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Regardless of how I feel about this particular company or transaction, to me this is a bad overreach of presidential power. I guess it's merely a reflection of
by supernova87a 6y ago
Regardless of how I feel about this particular company or transaction, to me this is a bad overreach of presidential power. I guess it's merely a reflection of the incompetence/inaction of Congress to study the matter and do something about it, as is their responsibility.
Why do I say so?
1. The justification for this is that it's a "national emergency with respect to the information and communications technology and services supply chain". Supply chain? Are you kidding me? The permissions given to the executive to declare emergencies for critical goods and services such as related to war time -- these extend to a voluntary communications app? Strains belief, and however you feel, this is not a good precedent to allow.
2. CCP is censoring / monitoring / scraping users' data, so this is a national emergency.... but not for 45 days and then also ok if we can buy the company on our terms.
This is yet another thing I guess time to throw up your hands and say, this is how we live now. One throw-it-against-the-wall proclamation after another.
Even if you're somewhat ok with it, are you really ok with this principle being applied, when someday it may not go how you want, for something you care about?
- rapsey 6y agoJustifications are meaningless. The US wants to curtail Chinese influence and power, so it finds some mumbo-jumbo to justify it.
- Sangama34 6y agoTomorrow this exact mumbo jumbo will be used against "California" companies and "New York" companies.
- rapsey 6y agoBy the Chinese? They have been strong arming western companies for decades. The price of doing business in China has always been severe.
- dodobirdlord 6y agoNo, the implication is that this would be done by Trump.
- rapsey 6y agoThat is an absurd notion entirely inconsistent with the history of US gov actions. It does everything to protect the corporations and nothing for the greater population.
- wonnage 6y agoJoke's on you, all companies are Delaware companies
- dumbfoundded 6y agoI think you mean Irish companies. They just have large Delaware based subsidiaries.
- chillacy 6y agoThis plays right into China's narrative. Now the arrest of Meng Wanzhou (Huawei CTO) starts to look a bit less principled and a bit more like a piece of realpolitik. I think it's definitely justified in the sense that it's understandable to strike back, but it's hard to take a moral high ground now.
- mlindner 6y agoBut only China believes China's narrative... Just ask any of China's neighbors. Philippines is reversing course of late even though they were trying to get closer to China, for example.
- logicchains 6y agoI'm in Singapore and most of my colleagues here view the US as the bad guy in all this.
- chillacy 6y agoOut of curiosity I dug up some of the research, at least as of 6 months ago (haven't found anything more recent) it's fair to say that overall APAC leans towards "unfavorable" in its attitude towards China. Favorability is down double digits from 2018 in APAC (though strangely up double digits in parts of europe). So "only china believes china's narrative" isn't super technically correct but I think the general sentiment is accurate. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/12/05/attitudes-toward-china-2019/ https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/12/05/attitudes-towa...
- bananaface 6y agoThe arrest of Meng Wanzhou was never meant to seem legitimate imo, the point was power projection. "Don't fuck with us." I don't think the moral high ground means much in geopolitics. Power is way more important. "Better not curtail us, it'll make you seem mean..." This is the US we're talking about, known around the world for turning half the middle east into a desert. That's really not their primary concern.
- 6y ago
- techntoke 6y agoDoes anyone remember when Trump bombed Syria while hosting Xi, and then bragged about how beautiful the chocolate cake was?
- president 6y agoPlease do some research before you downplay one of the most significant geo political events of our time. China poses an existential threat to democracy and freedom of the western world and we are (and have been) in a cold war with China. While you bask in your normalcy bias, realize that your ability to complain about your government is due to the fact that others before you have fought for your right to do so. If you care about the progress we have made and the future for your and others' children, you would not want the next century to be a Chinese century.