>will not be using information it gathers on US or European citizens in order to defend or promote democratic rights and freedoms globally.

And when was America doing this? I seem to recall the last 15 years as being full of America attacking and occupying foreign nations to claim resources.

I really don't think it had much to do with whether they had access to Facebook...

This seems to be getting caught up in general "pro-US"/"anti-US" or "pro-China"/"anti-China" sentiments on the forum. To be honest, I'm not interested in that or getting into general political discussions, though the question of how the tech environment will evolve around the world is very interesting to most of us that read this forum. Someone claimed it was "surprising" that Americans would support their companies operating overseas but oppose alleged data gathering by allegedly foreign-government-linked corporations. I expressed that I'm not surprised by that at all. That matches up pretty well with how I imagine the American public reacting.

Likewise I do think the nature of this allegation is different to national security allegations in the past. So far as I recall, this is the first time a national security risk allegation has been about mass data collection on civilians from the regular operation of an app. Cambridge Analytica is perhaps the closest equivalent, and that got shut down pretty quickly even though it was a company run in another western country.

I'm way more afraid of the US Government than the CCP. They're actually relevant to my life, beyond a vague "politics affects us all" kind of way.

I'm more afraid of the guy holding a stick over my head than the guy a mile away, no matter what that dude is up to.

Good news is that under the current administration the usa has heavily reduced it's foreign presence

The problem with an autocracy is that they will not cease until any threat to their existence can be stamped out or controlled. Nations continued to hope Nazi Germany would just stop its expansion and placate Hitler until it was clear he had no intention of stopping.

Last week it was discovered that an additional half a million Tibetans [1] were sent to join the Uighurs in labor camps. When do the democracies of the world say enough is enough? These are vast numbers of human lives being cast into the inferno because they aren't Han Chinese.

[1] https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/china-forces-500-000-tibet...

China hasn't fought a foreign war since 1979. I don't see the aggressive expansion you're claiming.

China has subsumed Tibet wholly and condemned its people to reeducation and labor camps. If this doesn't sound like lebensraum I don't know what to tell you.

Predatory loans on ports in Africa and their subsequent control by the CCP are by proxy tools of dominion.

China marched into Tibet in 1950, immediately after the founding of the PRC. It was part of the Qing dynasty, and the Republic of China also considered Tibet to be part of China. It's hyperbolic to say that China is expansionist because 70 years ago, it invaded a territory that every successive Chinese government for hundreds of years has controlled or claimed.

That sounds exactly like lebensraum, which if you're not familiar was an effort to create a "Greater Germany" through the annexation of ethnically German neighbors.

There are more than a million people whose only crime was they were not Han Chinese who have been sent to camps. It is an ethical imperative to make a stand.

Lebensraum was not about annexing ethnically German neighbors. Lebensraum was about the "German race" needing space to thrive and, being superior, having a moral right and "biological necessity" to conquer that space and wipe out the "inferior races" currently inhabiting it.

You are correct; lebensraum did go hand-in-hand with Hitler's Grossdeutschland. I argue that the Anschluss (the annexation of Austria) was in Hitler's eyes a test of pavement for lebensraum: for an even greater Germany. China's reconstitution of half a century old territories is evidence of this same desire.

>The problem with an autocracy is that they will not cease until any threat to their existence can be stamped out or controlled

Yes, I already said I was afraid of the US Government.

The US government is a democracy. Please give peer-reviewed evidence it is not: I know US citizens are entitled to vote in an election.

Define Democracy. If simply having a system of elections is enough, then China is also a Democracy. On the other hand, if you define a Democracy as a nation where every nation has an equal vote, then the US definitely is not a Democracy.