No, that's wrong. It sounds like a regurgitated libertarian talking point/post-hoc justification, not actual history.
The reason the US trades so much with China is that, during its over-confident post Cold War high, it convinced itself that economic liberalization would inevitably bring political liberalization. That theory has been proven wrong, and China has shown you can have capitalism without democracy.
You're trying to make perfect be the enemy of the good.
The US and Western countries, for the last several decades, have engaged in a foolish and deluded trade policy with China. It's going to be a long and difficult process to partially undo that mistake. Though is done, they'll never be able to take back the technology, trade secrets, and know-how they let go.
Dealing with the TikTok problem is low-hanging fruit, in comparison. You reach for the low-hanging fruit first.
In this case it appears we're reaching for the low-hanging fruit because it makes easy headlines, has low political risk, and won't change the status quo (Congress won't be successful in their stated goals). It's a distraction from real problems.
I don't think so. That honestly just sounds like a baseless appeal to cynicism.
And as for "low political risk," didn't they just get their phone lines jammed with complaints?
> and won't change the status quo (Congress won't be successful in their stated goals)
What goals are those? It seems like their big goal is to remove a popular social network from the control of an adversary nation, and this bill would do that.
IIRC, CIFUS successful forced the Chinese to divest Grindr. I don't see why this divestment would be out of reach.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/6/21168079/grindr-sold-chine...
Sure, and how many people are going to change their votes on the issue? Are they going to take it more seriously than immigration policy, abortion rights, support for Israel, the actual issue of our trade deficit with China, etc? I sincerely doubt it. It's pure distraction. They can point to it and claim they're taking the Chinese threat seriously.
> IIRC, CIFUS successful forced the Chinese to divest Grindr. I don't see why this divestment would be out of reach.
They invested about $250M, most of which was only a year before they sold it for $600M. They could have fought harder but I doubt they were too upset about that massive, quick profit. TikTok has a lot more at stake -- although who knows, maybe they'll find someone with extremely deep pockets.
This has less to do with data, and more about xenophobia.
Create data privacy laws is the only way to protect the US
We're talking about a nation who at worst is our enemy and at best a geopolitical foe who is harvesting massive amounts of data to use for purposes which are much worse than targeted ads.
Your only threat is they are using US platforms to target ads??
make it make sense
Also "_purposes which are much worse than_ targeted ads".
Does it even matter that it's under US jurisdiction if it can be misused by foreign actors without any real consequences? Meta just uses its lobbying to keep itself without harm.
This is straight-up factually incorrect.
How is it wrong? Are you making a super-big deal that, say, TikTok has some US-registered LLC's or something?
What ultimately matters is who owns and controls it, and whose jurisdiction they're under.
Come on, you can't be serious. Even considered at a pretty abstract and uninformed level, it's clear even the most "adversarial" domestic company would not go places an adversarial foreign company would.
Between TikTok and Facebook, one has already gone demonstrably further than the other, and it's not TikTok.
This is geopolitics, not criminal law. It's not about what was done, but about what could be done.
Whatever specific past actions of Facebook or TikTok that you're vaguely gesturing at don't matter.
China is a geopolitical foe who is quite serious about espionage. We don't have to make it easy for them.
We already know that Facebook does the same, and we already know for a fact that they have wielded this power against the public interest. Focusing on the nationality is a red herring - a US-based company can be just as adversarial as a foreign one.