TGIF: Leave TikTok Alone

This is America, last I checked. Surely, the government would not force the sale of a social-media company or ban its app from the Google and Apple stores. Would it?

Well, yes, it would,  could (perhaps), and might. A bill in Congress, backed by the government's nominal chief executive, could become law. The House of Representatives passed it last week by an overwhelming bipartisan majority -- despite valiant efforts by Rep. Thomas Massie,  R-KY, plus a few others -- and it is now before the Senate.

That bill would establish fuzzy criteria defining a "foreign adversary's" alleged influence through a social media platform. It is aimed, for now, at requiring TikTok, used by 170 million mostly younger Americans, to be sold to a government-approved American buyer within a specified period. If not sold, Americans would be forbidden to get the app. I guess the app would have to be disabled for those who have it already.

In other words, TikTok would be banned from America -- you know, just as China's communist government bans or interferes with social media over there. Knowing how the government works, we must presume that the bill's criteria will be applied to other cases later. It certainly would exist as a standing threat to the uncooperative.

The complaint against TikTok is that it's a subsidiary of ByteDance, a widely owned company subject to Chinese government influence or control, although this is disputed by TikTok's CEO, Shou Zi Chew, a Singaporean businessman with substantial roots in -- the United States. But let's assume the worst and see where that leads. After all, the Chinese government is no respecter of individual rights. If the U.S. government is eager to interfere with social media, why not the Chinese government?

TikTok worriers say that China could harvest data on Americans while feeding them self-serving democracy-subverting messages. It has reportedly been caught suppressing unflattering information. Not good, but of course, the U.S. government has done the same thing; a lawsuit about this, Murthy v. Missouri, is now before the Supreme Court. As many critics of the bill have pointed out, the Chinese don't need TikTok to acquire information that users readily give up to other platforms. It's already on the market. Moreover, nobody should expect the news from any one online source to be complete; as one grows, one should learn to consult a variety of sources for a fuller picture.

Matthew Petti of Reason is right: "Competition is the strongest force keeping the internet free. Whenever users find a topic banned on TikTok, they can escape to Twitter or Instagram to discuss the censored content. And when Twitter or Instagram enforce politically motivated censorship on a different topic, users can continue that discussion on TikTok."

Changing ownership or banishing TikTok would create a false sense of security. The problem of myopia would remain.

Moreover, as Matt Taibbi alerts us, the bill would give the executive branch "sweeping powers." He writes: "As written, any 'website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application' that is 'determined by the President to present a significant threat to the National Security of the United States' is covered.'"

Taibbi continues: "A 'foreign adversary controlled application,' in other words, can be any company founded or run by someone living at the wrong foreign address, or containing a small minority ownership stake. Or it can be any company run by someone 'subject to the direction' of either of those entities. Or, it’s anything the president says it is. Vague enough?"

By this time, shouldn't we expect the worst from letting legislators write the rules?

But those are not the only reasons for concern. According to Glenn Greenwald, the bill had been floating around for a few years but had not garnered enough support to get through Congress. That changed recently, according to Greenwald, citing articles in the Wall Street Journal, Economist, and Bari Weiss's Free Press. Why? As Greenwald documents, anxiety about TikTok took a quantum leap beginning on Oct. 7, 2023, the day Hamas killed and kidnapped hundreds of Israeli civilians and Israel began retaliating against the people of the Gaza Strip.

What has this got to do with TikTok? you ask. Good question. Israel's defenders in the United States, such as Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League, are upset that TikTok's young users are being exposed to what he calls anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic disinformation. "It's Al Jazeera on steroids," Greenblatt said on MSNBC. During a leaked phone call, he complained, "We have a TikTok problem," by which he means a generational problem. Younger people -- including younger Jewish people -- are appalled at what Israel's military is doing in Gaza. (To complicate things, it looks like TikTok and Instagram have suppressed pro-Palestinian information.)

Would an American-owned TikTok be easier to control? Experience says yes. Have a look at the Twitter Files, which document how American officials, Chinese-style, pressured social media to censor or suppress dissenting views on important matters such as the COVID-19 response and the 2020 election. A federal judge likened the government's efforts to the Ministry of Truth in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Do we want to become more like China?

A final word. Defenders of free speech should not argue that ill-intentioned disinformation and well-intentioned misinformation from any source can cause no harm, broadly defined. Of course, it can. The proper answer to this legitimate concern is that government-produced "safetyism," placing safety above every other value including freedom, will do more harm than good.

TGIF: Let's NOT Go to War with China

The word that strikes fear in the power elite is China. It's not fear of an existential threat; rather it's fear that America is becoming second fiddle in world politics. As a result, some believe, or say they believe, that war with China is inevitable. For them, that's a fancy word for desirable.

Here's an idea: let's not go to war with China. China has nuclear bombs, although not nearly as many as America has. No good would come from war for the people of China, the American people, or almost everyone else if you don't count the advocates of centralized authoritarian power here and the military-industrial complex. They will make out like bandits and murderers.

The limited choice between regarding China as an enemy (or adversary) and as a competitor is bogus. It's neither. China is a country with lots of people. Yes, it has a bad centralized government that tells people in some ways what to do. But it's neither "our" enemy nor "our" competitor. When Americans buy goods assembled in China (though the parts were made in many other places), they are cooperating, indirectly at least, with Chinese individuals acting together as a business firm. American consumers do not compete with Chinese manufacturers. If an American company makes a product that a Chinese firm also makes and exports, that is competition, but it's against the Chinese firm not the nation of China.

We have to get over seeing the world economy as a race among nation-states. That attitude leads to limits on freedom here, such as tariffs and quotas. Despite much government interference, including from the U.S. government, we still have a world market, and that means a worldwide division of labor, which is cooperation.

No one who values individual liberty would want to live under the Chinese government. No political liberty exists, and economic liberalization is limited. Further, the Chinese government reportedly enslaves one or more groups. Whether that is true, I do not know. But it's not grounds for war, whether nuclear or conventional.

The Chinese government, of course, looks after its security in its neighborhood, just as the U.S. government does -- except that the U.S. government sees the whole world as its neighborhood. It surely doesn't help that the U.S. government conducts war exercises with Taiwan. China is the target. I presume China spies on the United States, but the U.S. government spies on everyone, as we know from recent revelations. It's what big (and smaller) powers do. Hide your secrets better.

Whatever the merits or demerits of the dispute over Taiwan, it is not a matter for the U.S. government. Its claim to be acting for American security is about as believable as a Federal Reserve chairman declaring the American banking system sound. Taiwan, Hong Kong, and some small islands in the South China Sea are not our concern, not if we care about our own liberty and prosperity, not to mention the rest of the world's. Needless to say, decent people will wish everyone in that region life, liberty, and the freedom to pursue happiness, but a war won't bring those things.

The concern over China affects other issues, as to be expected. The latest is social networking in the form of TikTok, a social network that 150 million Americans use. Joe Biden and congressional Republicans and Democrats (with honorable exceptions like Sen. Rand Paul) want to ban TikTok because it's owned by a Chinese company and the Chinese government allegedly uses it, or may use it, to gather information about Americans. This is denied by TikTok's CEO, who is not Chinese and who has American partners.

The irony here is that the Chinese government notoriously bans and restricts social networks for its people to keep them from learning what the communist party doesn't want them to learn. In other words, those who would have the U.S. government ban or otherwise interfere with TikTok want the government to be more like the Chinese Communist Party. I can't find the sense in that.

As we well know the U.S. government has routinely pressured American social networks to ban or restrict information and opinions it did not want the American people to learn. Do we want to give this government even more power? That's exactly what members of Congress would do; pending legislation (acronym RESTRICT Act) would give the commerce secretary ominously broad and vaguely defined power to interfere with any social network allegedly to protect us from "foreign" influence. You know that can't be a good idea. The government's record to date in his regard is alarming. Government-connected organizations and individuals have interfered with the free exchange of ideas over the social networks by claiming that the sources of those ideas are foreign adversaries when in fact they came from Americans, as the Twitter Files about Hamilton 68 have disclosed.

Finally, China surprised everyone by facilitating renewed diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia. This is good for several reasons, among them: it signals a waning of America's role as the self-appointed world guardian. One hopes it will also formally end the brutal Saudi war against the Yemeni people. It should also thwart the U.S. and Israeli governments' ambition for war with, or capitulation of, Iran and undermine the pursuit of the Abraham Accords, begun under American arms-salesman-in-chief Donald Trump, which aim for a united front against Iran and further marginalization of the Palestinians. The Israeli and the U.S. governments have wanted Saudi Arabia to sign such an accord. (Why hasn't Biden reinstated the nuclear deal with Iran, which his old boss Barack Obama signed, and end the cruel sanctions against the Iranian people?)

I've heard commentators dismiss China's Middle East diplomacy as naked self-interest because China buys Saudi and Iranian oil and wants uninterrupted commercial relations with both. But if China's self-interest lies in substituting diplomacy for war, what's wrong with that? Rational self-interest is a feature, not a bug. There are signs that China may do something similar with Ukraine and Russia. (Zelensky, but not Biden, says he's interested.) A ceasefire should have been arranged a long time ago.

The American state has been a force for global disruption, misery, and war for a long time. Its repeated bullying over sanctions, regime-change operations, and covert and overt warfare have increasingly disgusted much of the world, which is fed up with the dominance of "the exceptional nation." That had to happen sooner or later. The U.S. government cannot design a world order. It's time to liquidate the empire and come home. It not only harms foreigners but also makes Americans unfree and poorer.