January 17, 2025 - 4:00pm
The Supreme Court has today upheld legislation forcing TikTok’s Chinese parent company to sell the app or face prohibition in the US. Incoming President Trump, who invited the app’s CEO to sit on the inaugural dais, is now likely to devise a delay of the ban.
With only two days left, Chinese officials are reportedly weighing the sale of TikTok to Elon Musk. Bytedance, the company which owns TikTok, is denying these reports; but, from Kevin O’Leary to Mr Beast, American investors are champing at the bit to save the app and make bank. Trump could orchestrate a friendly sale.
There are laudable reasons to ban TikTok and laudable reasons to buy it. In theory, at least, those reasons could overlap. An altruistic billionaire like Musk could, for instance, genuinely transfer all operations to the US, thereby eliminating legitimate concerns about foreign surveillance and manipulation.
That hypothetical, however, is extraordinarily far-fetched. The enormous power of TikTok is irresistible to oligarchs at home and abroad, and so the app’s fundamental threat remains — whatever Musk’s decision. It is also irresistible to America’s own intelligence agencies, which are rightly beating the drum about security concerns but have nonetheless abused their own powers repeatedly in recent years.
The Chinese government forces ByteDance to function domestically as a tool furthering education and patriotism. US officials know it’s an incredibly powerful weapon. That is why, according to journalist Ken Klippenstein, they’re already carving out exemptions for America’s own diplomacy. O’Leary and Musk are especially interesting potential investors, given that both are close to incoming president Donald Trump. Musk also happens to have cordial relations with the Chinese government, and it is striking that media reports suggest Beijing is even entertaining talk of a sale to the billionaire given its enthusiastic rejection of other potential deals. With Musk, at least, the CCP would have an open line of communication.
In the hands of an American owner friendly with the incumbent administration, the app could provide more surveillance access and opportunities for narrative control, much as we saw the Biden administration pressure and cooperate with Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Google during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Notably, Musk is also a major recipient of military contracts in the US, while his telecoms provider Starlink is an important part of wartime operations in Ukraine and Israel. This is worth considering given that, rather than banning TikTok outright, a bipartisan coalition of hawks passed a sweeping bill last spring that forced its sale to a US company. That legislation mentioned TikTok just once.
It is reasonable to disagree on whether the app should simply be banned outright. (I don’t support measures like Kosa but tend to think TikTok has much worse health outcomes than cigarettes for minors, though we needn’t open up that can of worms here.) It is less reasonable to see our public and private sectors’ management of the app as a service to the public, unless you support Big Government and Big Business exerting more control over our daily lives.
The forced sale could keep China, a country with which the US is locked in a new Cold War, from controlling the most popular platform for political and cultural discourse. This is obviously good news for the Pentagon, and for just about every other American. Yet whether Musk or O’Leary or any American owner tweaks the algorithm to favour self-serving narratives or Government propaganda — with or without formal coercion — we may not know until it’s too late. It’s also possible they may have no qualms whatsoever about profiting off the addiction of children.
This is sad to say because we deserve better, but much of the zeal to protect American users from leaders in government and business right now is likely explained by bad intentions, not good ones. We may soon be able to see this with even more clarity.
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SubscribeThe evidence just keeps piling up here. Musk and his tech bros have forged an alliance with Trump and the MIC to push a nationalist narrative and Cold War 2.0 is on. I wouldn’t call it an ideal outcome, but probably something like this was necessary given what China has become under Chairman Xi. I don’t love this conflict and I’d much rather be pushing for more populist reforms rather than settling for this rearrangement of the oligarchy, but the proverbial wolf is at the door and there do exist worse things that corrupted, money hungry oligarchs. The CCP is worse, and it is not remotely close. However corrupt and power hungry our own intelligence agencies might be, and however they might conspire to spy on Americans, the CCP are so much worse, and completely unchecked, and protected from criticism and protest. Yes, our system has problems. Yes, we are in dire need of political reform. No, it is not so bad that we should be considering whether Elon Musk and Donald Trump are better or worse than Chinese totalitarianism. It’s not even in the same universe, so yes, I’m OK with Elon buying Bytedance and using it to push a bit of patriotism. It won’t be anything close to what the CCP are already doing and Americans will still be free to complain about Musk and accuse him of conspiring with the government to make money and push a political agenda. We should celebrate the fact we can make such statements and have such protests against our government and leaders. You can’t do any of that in China, and that’s why this is not a fair comparison. I have no idea where all the China love comes from or how anyone thinks its fair or reasonable to compare the CCP to any American company or government agency. It’s not even close to the same thing. It makes me wonder how many journalists they’ve actually bought off.
What is to stop Donald Trump or his close relatives from buying TikTok? And what are its threats to American national security? Defined as what? The political security of the Democratic Party? Even then, though, in what way, exactly?
There are several issues that I don’t get in this whole business.
(1) Let us say TikTok is not sold to a US company or individual, what is to prevent people in the US accessing TikTok with VPN via a country that hasn’t banned TikTok. This is a really easy thing to do.
(2) Let us say TikTok and its parent company are sold to a US company or individual. My question is what difference does this really make if TikTok and the relevant software development are still based in China. because if they’re located in China they are still subject to interference and manipulation by the CCP. So one would need to not simply buy TikTok but also to bring all future software development to the US with US employees and not Chinese nationals.