What Does Trump Have Against TikTok?

It&#x27;s got nothing to do with &quot;global internet&quot;, it&#x27;s about a totalitarian surveillance dragnet capturing every bit of data imaginable about American children.<p>Tik Tok is unique in the granularity and sheer scope of what it captures, and it is stored on Chinese servers that are legally compelled to make any and all data available to the CCP with no oversight or warrants or anything of the sort.

It should be clear to all but the most biased that:<p>1. Chinese companies are extensions of the state. This is not true to the same degree for US or European companies; and<p>2. China deliberately restricts access to the Chinese market so no foreign company will &quot;win&quot; there. It will always be a Chinese company. This is why companies kowtowing the China is so pointless.<p>Trade is about reciprocity. Separation from the state is a national security issue. China is not playing by the same rules as everyone else is. The only shocking thing about this is that it&#x27;s taken what is otherwise the worst president in America&#x27;s history (and someone who, with his family, should probably all be in jail for various reasons) to demand reciprocity and to point out the obvious.<p>Yet the carrot of the Chinese market remains for Western companies and those companies have pressured (if not outright bought) their governments to play along in a completely rigged game they cannot win.

Forget TikTok and the US for a moment - just given the actions of China, the EU, and India, is there even such a thing as a global internet anymore?

No. Banning TikTok at most suggests that the current US administration no longer believes in a global internet.<p>That administration might be out of office as soon as January 2021.<p>Edit: Comment submitted before title was changed. Title was originally: &quot;Banning TikTok suggests that the US no longer believes in a global internet.&quot;

Is it true that we (not HN, but US as a geopolitical entity) have ever believed in a global internet? Seems naive. We’ve believed in the American internet purveyed by America to the world. Countries like China deployed their firewalls precisely because it is largely an American internet out there. Banning TikTok as delivered by a frenemy that sees us as its key rival for the next <i>two hundred years</i> makes more sense with that context.

I disagree with the authors conclusions. All Chinese companies are owned by the Chinese government. China is a horrible regime that murders it&#x27;s own people, not to mention half the nation is starving while the Politburo lives in fancy houses chauffeured in fancy cars. It is not a great leap to conclude that a nation like that which owns a very popular social media app would not attempt to use it for subversive means.

Belief has nothing to do with it. This is a response to geopolitical realities. There is no virtue in believing in a fiction, even if it sounds nice.<p>Edit: this post was originally titled “Banning TikTok suggests that the US no longer believes in a global internet” and that is still the main idea of the article

TikTok trolled his Tulsa rally

Or maybe it believes that those who don&#x27;t believe in a global internet shouldn&#x27;t benefit from it.<p>The <i>first</i> thing China did was putting up the Great Firewall.<p>Reciprocity is overdue and important.

Not sure if we should extrapolate from one White House administration as to what the US believes.

Trump’s fallen for one of the two classic blunders! The first being never put self above the American people but only slightly lesser known: never go in against the TikTok hive mind when RE-ELECTION is on the line!

Having a fool at the helm often yields such outcomes.

Or US believes in trade reciprocity