In my opinion, the best economics writer today is Tom Hazlett. He has a way with words. And good writing necessarily requires good thinking.
Tom recently had a recent post on banning TikTok, it was so good I didn’t want to post it as one of the many weekly Sunday reading posts.
He wrote:
And so President Joe Biden sign the Protecting Americans from Apps Controlled by Foreign Adversaries Act of 2024, which requires China-based company ByteDance to either split up TikTok or see it banned. Separating the business from the app would supposedly solve the problem. other problem frequently attributed to TikTok: the circle that links the personal data of American users to the Chinese Communist Party. The loop has already been cut, TikTok claims, because US user data is now stored at Oracle in Texas. That’s about as credible as those TikTok baby talk vignettes, Congress counters.
If Congress gets the better of the communists, say it! These Homeland Security Threat Assessment Swatches from the 2000s are tanned, rested, and ready. But forcing the closure of a business because of simple rumors, that’s really it. East a nasty import from China.
Later:
Rather than shouting about potential threats, TikTok haters should point out any real lies or breaches of trust. When it involves criminal behavior – as in the case of misappropriation of user data – such inappropriate behavior should be prosecuted by the authorities. Yet here, national security specialists have often gone on the run.
New York Times journalist David Sanger, in The perfect weapon (2018), provides spectacular context. Around the summer of 2014, U.S. intelligence discovered that a major state actor – believed to be China – had hacked into U.S.-based servers and stolen the data of 22 million current and former U.S. government employees . More than 4 million of these victims lost highly personal information, including Social Security numbers, medical records, fingerprints and security checks. The American database was not encrypted. It was such a sensational flaw that when the theft was finally discovered, it was discovered that the outgoing data was (bizarrely) encrypted, an upgrade the hackers had dutifully provided in order to carry out their heist discreetly.
Here’s the killer: Sanger reports that “the administration has never matched the 22 million Americans whose data was lost — except by accident.” Victims were simply sent a note stating that “some of their information may have been lost” and offered credit monitoring subscriptions. This was in itself a ruse; the hack was identified as a hostile intelligence operation because the data recovered was not sold on the Dark Web.
I was one of those 22 million. I remember very well the innocuous letter I received from the American government. More on this in the postscript.
Here’s what I’m wondering: Which is the greater threat to Americans’ privacy: the Chinese government or the US government? The Chinese government has limits on what it can do with stolen private data. The American government, because it is here, has broader limits.
Hazlett ended thus:
While keeping the American public in the dark about actual violations, U.S. officials are raising the specter of a potential violation aimed at trampling on free speech. Banning TikTok is Fool’s Gold. The First Amendment is pure genius. Let’s keep one.
On the issue of the First Amendment, I found it striking that Senator Mitt Romney wanted to ban TikTok. because he wants to limit freedom of expression.
Here is a segment of a report In The New Republic.
“I mean, in general, Israelis are good at public relations. What happened here? How have they – how have they and us been so ineffective in communicating local realities and our point of view? Romney request Blinken, apparently in disbelief that images of Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Gaza had sparked outrage in the United States.
Then Romney explained that the mass ban on TikTok pass both houses of Congress due to extensive Palestinian advocacy on the app.
“Some are wondering why we have had such overwhelming support to potentially shut down TikTok or other entities of that nature. If you look at posts on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians compared to other social media sites, this is overwhelmingly the case among TikTok shows. So I would like to note that this is of real interest and that the president will have the opportunity to take action on this,” Romney said.
Politicians often like to attribute their own motives to others. I don’t know if the main motivation for voting against TikTok was the one stated by Romney above. But it’s pretty clear from the context that that was Romney’s motivation.
PS: I wrote about this problem in August 2020. I will end with an excerpt:
What about the third objection to trade with China: that it might use various apps to surveil Americans? Again, just like the other two objections to trade with China, this is true. But in the major recent case of such surveillance, TikTok, it’s hard to see how this constitutes a problem. In August discussionJohn Cochrane, economist at Hoover disputed Hoover historian Niall Ferguson and Hoover national security expert HR McMaster support their view that TikTok was dangerous to Americans. Ferguson argued that TikTok is addictive among young people. I’m sure, just like computer games, but it has nothing to do with China.
McMaster argued that TikTok collects data on Americans, particularly young people. I’m sure this is also true, just like Facebook and Instagram do the same with different audiences. But how does this significantly harm Americans? Like Julian Sanchez of the Cato Institute recently wrote:
One can imagine how such information might be exploited by a government interested in surveilling its own citizens, but it’s harder to articulate a coherent reason why Midwestern teenagers posting cat videos should fear that Maoists are scrutinizing the settings of their system or their geolocations.
People often neglect young women’s dance performances, as we learned when a video leaked of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dancing while she was a student at Boston University. My own reaction was that she was a hell of a dancer.
HR McMaster argued that the Chinese government wanted to “weaponize data”. He’s probably right. But how exactly can we use data on, for example, young women who dance? Interestingly, its best example of the Chinese government collecting data that could harm Americans is the Chinese government’s hacking of confidential government-held data on millions of federal employees a few years ago. That was serious. But notice that they did it without trade. (HRD side note: and without TikTok.) Additionally, the lack of security from the US federal government has made hacking easier than not. I was a US federal employee in 2015 when the hack took place and Beth F. Cobert, Acting Director of the Office of Personnel Management, wrote to inform me that my data had been hacked. Here is an excerpt from his letter:
Since you applied for a position or submitted a background investigation form, the information in our records may include your name, social security number, address, date and place of birth, residence, your education and employment history, your personal foreign travel history, information about your immediate family and professional and personal acquaintances, and other information used to conduct and evaluate your background investigation.
She added: “Our records also indicate that your fingerprints were likely compromised during the cyber intrusion. »
I distinctly remember that the hacked form I filled out the year before asked if I had committed adultery in the past seven years. This was important, you see, because the American government needed to know whether I could be blackmailed. Fortunately, my answer was no, but note that the US government had made it easy for the Chinese government to blackmail federal employees who said yes.
It’s data like this that I would like the federal government to protect, not photos of young girls dancing.
