Comment by lelandfe 4 days ago
If you feel that the national security angle is a farce, do you similarly feel that the DoD banning TikTok on government systems was just for show? https://defensescoop.com/2023/06/02/pentagon-proposes-rule-t...
Except there was never a discussion of banning TikTok the app. Which is why a sale of the app was always an option.
NatSec should not even be needed. A simpler reason could be that China bans foreign social media apps from operating in China, so Chinese apps should be treated as such.
Reciprocity is not a good idea. Why would we want to copy every bad foreign law?
> Reciprocity is not a good idea.
Sometimes it is. Especially, if an adversary is bad to you, you should not be good to him. You should be equally bad, or sometimes worse.
That's how wars are won. Those who are nice to enemies because of "values" get crushed by the ruthless opponents.
There’s no adversary here. There’s no ongoing war. In fact, up until the US started imposing restrictions on China, the US was one of China’s largest trade PARTNER.
US social media is banned in China because it doesn’t comply with local censorship laws, nor because it is American. They impose the same censorship on local individuals and organisations too.
If it's going to help US in any way, why not? TikTok is eating the lunch of US social media apps so fair to play the protectionism game.
> Sometimes it is. Especially, if an adversary is bad to you, you should not be good to him. You should be equally bad, or sometimes worse.
Every little thing the West does is already played up in China and spun as an intentional attack aimed directly at China because the West wants to destroy China. Usually this is conveyed in news broadcasts set to a backdrop of video of various US military exercises.
A lot of the support the Chinese government enjoys comes from people in China generally seeing the country as much better off than it was a few decades ago, and a sense of nationalism and conflating the government, country, and people as one. An attack on China is an attack on all of us is an attack on me.
Whatever you do in retaliation is just building the public and political will, or even public demand, within China for them to take harsher measures or escalate things further.
Despite the government's efforts, the populace is not exactly entirely isolated from the outside world. There are many people who, while maybe not fully distrusting of the government, definitely smell something fishy. They're curious, and they want to and are able to learn more.
Heading into the 2030s, China itself is already forecasting China's going to enter a period of negative population growth. Combined with a variety of cultural forces, this could be even more impactful than in some other countries. And it will only get worse with time. "Better off than we were a few decades ago" may soon become clearly untrue to a lot of people. The government knows this is coming and is trying to prepare by strengthening their grip.
I think a smarter long term move here would be to just... not. Let them yell at the clouds. Make whatever information we can freely available to the curious in any way we can. Welcome those that want to embrace Western values with open arms. Model the world that we think is best.
Rather than giving China the government the tools and ammunition needed to unify the people and rally them behind China the government... let's just wait. When the people feel the government is failing them, instead of leaving them feeling isolated and vulnerable... let them see they have somewhere else to turn.
Or, y'know, escalate this towards an economically and politically unstable nation of 1.5 billion people who think the West is the cause of all of their woes and see how it all shakes out. That'd definitely show everyone we have the biggest dick.
Reciprocity is a great idea. It takes the emotion out of the decision: we don’t allow X from Y because Y doesn’t allow X from us. It makes sense for trade at least.
Then there is no need to find another excuse that might be offensive.
It also lets somebody else make your decision for you, though, which is probably not a good strategy.
The difference is, of course, that only one of those countries CONSTANTLY bangs on about being the "free" world, about "free" markets, about how not saying the n-word is censorship etc.
In short, it's only hypocritical for one of those countries.
In both cases though, for normal citizens your own country and it's companies are far more dangerous than some random country halfway across the globe.
most bases still block twitter, facebook, flickr, etc too
https://www.wired.com/2009/06/despite-army-order-some-bases-...
The DoD banning an app on their network is a lot different than banning it competely in the US. I would think DoD should ban most apps connecting to their networks that aren't work related. I feel this whole effort is either in bad faith or isn't being transparently communicated to the public.