Maoists in the subsequent Chinese Civil War, Taiwan was the last hold out of the despised Kuomintang. China has always had ambitions to reunite with Taiwan, as they had with Hong Kong and Macau.
List of governments overthrown by USA since 1949. Iran, Guatemala, South Vietnam, Congo, Chile, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
List of governments overthrown by China since 1949.
Yikes, I didn’t know you were such a China apologist. That’s a take I don’t see every day. For obvious reasons related to its being an ultra-authoritarian Communist dictatorship with a monstrous civil rights record and all that.
I should add, minimizing the possibility of a military invasion and annexation of Taiwan, one of the healthiest and free-est democracies in Asia if not the world, as a mere bit of leftover administrative cleanup after the Maoists took over the Mainland is rather breathtaking.
The Kuomintang remnants are pro reunification… The islanders who see themselves as Taiwanese are not fans. These people did reasonably well during the first Japanese occupation. Hong Kong also used to be a free island and Xi’s actions there have proven what a shit he is.
That said, when I make my whole “destroy all the non-liberal democracy/republics” list I hesitate with China. They’re not Russia; they’re brutal while not being uncivilized and maybe could be sort of ok someday.
Taiwan is almost the size of Australia, population-wise. The idea that the democratic freedom of some 23 million people ought to be erased for any reason, let alone some romantic interpretation of the Maoist takeover of Beijing in 1949 or whatever, is absurd to me. I know that “freedom” is a word that has been somewhat tainted by the Right, turned into empty jingo, but seriously: freedom versus non-freedom is not a two-way street. When people obtain freedom, they have to fight to keep it. And when they lose it, it’s often almost impossible to get it back. The Chinese Communist Party is a force for destroying individuals’ freedom, and the Taiwanese democracy is its opposite: a force for human rights. The millions of Taiwanese are not pawns and it’s not arbitrary which government they end up subjected to. Under the CCP, their lives and freedoms are immeasurably worse off, and their ability to voice their disapproval and choose for themselves a better alternative is also cut off: under China it’s a one-way street. It’s night and day. For the Taiwanese people, I choose day over night.
(In my local Chinatown, even though the grocers are all Mainland Chinese, they hawk imported green Taiwanese pomelos, which have become symbols of Taiwan’s independence. Baskets of them are kept next to the cash-out like impulse purchases, where you’d normally find packs of gum or candy bars. Tossing one of these overpriced imported sour grapefruits into your grocery bag has become an act of defiance against China’s attempts at authoritarian control over the island. It seems to have had an effect. Long live the Taiwanese pomelo! Long live Taiwan!)
The move to shut down, ban, or sell Tiktok is a massive waste of time and effort. The politicians claim to be worried about US citizens’ information falling in the hands of the Chinese government, but as the Reverend points out, every other major social media platform harvests exactly the same information and sells it. China already has the information, it it wants to have it, because it’s been available for legal purchase for years.
What I can’t tell is whether this move is mostly springing from anti-Chinese racism, or kickbacks from Facebook / Meta, Google / Alphabet, and similar.
[…] a comment by Artymorty on Friends in high […]
Arty, not advocating for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, just going over the ground of how it came to be.
And I’m still waiting for the list of governments overthrown by China post 1949.
“I’m still waiting for the list of governments overthrown by China post 1949”
Well they annexed Tibet, sent troops to support North Korea’s invasion of South Korea and provided an enormous amount of support to the Khymer Rouge. I’d say those all count.
They also provided a lot of support to anti colonial movements in Mozambique and Angola, which I’m personally rather in favour of, but it’s clearly an example of the successful overthrow of a government.