3 ms·
My guess is that TikTok is about to get the Huawei treatment. Like it happened to Huawei, the US State Department will campaign against it in various foreign c
by chvid 2y ago
My guess is that TikTok is about to get the Huawei treatment.
Like it happened to Huawei, the US State Department will campaign against it in various foreign countries and seek a similar ban. And like it happened to Meng Wanzhou, the US will use its legal system to pursue key figures in ByteDance, many of whom reside in Singapore, a country which has an extradition treaty with the US.
(If you think I am exaggerating, hear this week's edition of the All In podcast.)
- hnfong 2y agoMaybe. Meng Wanzhou got caught because she was in Canada, and she was (apparently) a Chinese national. But I cannot imagine Singapore just handing over their own nationals to the US as a political prisoner...
- chvid 2y agoFounder Zhang Yiming lives in Singapore today.
- JeremyNT 2y agoIt's not in the US strategic interests for China to control the most popular social media (aka propaganda) site, so from a realpolitik perspective this makes a ton of sense. Reliance on a foreign power for things that are so prevalent is a risk, and it's not like the US is incapable on a technical level of producing a TikTok alternative - it's "only" popular because of network effects. FWIW I mostly agree that your take seemed to be a likely outcome if Harris had been elected, but I literally have no idea what the new administration will do.