Leo Yu, Associate Clinical Professor of Legal Writing, Research and Advocacy at the Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law has produced a useful monograph not a paper, but I thought its contents sufficiently topical to highlight in light of the noise around TikTok.
He argues that the front-and-center problem with TikTok is? It’s Chinese, and it’s really that simple. He notes America (and its quick to fall into line vassals) has had a problem with Huawei for some time without having provided a scintilla of evidence it’s operating, anywhere, illegally. Ditto the TikTok, no wrong doing, whatsoever, but somehow it’s a ‘threat’.
He provides the clearest understanding yet of what the real problem is. The West has dominated technological progress for the last 600-years and is now discomfited to see a challenge, especially coming from what was presumed to be a perpetual subordinate.
Moreover, America is coming late to a conclusion that China came to several years ago. If we are in a ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ data is now the most valuable asset any firm or country can possess and that’s the nub of America’s problem with TikTok. It scoops up large amounts of data on its U.S. users and has no obligation to share that data with either the U.S. government or even sell it for a fee to other U.S. competitors.
My two pennyworth here would be to also note this notion explains more completly America’s antipathy to EVs. All the blah about ‘unfair’ competition and ‘excess capacity advantage’ never sounded quite right to me.
If you’re an American business operating in a data driven industry you’d be well advised to cozy up to your government right now. Which, nobody could help noticing, the heads of many are.
You can read the article in full here TikTok and the Control over the Means of Production.
Happy Sunday.