Banning TikTok
Techno-nationalism, cybercrime, and the new Cold War
Senator Josh Hawley wants to take away your TikTok. In December, the senator sponsored a bill to ban TikTok on all government devices, after a bunch state governments did the same—the bill passed unanimously. Last week, he introduced a bill to extend this to all US citizens.
A Strained Relationship
Whether the US chooses to ban TikTok will change the course of US diplomacy; it’s worth zooming out to think about this bill in the context of the broader geopolitical environment. Over the last decade, Sino-US relations have been strained: trade wars, exit bans, stolen technology, misinformation campaigns, election meddling, yada yada. At the same time, Sino-US relations became increasingly important: tech development, military hard power, international trade. During the Trump and Biden years, the US has pulled back from the global stage, opting for ‘focus on what’s at home’ tact, while China has continued to invest in cultural and economic influence abroad.
A New Battlefront
In the 1980s, cold wars were fought through proxies where enemies supply resources for other countries to engage in conflict on their behalf. During the Cold War, communist revolutions were sponsored by the soviets. Today, countries take Chinese money to build infrastructure with Chinese hardware. The new proxy wars are being fought with technical infrastructure and in cyberspace. Instead of going directly to war with a nation, you can attack its allies’ cyber infrastructure.
As technology becomes more embedded in our critical infrastructure, the threat vectors available to our enemies (opportunities to disrupt us through cyber attacks) becomes more plentiful. For example, China would not have to bomb an airport to disrupt US air traffic, it could simply hack into antiquated FAA computer systems. Because the threat landscape is expanding, the scope of what qualifies as a question of national security has also expanded to include the following:
What technical infrastructure do our allies use to communicate with us?
What reliance does the US economy have on foreign supply chains or capital?
To what extent can domestic political discourse be swayed by our rivals?
As pandemic era, lag times, technology theft, and election meddling has shown us, each presents a legitimate concern for policy makers to respond to. Given our strained relationship with China and a growing threat surface area, the question of whether we ban TikTok is big one.
Against Banning TikTok
This study from GeorgiaTech states that TikTok’s privacy policy and recommendation algorithm is purely a function of market forces, and not influenced by the Chinese state.
It also states that the data TikTok collects “can only be of espionage value if it comes from users who are intimately connected to national security functions”.
There’s also Project Texas, TikTok’s massive effort to rebuild its internal systems so that China-based employees will not be able to access a swath of “protected” identifying user data about U.S. TikTok users, including their phone numbers, birthdays and draft videos.
TikTok has said it will release a label next to state-controlled media outlets, which will include the Chinese government.
The Costs of a Ban:
Banning TikTok would harm the 90 million + Americans who use the app. It would deprive them of free expression rights, and destroy their equity in their creations and followers.
Banning TikTok would expropriate the investors who have provided capital to the company, and eliminate thousands of US jobs.
Banning TikTok would weaken competition in the social media/advertising industry.
China could retaliate against American businesses in China
Banning TikTok would encourage other countries to enact techno-nationalist and data protectionist policies, which would have negative effects primarily on US-based social media firms.
For Banning TikTok
Policymakers are concerned that TikTok will be used to spy on and sway the opinions of Americans. There is substantiated evidence that the ByteDance Planned To Use TikTok To Monitor The Physical Location Of Specific American Citizens. And also evidence that **Chinese State Media Pushes Divisive Videos About U.S. Politicians. Chinese state media entities have long sought to use social media to influence U.S. audiences — they’ve built audiences and bought ads on Facebook and Twitter to disseminate misinformation about topics such as the detainment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, the 2019 protests in Hong Kong. Chinese companies have a uniquely subservient relationship to their government. We must assume that TikTok, like any other Chinese company will continue to be a mechanism by which the Chinese state exerts its influence over the US populous.
I’m predicting ByteDance will work with US policy makers to spin off TikTok’s US operations to a willing buyer, avoiding a wholesale ban. Perhaps, this will be decided when TikTok’s CEO testifies before congress on March 23.
Best,
Elliot