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The author's central argument[0] falls apart with today's released XO[1].

[0]> When US lawmakers discuss their plans for a TikTok ban, they often talk about it as a national security threat — that it will allow China, through ByteDance, to get access to US data and information — but as I’ve already outlined, that’s not a strong argument.

[1]https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...

> The Departments of Justice and Homeland Security to work together to set high security standards to prevent access by countries of concern to Americans’ data through other commercial means, such as data available via investment, vendor, and employment relationships.

>genomic data, biometric data, personal health data,

Too bad that cat is well and truly already out of the bag. Still, better late than never!

Shouldn't a country try to preserve their power?
One that promotes laissez faire capitalism and proclaims to the world the moral virtue of pure market competition?

Though, most of the world has quite the different experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2khAmMTAjI

Our opening up of trade to China was contingent on eventual political reforms to the CCP's form of government. This has not happened. We've tried using the carrot on China for over 50 years. It's time to take out the stick.
Repugnant imperialista thought; political reforms on a foreign government?

Take out the stick like in Latin America and the Middle East?

Laughable from the country that proclaims itself "leader of the free world"

At the expense of its own citizens? Not in my opinion.
The citizens won't have a chinese tiktok? Plenty of alternatives.
"A republic, if you can keep it" -bf

america gets many things wrong, but to think it deserves to collapse or that it shouldn't take steps to protect itself is ignoring history.

tiktok is controlled by a country we're entering/entered a new cold war with. china is not your friend.

Well no. As I understand it TikTok has been the top platform for brash divisiveness tactics. It is hosting a lot of bots actively trying to split the body politics with inflamatory astroturfing messages split between the "burn all the wokes" and "ban father's day" types. A reaction is in order, the CCP would never allow any of that to happen in their empire.
Aren't you thinking about Twitter/X and Facebook/Meta?
Anyone have any research on where ByteDance actually hosts their servers geographically? I’m sure they make use of CDNs at some point.
Texas. At least for US users. As part of the last TikTok ban attempt, ByteDance spent a billion and change moving all US user data to Oracle owned and managed servers.
ADLs CEO named TikTok in Israels misinformation war online, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKbMtVKq18I

I agree I see it as very much about the US preserving power and control. We've seen Instagram and Facebook changing their algorithms and banning pro-Palestinian videos, or limiting reach. [1]

TikTok is thorn which needs resolving ASAP. The sudden interest in 'fixing' TikTok and the Israel-Palestine war shouldn't be overlooked. Especially when we have high ranking officials loosing sleep about this issue and publicly expressing their discontent in interviews.

[1] Meta's Systemic Palestine Censorship https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/...