It needs the combined forces of big tech and Donald Trump to produce hypocrisy of the magnitude surrounding the forced sale TikTok — or, as it should be more accurately described, the extortion of Chinese company ByteDance.
We’re all supposed to hate the Chinese tyranny and the tech companies it can use to serve its purposes of surveillance, control and commercial espionage, both at home and abroad.
But the Five Eyes governments of the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are no better when it comes to surveillance and commercial espionage — and control, when they want it. Indeed, we invented the practice of hoovering up personal data from tech platforms — and Western companies invented the practice of monetising that data.
Perhaps that’s why no one seems perturbed that the Trump administration intends to prise the boom social media app TikTok from the ownership of Chinese company, ByteDance.
Bytedance identified an opportunity in — or perhaps created, or both — young people’s interest in mobile short videos. Anyone over 25 either never heard of TikTok or would be completely bewildered by what its users see in it. It’s a classic case of innovation driven by connectedness, which left Western tech giants miles behind.
Now, on the pretext TikTok is a security threat due to its vacuuming up of personal data — the very business model of Facebook and Google — the Trump administration is going to ban it, forcing a sale to Western interests. Microsoft has put its hand up to acquire TikTok in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Trump has set a deadline of September 15 for a deal to be done. There will be a lot of haggling over the price, but Microsoft had US$136 billion in cash at the end of June.
Microsoft’s acquisition might be at the exact moment TikTok loses its lustre — or one may cause the other. Either way, the acquisition has all the characteristics of News Corp’s 2005 acquisition of MySpace.
But once it is controlled by Microsoft, it means that the NSA, the Australian Signals Directorate and other Five Eyes governments will be able to use the app to vacuum up user data. And, as the Snowden revelations demonstrated over and over again, that’s exactly what our governments do.
Indeed, the Australian government, in last week’s melodramatic cybersecurity strategy, boasted of its ability to thwart encryption on widely used apps and devices.
The main use of such information is allegedly to fight terrorism, child abuse and organised crime. In reality it’s commercial espionage and pursuing whistleblowers, journalists, lawyers and anyone else who embarrasses governments.
But that’s only the start of the hypocrisy.
For the last couple of years, pretty much everyone has been railing about big tech and the need to impose limits on the monopolistic practices of Facebook, Amazon, Alphabet (owners of Google) and Apple. Microsoft, of course, was being pursued by competition regulators before Facebook and Amazon even existed. It’s been one of the few causes to bring politicians together in this polarised political age.
Now Trump and the US Congress are now willing to anoint them as the national champion to grab control of the major foreign threat to big tech.
The mainstream media, eviscerated by Facebook and Google, have cheered on attempts to rein in big tech. Here, News Corp essentially dictated to the Morrison government how it should force Google and Facebook to hand over hundreds of millions of dollars allegedly for use of content. So all the more curious that the crushing of a competitor to big tech not merely in the US and Canada but here as well has been greeted with such equanimity, especially at the Financial Review, which normally adopts a “forget China’s monstrous crimes, just think about the money to be made” editorial line.
The United States likes to impose Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions in trade deals on smaller countries, ostensibly because the legal systems of smaller countries can’t be trusted to protect investment by US firms. But it’s unlikely any dispute that ended up before a dodgy international ISDS forum has ever been remotely the size of what will be a forced acquisition of TikTok.
Trump has also, Mafia-style, insisted that the US government receive a large slice of any deal. This may well be unconstitutional. One lawyer described it as “akin to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act but on US soil, where the US government would be able to require what is tantamount to a bribe in order to obtain a regulatory approval for a business transaction”.
Imagine the outrage if the Chinese government demands that the Chinese operations of Microsoft be ceded to a local government after any TikTok deal was completed — and takes a juicy cut of the proceeds. It would confirm what everyone has been saying about the lack of any rule of law there, and rightly so.
Lets be clear, the only reason that Trump knows of, or cares about, TikTok is because it was so successfully used by teenagers to make him look even more stupid than usual at his rallies-by booking tickets they had no intention of collecting! They only threw Tencent under the bus as well when they realised that a focus on TikTok might well make Trump look even more venal & petulant than normal.
Good point.
After Tulsa I thought that their boasting of having gamed him was a mistake and would have consequences.
What the dinosaurs – now including Farcebuch et al!! – still haven’t grasped is that new apps will be instant, ephemeral & irrelevant.
Might as well try to capture smoke in a butterfly net.
Where USA goes Australia is sure to follow and or copy.
That’s what happens when we are merely chewing gum stuck on the sole of the American boot.
Hey, if we get to chew on the hard, stale gum on Uncle Sam’s boots that’d be an improvement on licking them whilst being kicked.
‘fing is, it ain’t a binary choice – in the on-rushing future they are gonna need us more than we need them.
Dare I use a tu quoque argument, and say China is doing the same by banning USA social media in China? Yes, in this case I think I will.
Don’t think that argument flies, Mike. First, when a centralised government that believes in the centralised control of all aspects of citizens’ social lives institutes that control, they are not behaving hypocritically. When the government of a supposedly free society behaves in a tyrannical way, then they ARE being hypocritical.
Secondly, the behaviour for which Tick Tock is being banned – the collection of user data – is, as the article points out, exactly what western social media platforms do, yet Trump is not threatening to ban them from operating in the US.
The US has continually charged China with stealing US intellectual property. This seems to be a reverse case of that.
It’s also hard to see how a collection of videos of young people doing silly dances really constitutes a security threat to anyone. Except maybe to older folk, if they try to replicate those dance moves.
But basically, the whole thing is BS, anyway. Trump needs an external enemy for his base to focus its hate on. The US also needs an on-going external threat to justify the ongoing existence of its military-industrial complex, which is the foundation of US society.
There’s no obvious candidates at the moment, so he needs to create one. He’s certainly not the first US politician to use this strategy, but his options at the moment are limited. He can’t use Russia, because Putin owns him. He tried Iran for a while, but Iran hardly constitutes a believable current threat of sufficient magnitude. Trump’s been running with China for a while now (tariff wars, ‘China’ virus) and so far it appears to be working. I expect her will keep it up for as long as he is president.
*TikTok, not Tick Tock. Showing my age lol.
This – “an on-going external threat to justify the ongoing existence of its military-industrial complex, which is the foundation of US society” is the Alpha & Omega of the Benighted States.
Have a squizz at the Great Seal – clutching weaponry (arrows) in its talons.
I didn’t so much mean China was hypocritical, more that it’s an acceptable to for tat response by USA for China’s banning of most of the USA based social media and messaging systems.
Taken from Murdoch’s Wall St Journal twitter account, Aug 8th;
“A small U.S. company with ties to the U.S. defense and intelligence communities has embedded its software in numerous mobile apps, allowing it to track the movements of hundreds of millions of mobile phones world-wide. wsjdotcom/2DLOcza ”
Going back to Feb’ish this year, anyone recall much mention ’round these parts of ‘Crypto AG’?
Another US – German JV kicked off in the aftermath of WWII, ‘incorporated’ in ‘neutral’ Switzerland.
Coupla memorable headlines;
Graun, Feb 11th;
“CIA controlled global encryption company for decades, says report
Swiss government orders inquiry after revelations Crypto AG was owned and operated by US and German intelligence”
WaPo, same day;
‘The intelligence coup of the century’
For decades, the CIA read the encrypted communications of allies and adversaries.”
‘The Diplomat”, a few days later;
“What the Tale of ‘Crypto AG’ Reveals About the Nature of US Overseas Espionage
A new exposé sheds light on an audacious U.S. long-term espionage effort.”
“Audacious”?
‘Swashbuckling’, surely?
Nice to see that your post made it (eventually) through the hoops David but although enlightening, in terms of a record, albeit not a lot (via Snowden) that we didn’t already know, I’m inclined to think that the “evidence” is neither ‘audacious’ or ‘swashbuckling’.
However, your post does make a monkey’s breakfast as to what Parliament was advised via ministers for Communications (via faceless sources) as to dealing with “righteous” telecom companies and not the [pejorative adjective here] telecom companies from the PRC. If (e.g.) Huawei could attach a back door then anyone (e.g. HP) can attach a back door. It is the world in which we live.
However, it is well known that the electorate is to be composted; especially when it comes to making sausages and laws pertaining to security.
Snowden ‘missed’ Crypto AG, and it was only brought to light earlier this year;
“In 2020, an investigation carried out by The Washington Post, Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF), and Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen (SRF) revealed that Crypto AG was, in fact, entirely controlled by the CIA and the BND. The project, initially known by codename “Thesaurus” and later as “Rubicon” operated from the end of the Second World War until 2018.”
And, a very rich ‘history’ it has, too (including streams of activity going back to 1920).
The JV itself was one of a number formed by the Yanks and Germans, in various pursuits, from bigger and better bombs, to some top notch ‘foreign meddling’, particularly in Central and South America.
Crypto AG would reasonably be categorised as ‘IT Support’ for the other, more kinetic, streams of activity.
“Astonishing”? Look at the practice “Western Civilisation” has had?
But then, our politicians have got God on their side – we’re told.