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<\/p>\nTikTok is the most successful digital communication app to emerge in the past decade.<\/p>\n
A huge phenomenon among young people, TikTok has established itself as the most downloaded application in the world, becoming a staple in many people\u2019s lives in the same way other platforms, such as Facebook, managed in the past.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
However, not everyone is happy. One unique characteristic of TikTok is that it\u2019s the first non-American digital communication app to ever gain worldwide ascendancy. Even more importantly, it\u2019s Chinese, and as much as the application isn\u2019t political, its association with Beijing has landed it in the line of fire.<\/p>\n
A U.S. House committee has voted to forward an act which, if signed into law, will give the president power to ban TikTok as he wishes. Likewise, U.S. President Joe Biden himself has ordered the application removed from all federally owned devices, a move which has been copied by some other Western countries.<\/p>\n
The claim is, because TikTok is \u201cChinese-owned<\/em>,\u201d it should be regarded as a \u201cnational security risk<\/em>.\u201d The most hawkish U.S. senators, such as Josh Hawley and Marco Rubio, have never disguised their intentions to have it banned completely in the United States, and who can forget that the previous administration already attempted to do so, but was unsuccessful after the move was challenged in court?<\/p>\n However, there isn\u2019t any serious evidence of a \u201csecurity risk<\/em>\u201d posed by TikTok \u2013 only guilt by association, since the app is Chinese. The firm has worked hard, and devotes enormous amounts of money to lobbying and marketing to prove the opposite. Apparently, that is not enough to stop the tide of concern sweeping in its direction.<\/p>\n The U.S. isn\u2019t rational when it comes to dealing with China. American political culture is deeply affected by \u2018McCarthyist\u2019 scaremongering, and when there are not enough solid facts available to justify an aggressive political decision, such decisions are made based on emotional statements. These emotional statements are most often related to fear or hatred, and presented as necessary to manufacture public consent. This is a \u2018post-truth\u2019 world, and China is on the other side of it.<\/p>\n Over the past few years, the U.S. has developed an aversion to anything coming out of China that has attained global success. US foreign policy is now obsessed with trying to contain China at all costs, especially in the field of high-end technologies which, if Beijing is allowed to succeed, will enormously deplete U.S. power and influence.<\/p>\n The U.S. has subsequently \u201centity listed\u201d or blacklisted thousands of Chinese companies. Recent measures include targeting Beijing\u2019s entire semiconductor industry. This was after Washington set out to cripple Huawei. As the U.S. pursues the Chinese companies it seeks to take down, it levels the same vague allegations at them, claiming that they are a \u201cnational security threat<\/em>,\u201d and that through their \u201cassociation<\/em>\u201d with the Chinese government, there is a risk that the technology will be used to take your data and spy on them.<\/p>\n These allegations continue to claiming Chinese-made fridges can spy on people. The U.S. says so again and again, until it becomes an established trope in popular discourse, is parroted by the mainstream media, and steers the public debate in allied countries to get the foreign policy outcomes that Washington wants. This is precisely how the U.S. was able to convince allied countries to exclude Huawei from its 5G networks.<\/p>\n However, it still remains unclear if the Biden administration will actually ban TikTok countrywide. First, it is because, as much as it is a hugely successful Chinese application, the reality is that the stakes of TikTok\u2019s success are not strategic. It does not alter the balance of power between the U.S. or China in a dynamic which can have military implications, at least not in a way that something such as semiconductors can. Secondly, such a ban can have shocking reverberations for freedom of speech and there is a serious argument that it may be unconstitutional. Case in point, the previous attempts to ban Chinese applications, including WeChat and TikTok itself, were blocked in the courts. This sets a precedent regardless of any bill the U.S. Congress may pass.<\/p>\n Whether this will lead to substantial policy outcomes in the TikTok case, remains to be seen, and if it did, it would likely provoke outrage and cost Biden a generation of young voters, as most of them are already addicted to social communication networks.<\/p>\n Author: Timur Fomenko, political analyst <\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n yogaesoteric <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" TikTok is the most successful digital communication app to emerge in the past decade. A huge phenomenon among young people, TikTok has established itself as the most downloaded application in the world, becoming a staple in many people\u2019s lives in the same way other platforms, such as Facebook, managed in the past. However, not everyone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[382],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinions-1602-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117068"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":117072,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117068\/revisions\/117072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nApril 8, 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n