TikTok from China is the most successful social media app that has emerged in the world in the last decade. TikTok is a huge phenomenon among young people, it has become the most downloaded app in the world, it has become a staple in the lives of many people, just like traditional platforms such as Facebook used to be.
However, not everyone is happy. One of the unique things about TikTok is that it is the first non-US social media app to gain an edge globally. What's more, it was developed Chinese, and although the technology is not political, its ties to Beijing have left it in the line of fire.
A committee in the U.S. House of Representatives just voted to pass a bill that, if signed into law, would give the president the power to ban TikTok as he wishes. Likewise, US President Joe Biden himself has ordered the removal of the app from all federally owned devices, a move that has been replicated by some other Western countries.
The argument is that because TikTok is "owned by Chinese," it must have a "national security risk." The most hawkish US senators, such as Josh Hawley and Marco Rubio, have never hidden their intention to ban it completely in the United States, and who can forget that the Trump administration has tried to do so, but the move has not succeeded after being questioned in court?
Of course, there's no evidence that TikTok poses a "security risk" — only associated culpability, because the app is Chinese. The company worked hard and invested heavily in lobbying and marketing to prove that it did not pose any security risks. However, this is not enough to stop the wave of paranoia from sweeping its direction.
What about reality? The United States is not rational in its dealings with China. American political culture is heavily influenced by the alarmism of "McCarthyists," which are made on the basis of emotional statements when there are not enough hard facts to justify a radical political decision. These emotional statements are often associated with fear or hatred and are fabricated to be necessary to create public consent. This is a "post-truth" world, and China is on the other side of it.
Over the past few years, the United States has become averse to anything that comes from China and has achieved global success. U.S. foreign policy is now obsessed with containing China at all costs, especially in high-end technology, and allowing Beijing to succeed would be a huge drain on U.S. power and influence.
The U.S. then "put thousands of Chinese companies on the Entity List" or blacklisted. Recent measures include targeting Beijing's entire semiconductor industry. This is after Washington began to weaken Huawei. When the U.S. goes after the Chinese companies it seeks to outlaw, it makes equally vague accusations against them, claiming they are "national security threats" and that through their "connections" to the Chinese government, the technology could potentially be used to obtain your data and spy on them.
The accusations can become as silly as claiming that Chinese-made refrigerators can spy on people. In this "debate", no conclusive evidence was ever provided. The United States simply said it over and over again until it became an established metaphor in popular discourse, parroted by the mainstream media, and channeled public debate among allies to get the foreign policy outcome Washington wanted. This is exactly how the United States was able to persuade allies to exclude Huawei from its 5G network.
However, it is unclear whether the Biden administration will actually ban TikTok nationwide. First, this is because, despite TikTok's great success in China, the reality is that the stakes in TikTok's success are not strategic. It won't change the balance of power between the U.S. or China, and that dynamic could have military implications, at least not like semiconductors. Second, such a ban could have alarming repercussions for free speech, and there is a serious argument that it may be unconstitutional. For example, previous attempts by the Trump administration to ban Chinese applications, including WeChat and TikTok itself, were blocked in court. Whatever bill the U.S. Congress might pass, it sets a precedent.
Given this, it is clear that the obsession with TikTok is nothing more than collective collective hysteria, the same mass hysteria pervades everything that today the United States has to do with China. However, it remains to be seen whether this will lead to a substantial policy outcome in the TikTok case, and if it does, it could stoke anger and cost Biden a generation of young voters.