It's not *really* a ban. It's a call for a company to divest foreign ownership, based on adversarial control. Can it happen to an American company, if the President's Men label it "foreign adversary"?
Brendan Carr said, "Good news is that this particular bill is limited, not only to foreign controlled, but to foreign adversary controlled AND only when additional, specific criteria are also met."
Read it. Doesn’t seem too bad. Definitely limited to social media and almost specifically to tic-tok (with carve outs for some yet-to-be-determined other threat). Actions are limited to States Attorneys doing investigations and starting judicial proceedings, and divestiture seems fairly reasonable, ie China, the literal government thereof, can’t own 50%+.
In sure there’s room for tomfoolery, there always is, it’s a problem endemic to legislation. I’m supportive of this measure because it seems mostly above board and we need to start pushing against some boundaries to determine where we want to end up. The Wild West cannot remain Wild.
Ok, good. That's one thing many people are reading into this bill. I'll get to say what I see in this whole scenario. I think the whole thing has become a political crab trap to keep us in abusive business relations with China. So go ahead and drill down on your own personally derived conclusions, before they get manipulated and dragged by corporate media and their Tencent web army.
The Patriot Act was a very different piece of legislation that was most notable in assigning broad surveillance and law enforcement powers to DHS (which it formed)—as well as FBI and CIA, it redefined terrorism and terrorist and created a legal grey-zone for perpetual detention without habeus corpus, it opened up banking and financial transactions of private citizens and provided the framework for all of the internal surveillance that we’ve seen front-and-center the past 5 years. It is a truly nightmarish piece of legislation that proved to be as horrific as we said it was going to be 20-ish years ago. All the warnings have come to pass.
If you want me to accept the tic-tok divestiture act is even remotely close to the Patriot Act, give me something to go on. What I read in the brief is this law would, at most allow States’ Attorneys to bring cases and do investigations—seemingly through our existing court structures and not new extrajudicial structures ala the PA.
Second It’s focused exclusively on companies with foreign ownership, it’s also focused only on social media businesses with > 1M daily active users. So, I’d need to see how this law could be used to limit individual rights.
Third, it doesn’t have any language about restricting what happens in the platform and—to my best understanding—only wants to make sure that these companies can’t operate with greater than 50% corporate governance led by a foreign power.
I don’t see the comparison at all, so show me what I missed.
Ok. As it stands, TikTok, reportedly only has 20% vested interest in the CCP's business intel unit. However, that is enough to make a demand onto TikTok for any intelligence or data requirements from China's national security queries. Reports are also in that the PRC wrote and owns some of the algo code for the app. It's their engineering. So PRC national security law has reach, legally, onto content or anything transiting that platform; which includes American small business transactional information from buyers to sellers, child data, location information, whatever the app collects. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/13/us/politics/tiktok-ban-house-bill.html
I think it must be acknowledged that China is a special kind of bad when it comes to spyware both as software and hardware. It’s possible that Zeihan is right and it doesn’t matter because China is functionally collapsing as we speak, but that doesn’t change the sinister nature of their products—no one should ever want any government spying on them anywhere—duh!
(Incidentally, I bought a Chinese made telescope with a phone app feature and just couldn’t bring myself to install and run it—it felt like I would have been actively spying for them. I’m trying to say, regardless of the actual danger, the suspicion is now superstition and the effect is the same. Another example of how business fails under authoritarianism.)
Collapse or not, they have lawyers. The United States respects the rule of law, even when they don't. Read this article on lawfare per the administration of "universal jurisdiction" in the global business climate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawfare
I’m familiar with Lawfare but not making the connection. Are you saying this til-tok bill is primarily intended to have a chilling effect to force every other media company in-line? I understand Taibbi’s claim to be this is a path for legitimizing presidential whims as a form of totalitarian media control. Maybe? Like, the possibility of abuse is clear but I don’t think that’s anything new or novel. In totality it seems like the system working as designed: legislatures propose a shitty bill giving some sweeping power to the executives that has to be viciously adjudicated over time.
I’m still not convinced this is some freedom ending disaster akin to the Patriot Act and frankly found the last AtW pretty disappointing as the lads really seemed like old men yelling at clouds throughout. Maybe I’d understand this issue better if someone showed me how it should be done…specifically, how should the US protect its population from spying and manipulation by foreign adversaries legally? What terms should be better defined and how? What restrictions on the bill would make it reasonable?
It doesn't have to be a "new concept" to be an unqualified attempt to steer American government in a non-accountable foreign policy agency who misrepresents the interests of the American people and manufactures war conflicts abroad to autocrate to the US citizen against the US Constitution. The "whaddaboudist" treatment in media is not the same as lawmaking. When we downward dog our Constitutional foundations, conformance to the Bill of Rights, to mimic Asian interests of other partners - we are serving a global heirarchy that no longer represents the American people. Unless the Intel State starts recognizing whom their powers come from, their powers fail to protect and we shall reject their authority.
Per this bill - they need to pick a lane. If you want to sanction Chinese business agency in the US - do it. However, TikTok speaks louder for a fashinonable alignment in Asia. It is more of a global caduceus to International economic partners in India & Bhutan and than it is to serve US localized needs. It hands overbroad discretionary powers on business to the Intel State. Return those powers to the US Congress or kill bill.
I just read Taibbi’s article con-tic-tak bill with a call to contact everybody’s various politicians. I think he makes a slightly better case for how this might relate to 2003 Patriot Act, but my read of his argument is, “the bill is bad because it will be abused,” and I found the case he laid out pretty speculative and not overly convincing.
I’ll listen to America This Week and maybe I’ll see it differently, but Walter is often paranoid about things that, IMO have already happened and while I love him to death, I don’t always think it’s the right position.
Anyway, I’m glad to hear more arguments, I like this discussion, but I’m very, “meh” about this particular controversy.
Here's where Section 702 of FISA is at right now. FISA-reauth just moved ahead in US House. USA PATRIOT Act was ruled unconstitutional for its applications on US citizens in 2018.
Elon Musk & Thomas Massie's voice concern on this bill.
https://x.com/BrendanCarrFCC/status/1767545265223864595?s=20
Brendan Carr said, "Good news is that this particular bill is limited, not only to foreign controlled, but to foreign adversary controlled AND only when additional, specific criteria are also met."
https://x.com/BrendanCarrFCC/status/1767545265223864595?s=20
Read it. Doesn’t seem too bad. Definitely limited to social media and almost specifically to tic-tok (with carve outs for some yet-to-be-determined other threat). Actions are limited to States Attorneys doing investigations and starting judicial proceedings, and divestiture seems fairly reasonable, ie China, the literal government thereof, can’t own 50%+.
In sure there’s room for tomfoolery, there always is, it’s a problem endemic to legislation. I’m supportive of this measure because it seems mostly above board and we need to start pushing against some boundaries to determine where we want to end up. The Wild West cannot remain Wild.
Thanks for sharing, was a good read.
I don’t trust this administration to not use this bill as a way to censor.
Ok, good. That's one thing many people are reading into this bill. I'll get to say what I see in this whole scenario. I think the whole thing has become a political crab trap to keep us in abusive business relations with China. So go ahead and drill down on your own personally derived conclusions, before they get manipulated and dragged by corporate media and their Tencent web army.
I don't trust any of it.
It has echos of the Patriot Act, no?
What echoes? Own your conclusions.
The Patriot Act was a very different piece of legislation that was most notable in assigning broad surveillance and law enforcement powers to DHS (which it formed)—as well as FBI and CIA, it redefined terrorism and terrorist and created a legal grey-zone for perpetual detention without habeus corpus, it opened up banking and financial transactions of private citizens and provided the framework for all of the internal surveillance that we’ve seen front-and-center the past 5 years. It is a truly nightmarish piece of legislation that proved to be as horrific as we said it was going to be 20-ish years ago. All the warnings have come to pass.
If you want me to accept the tic-tok divestiture act is even remotely close to the Patriot Act, give me something to go on. What I read in the brief is this law would, at most allow States’ Attorneys to bring cases and do investigations—seemingly through our existing court structures and not new extrajudicial structures ala the PA.
Second It’s focused exclusively on companies with foreign ownership, it’s also focused only on social media businesses with > 1M daily active users. So, I’d need to see how this law could be used to limit individual rights.
Third, it doesn’t have any language about restricting what happens in the platform and—to my best understanding—only wants to make sure that these companies can’t operate with greater than 50% corporate governance led by a foreign power.
I don’t see the comparison at all, so show me what I missed.
Ok. As it stands, TikTok, reportedly only has 20% vested interest in the CCP's business intel unit. However, that is enough to make a demand onto TikTok for any intelligence or data requirements from China's national security queries. Reports are also in that the PRC wrote and owns some of the algo code for the app. It's their engineering. So PRC national security law has reach, legally, onto content or anything transiting that platform; which includes American small business transactional information from buyers to sellers, child data, location information, whatever the app collects. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/13/us/politics/tiktok-ban-house-bill.html
I think it must be acknowledged that China is a special kind of bad when it comes to spyware both as software and hardware. It’s possible that Zeihan is right and it doesn’t matter because China is functionally collapsing as we speak, but that doesn’t change the sinister nature of their products—no one should ever want any government spying on them anywhere—duh!
(Incidentally, I bought a Chinese made telescope with a phone app feature and just couldn’t bring myself to install and run it—it felt like I would have been actively spying for them. I’m trying to say, regardless of the actual danger, the suspicion is now superstition and the effect is the same. Another example of how business fails under authoritarianism.)
Collapse or not, they have lawyers. The United States respects the rule of law, even when they don't. Read this article on lawfare per the administration of "universal jurisdiction" in the global business climate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawfare
I’m familiar with Lawfare but not making the connection. Are you saying this til-tok bill is primarily intended to have a chilling effect to force every other media company in-line? I understand Taibbi’s claim to be this is a path for legitimizing presidential whims as a form of totalitarian media control. Maybe? Like, the possibility of abuse is clear but I don’t think that’s anything new or novel. In totality it seems like the system working as designed: legislatures propose a shitty bill giving some sweeping power to the executives that has to be viciously adjudicated over time.
I’m still not convinced this is some freedom ending disaster akin to the Patriot Act and frankly found the last AtW pretty disappointing as the lads really seemed like old men yelling at clouds throughout. Maybe I’d understand this issue better if someone showed me how it should be done…specifically, how should the US protect its population from spying and manipulation by foreign adversaries legally? What terms should be better defined and how? What restrictions on the bill would make it reasonable?
It doesn't have to be a "new concept" to be an unqualified attempt to steer American government in a non-accountable foreign policy agency who misrepresents the interests of the American people and manufactures war conflicts abroad to autocrate to the US citizen against the US Constitution. The "whaddaboudist" treatment in media is not the same as lawmaking. When we downward dog our Constitutional foundations, conformance to the Bill of Rights, to mimic Asian interests of other partners - we are serving a global heirarchy that no longer represents the American people. Unless the Intel State starts recognizing whom their powers come from, their powers fail to protect and we shall reject their authority.
Per this bill - they need to pick a lane. If you want to sanction Chinese business agency in the US - do it. However, TikTok speaks louder for a fashinonable alignment in Asia. It is more of a global caduceus to International economic partners in India & Bhutan and than it is to serve US localized needs. It hands overbroad discretionary powers on business to the Intel State. Return those powers to the US Congress or kill bill.
I just read Taibbi’s article con-tic-tak bill with a call to contact everybody’s various politicians. I think he makes a slightly better case for how this might relate to 2003 Patriot Act, but my read of his argument is, “the bill is bad because it will be abused,” and I found the case he laid out pretty speculative and not overly convincing.
I’ll listen to America This Week and maybe I’ll see it differently, but Walter is often paranoid about things that, IMO have already happened and while I love him to death, I don’t always think it’s the right position.
Anyway, I’m glad to hear more arguments, I like this discussion, but I’m very, “meh” about this particular controversy.
Here's where Section 702 of FISA is at right now. FISA-reauth just moved ahead in US House. USA PATRIOT Act was ruled unconstitutional for its applications on US citizens in 2018.
https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/press/releases/durbin-lee-introduce-bipartisan-safe-act-to-reform-fisa-section-702