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The United States is currently in the middle of a cyber cold-war with China. They hacked all of our major telco's and many of America's regulatory organization

The United States is currently in the middle of a cyber cold-war with China. They hacked all of our major telco's and many of America's regulatory organizations including the treasury department. Specifically they used the telco hacks to gather geolocation data in order to pinpoint Americans and to spy on phone calls by abusing our legally mandated wiretap capabilities. Yet people are arguing that we should allow the people who did that to continue to install apps on millions of Americans phones. I can't tell if people just don't know that this is happening, or if they take their memes way too seriously. I sort of wonder if they don't know it's happening because they get their news from Tiktok and Tiktok is actively suppressing the stories.

quantumsequoia 2y ago
> Tiktok is actively suppressing the stories. Is there any evidence of this? FWIW, I saw plenty of tiktoks talking about the China hack
- adamanonymous 2y ago
  There is no evidence. This is just blind speculation. 95% of the population just doesn't care about telecom cybersecurity.
  - WillPostForFood 2y ago
    I agree the evidence is weak, and circumstantial, but it is not true that there none. Quick overview of some of it (which includes critique of it): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_TikTok https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_TikTok
- dvngnt_ 2y ago
  Yeah i shared with relatives by taking a screenshot of a tiktok to show them the news
- HamsterDan 2y ago
  It's completely irrelevant whether they have done it or not. The only thing that matters is the fact that they can do it. We're not going let you have nukes just because you haven't nuked anybody yet.
  - throwawayq3423 2y ago
    Also the idea that a country that has built the most extensive digital surveillance apparatus in the world will somehow avoid the temptation to use TikTok to monitor people abroad.. It's beyond naive.
archagon 2y ago
Respectfully, I should be able to install whatever the fuck I want on my phone. Regardless of which apps I choose to rot my brain with, neither the US nor Chinese government should have any say in it, period. If a red line is not drawn, websites will be next, then VPNs, then books. And then the Great Firewall of America will be complete.
- postoplust 2y ago
  If TikTok turned out to be State sponsored spyware, would you reconsider? I support your slippery slope argument. I wonder where your red line is relative to "state sponsored spyware" and "typical advertising ID tracking" or "cool new app from company influenced by an adversarial super power".
  - tveita 2y ago
    All spyware should be illegal. A law to reign in the ubiquitous data collection on everyone's computing devices would be great. Maybe start by requiring all data collection to be opt-in and for a specific purpose. Make it illegal to deny functionality that doesn't strictly require the requested data. "Paying with your privacy" shouldn't be a thing. Crush every data broker. This law is different to that, it's all about specific actors, not about behavior and actions. A "people we don't like" list. CNN could be on a similar list soon. All constitutional of course - the law will specifically mention how this is all for national security. And no one's speech is being suppressed, the journalists can always write for a different news channel.
- gpm 2y ago
  I agree, you should be able to install whatever the fuck you want. Google and Apple shouldn't be helping China get you to do that, by hosting and advertising it in their app store though*. Oracle shouldn't be helping China spy on Americans by hosting their services. This isn't a law against you installing things on your phone. You're still free to install whatever you want on your phone. *And if there is a valid first amendment claim here, it would probably be Google and Apple claiming that they have the right to advertise and convey TikTok to their users, despite it being an espionage tool for a hostile foreign government. Oddly enough they didn't assert that claim or challenge the law.
ElevenLathe 2y ago
We just don't care. We know the all the American TLAs are on our phones, so what's a few more Chinese ones? It's a problem for Washington war wonks to freak out about, not teens in Omaha.
- dyauspitr 2y ago
  Oh we care. I care way, way less about an American company with my data over the CCP.
  - hnuser123456 2y ago
    I've heard it put that, if you're not a government official, having your own government spy on you could be more consequential than a foreign one.
    - abduhl 2y ago
      Lots of people think this way and, to be honest, it speaks more to the inability of the thinker to consider the realities of the US's current relationship with China. A good thought experiment is whether you think the people of Crimea or Donetsk would prefer having the Ukrainian government spy on them instead of the Russian government and whether this preference changed in 2014 or 2022. It's easy to have a gut reaction that your own government has a greater impact on your life than a foreign one, but that does not reflect the reality that 1) the US government is generally benign in that it historically has not abused its power over citizens; 2) the Chinese government has; and 3) the US and China are going to war one day, and China might win.
      - ethbr1 2y ago
        > 1) the US government is generally benign in that it historically has not abused its power over citizens; 2) the Chinese government has And before someone hops in with Kent State, Tuskegee trials, et al., let's set the comparison bar at order-of x00,000 to x0,000,000 citizens killed by the government. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution#Death_toll https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution#Death_to...
glenstein 2y ago
>I can't tell if people just don't know that this is happening, or if they take their memes way too seriously. Exactly. Everyone is having fun bidding adieu to their Chinese spys. And I think they're losing sight of the fact that there's abundant reporting on harrassing expats and dissidents internationally, pressuring countries to comply with their extradition requests, to say nothing of jailing human rights lawyers and democratic activists and detaining foreigners who enter China based on their online footprint. Most of the time I bring this up I get incredulous denials that any of this happens (I then politely point such folks to Human Rights Watch reporting on the topic), or I just hear a lot of whataboutism that doesn't even pretend to defend Tiktok.
- divbzero 2y ago
  Do you have links to the Human Rights Watch reporting that you reference?
  - abduhl 2y ago
    Not a link to the Human Rights Watch report; however, at oral argument this was stated by the US government (https://www.oyez.org/cases/2024/24-656 https://www.oyez.org/cases/2024/24-656 @ 1:58:32): Elizabeth B. Prelogar: And the one final point on this is that ByteDance was not a trusted partner here. It wasn't a company that the United States could simply expect to comply with any requirements in good faith. And there was actual factual evidence to show that even during a period of time when the company was representing that it had walled off the U.S. data and it was protected, there was a well-publicized incident where ByteDance and China surveilled U.S. journalists using their location data --this is the protected U.S. data --in order to try to figure out who was leaking information from the company to those journalists.
  - glenstein 2y ago
    Here's one from October of last year: https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/10/09/japan-chinese-authorities-harass-critics-abroad https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/10/09/japan-chinese-authoritie... And here's their overall 2025 page on China which details, among other things, harassment of critics based out of Italy, detention of U.S. based artist, and even harrassment of protestors in San Fransisco. https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2025/country-chapters/china https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2025/country-chapters/china I think their suppression of criticism on Uighur forced labor has also encompassed harassment of extended support networks people from the region as well, but that's just off the top of my head and not necessarily on that page.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
areoform 2y ago
The TikTok ban is security theater through and through. Chinese spy agencies don't have to make an app that millions of American teens use to harvest data on them. American companies have been doing the job for them. They — just like the FBI, NSA, American police departments and almost every TLA — can just buy the data from a broker, https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/01/nsa-finally-admits-to-spying-on-americans-by-purchasing-sensitive-data/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/01/nsa-finally-admi... https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/06/how-federal-government-buys-our-cell-phone-location-data https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/06/how-federal-government... The brokers don't care. They'll sell to anyone and everyone. And the people they sell to don't care either. They'll process and re-sell it too. And on and on, until it ends up in the hands of every interested party on Earth, i.e. everyone. So don't worry, the Chinese already have a detailed copy of your daily routine & reading habits. Just love this new world that we've created to make $0.002/click. EDIT — if it makes you feel any better, the Chinese are doing it too! https://www.wired.com/story/chineses-surveillance-state-is-selling-citizens-data-as-a-side-hustle/ https://www.wired.com/story/chineses-surveillance-state-is-s... > The vendors in many cases obtain that sensitive information by recruiting insiders from Chinese surveillance agencies and government contractors and then reselling their access, no questions asked, to online buyers. The result is an ecosystem that operates in full public view where, for as little as a few dollars worth of cryptocurrency, anyone can query phone numbers, banking details, hotel and flight records, or even location data on target individuals.
- op00to 2y ago
  The value is in the ability to influence what your enemy sees, and to push whatever narratives are best for you and worst for your enemy. They don’t give a shit about the data.
- noman-land 2y ago
  For anyone reading this who is knowledgeable about this topic, where, specifically, can a regular citizen buy personal data about people from data brokers?
  - ethbr1 2y ago
pizza 2y ago
How can you call Americans naive when over and over again for the past 2 decades there have been non-stop news stories about how the US Gov spends insane amounts of effort ensuring the technology Americans use is not fully secure? Maybe you should understand that the public can actually recognize Machiavellianism. edit: before you downvote me, how many of you remember: - Bullrun - PRISM - Dual EC DRBG and the Juniper backdoors, that too also were exploited by secondary adversaries - FBI urging Apple to install a backdoor for the govt after the San Bernardino shootings - the government only recently mandating that partnered zero-day vendors must not sell their wares to other clients who would then target them against Americans - Vault7 - XKeyscore - STELLARWIND - MUSCULAR etc.?
henryfjordan 2y ago
I can think that China is up to no good with my data and still be mad at my own Govt for doing the exact same thing. The outrage is not that TikTok is banned, it's that Zuckerburg is doing the exact same harms to America that China is alleged to be doing, but only 1 app is banned. Hence people flocking to Rednote rather than using Reels.
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  There is no legal way to ban FB -- nor would there be any way to ban TT if it were not owned and controlled by a foreign power.
bjourne 2y ago
> They hacked all of our major telco's and many of America's regulatory organizations including the treasury department. Please cite your sources. After decades of watching American propaganda, we know all too well that it is trivial to make up shit from thin air and have a large segment of the population eat it up.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  https://archive.ph/20241007181947/https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/china-cyberattack-internet-providers-260bd835 https://archive.ph/20241007181947/https://www.wsj.com/politi... https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/30/us/politics/china-hack-treasury.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/30/us/politics/china-hack-tr...
  - jampekka 2y ago
    NYT would of course never back erroneous allegations by US officials on geopolitical matters like these.
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      What satisfiable criteria would you like in a source?
      - bjourne 2y ago
        Read the sources carefully. It all boils down to "US officials says so". It's different from the Podesta hack as forensic evidence were published linking Russian hackers to the attack.
        ethbr1 2y ago
        The Podesta "hack" was a spear phishing link, no? With the emails then published by Wikileaks? What forensic evidence was published? Afaicr, it was attributed on the basis of methods. Gmail didn't publicly disclose any internal logging. And the email chain of custody is unreliable, so post-leak analysis has the can't-spot-a-perfect-forgery problem.
m3kw9 2y ago
People are now using Rednote, so what’s new?
latentcall 2y ago
I think the fallout from this is many Americans like myself don’t see China as our enemy. Based on the recent RedNote phenomenon, Chinese citizens don’t see it that way either. Maybe the uniparty in the USA should make it a priority to improve the life of everyday Americans and not Zuck and Elon. Young people don’t care who the establishment is warring with because they know the establishment doesn’t represent them, they represent themselves.
- cscurmudgeon 2y ago
  Try posting a Winnie the Pooh meme on RedNote.
  - latentcall 2y ago
    Ooooh! At least they have healthcare!
idle_zealot 2y ago
> Yet people are arguing that we should allow the people who did that to continue to install apps on millions of Americans phones This paternalistic framing is the disconnect between you and those opposed to the ban. The idea that it's TikTok insidiously worming its way onto American phones like a virus. In reality, people download the app and use it because they like it. This ban will, in effect, prevent people from accessing an information service they prefer. You must acknowledge this and argue why that is a worthy loss of autonomy if you want to meaningfully defend the ban to someone who doesn't like it. If it helps, reframe the ban as one on a website rather than an app. They're interchangeable in this context, but I've observed "app" to be somewhat thought-terminating to some people. For the record - I would totally support a ban on social media services that collect over some minimal threshold of user data for any purposes. This would alleviate fears of spying and targeted manipulation by foreign powers through their own platforms (TikTok) and campaigns staged on domestic social media. But just banning a platform because it's Chinese-owned? That's emblematic of a team-sports motivation. "Americans can only be exposed to our propaganda, not theirs!" How about robust protections against all propaganda? That's a requirement for a functional democracy.
- abduhl 2y ago
  Sure, but why can't my teenager smoke cigarettes? The point of my response is: sometimes you have to be paternalistic, and the federal government doesn't need to meaningfully defend the ban to someone who doesn't like it because those people don't matter. They meaningfully defended the ban to the courts.
  - idle_zealot 2y ago
    I don't think we really disagree in general. I specifically said that I would favor a broader ban. Just that if you're going to be paternalistic you need a good reason. In the case of smoking, "it's literal poison" is a pretty good reason to ban it (which we haven't done, lol). My point is that I don't think "access to this information services will stoke negative sentiment towards the US government" is a good reason to ban access to said service in a liberal democracy. It would be a good reason to ban the service in an autocracy of some sort, but standards for individual freedoms are higher (though not infinitely high) here. At least, they ought to be higher. That's where the disagreement comes from: I do not care that access to TikTok threatens the US Government. I care about US citizens generally. The interests of these two parties are increasingly disconnected, a sign of a decaying democracy.
boredpeter 2y ago
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triyambakam 2y ago
> I can't tell if people just don't know that this is happening, or if they take their memes way too seriously. I would say both at the same time
Jimmc414 2y ago
So, should we also ban Chinese companies Alibaba, Baidu, Haier, Lenovo, Tencent, and ZTE from operating in the United States? Why just TikTok (Who is ironically also banned in China)? And should Israeli companies, like those associated with NSO Group, face similar scrutiny after reports of their tools being used to hack U.S. State Department employee phones?
- wewtyflakes 2y ago
  Yes
  - throwawayq3423 2y ago
    On unfair trade practices and ethical violations, yes. Ban them all. Nothing of value will be lost.
    - herbst 2y ago
      Let's build the greatest great Firewall ever built!
      - throwawayq3423 2y ago
        No one is suggesting that.
EasyMark 2y ago
I am of 100% of the same opinion as you. I have told people for years about the cyber warfare going on and that we're losing it, and they just don't seem to care and want that serotonin hit and ignore the rest. I also want curbs on other social media, but TikTok and the war of China against the US on the internet is in a league of its own. The CCP are no doubt funneling the data to their servers, and no doubt have plans for further damaging our youths' minds through brain rot of tiktok diverting them from far more productive activities. There's a reason CCP has strong curbs on similar apps regarding young people in their nation.
tboyd47 2y ago
[flagged]
greenavocado 2y ago
> They hacked all of our major telco's Can I see the evidence?
- stevenAthompson 2y ago
  Yes, whether you understand it or not is a different question. Search for Salt Typhoon and Volt Typhoon.
sangnoir 2y ago
> Yet people are arguing that we should allow the people who did that to continue to install apps on millions of Americans phones Who are "the people who did that" - Byte Dance or China as a whole? If it's the latter, I'm afraid there are still plenty of apps made by Chinese companies like, DJI, Lenovo, and thousands of IoT apps to control random geegaws via WiFi or BT.
sangnoir 2y ago
> Yet people are arguing that we should allow the people who did that to continue to install apps on millions of Americans phones Who are "the people who did that" - Byte Dance or China as a whole? If it's the latter, I'm afraid there are still plenty of apps made by Chinese companies like, DJI, Lenovo, and thousands of IoT apps to control random geegaws via WiFi or BT. It's not hard to see the pattern: any Chinese tech champion that does as well as, or better than American companies will find itself in legal peril. Huawei didn't get in trouble after hacking Nortel, but they got sanctioned much later, when their 5G base equipment was well-received by the markets. TikTok had the best ML-based recommendation systems when it burst in the scene, Google and Meta still haven't quite caught up yet.
ants_everywhere 2y ago
It's one of those things. If you asked most Hacker News readers how they feel about the authoritarian government of a single party state literally controlling the algorithm that determines everything you see, most would swear up and down that they would never stand for it. But yet what happens in practice is people line up to defend it. I can only guess most of the people defending it are active users and aren't aware of how distorted their perception of the world is by the content they see there.
- noirbot 2y ago
  There's some defending it in general, but it's also just a really tough precedent to allow when it could, so easily, be used to shut down any other service they want by just waving the magic "national security" flag. It's possible to believe TikTok is bad and that the pathway the US just proved out to banning it in the US has shown that no US court will seriously question the "security reasons" fig leaf. Telegram and Signal are both used by plenty of people the US could easily paint as "security threats" and it's unclear there's any defense to a ban that they could mount at this point.
  - idontpost 2y ago
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urhmbutwait 2y ago
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HamsterDan 2y ago
There's at least three separate reasons that justify banning TikTok. If Trump bails them out, it's a complete betrayal of his base and the country at large. 1. Competitive balance. China does not allow US social media companies. If we allow theirs, our industry is essentially fighting with one hand tied behind its back. 2. China controls the algorithm for determining who sees what. This gives them tremendous ability to influence public opinion, and consequently public elections. That cannot be allowed to stand as long as China is hostile to the US. 3. China gets extremely detailed data about the interests and proclivities of millions of Americans, including military personnel and elected officials. This data is not otherwise publicly available and can be used for blackmail and other manipulation. Which is completely unacceptable when we have no mechanism to punish them from doing this short of global nuclear war. Even ignoring the enormous threat to national sovereignty, TikTok has no redeeming qualities. It's an addiction machine that profits off people wasting away in front a screen. That alone is not a reason to ban it, but it sure does make the case stronger. Banning TikTok is a clear-cut positive for the American people. Every American adult should be in support.
- throwawayq3423 2y ago
  > If Trump bails them out, it's a complete betrayal of his base and the country at large. There is no wall. The Trump "tax cuts" raised taxes on most Americans and cut them for the 1%. Trump has not faced any consequences for betrayal in the past, why would he now? In fact, TikTok helps promote the lack of awareness of all the above. If anything he'll want to keep it in place, to keep the public misinformed.
- ramblenode 2y ago
  All of your points except 1. are true of American social media companies. 2., in particular, is widely documented: the Facebook mood manipulation fiasco, Cambridge Analytica, Musk's personal tweaking of the Twitter trending hashtags, and YouTube's heavy-handed censorship of legitimate medical advice during Covid are just a few of the higher profile instances of this.
  - ninkendo 2y ago
carabiner 2y ago
Senator I'm Singaporean.
coliveira 2y ago
The interesting thing is that, using these tactics, the supreme court has made the legal case for every other country to ban US owned social networks! My opinion is that the US government has made another stupid move.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
wumeow 2y ago
> I can't tell if people just don't know that this is happening, or if they take their memes way too seriously. I sort of wonder if they don't know it's happening because they get their news from Tiktok and Tiktok is actively suppressing the stories. No, it's just information asymmetry shaping public opinion. The US lets its dirty laundry air out. US whistleblowers, press, and historians dig up every shitty thing the US has ever done and US citizens are free to discuss it, sing about it, turn it into movies and viral memes, etc. China doesn't allow this. No one in China is going to become famous by calling for justice for those killed by Mao or exposing MSS-installed backdoors in Chinese telecoms. That kind of talk is quelled immediately. The result is that public discourse trends more anti-American than anti-China.
throwawayq3423 2y ago
> I can't tell if people just don't know that this is happening This. It's this. Don't waste your time thinking past this answer, you already nailed it.
sfifs 2y ago
Everyone outside of the US already knows the American three letter agencies and their allies like the Mossad can access, hack or destroy all their networks if push comes to shove. Most network services all over the world are run on infrastructure owned by a handful of American companies with deep defense and government ties - AWS, Google, MS. As other powers arise, they will naturally want equivalence. The American government may decide that is not in their interest to make this easy - but I'd suggest as Hacker News community, we retain the ability to see beyond propaganda and balance contrary viewpoint.In this case (or the case on Nippon steel),how does one differentiate between "security" considerations and potentially a straightforward cash grab attempt by rich American investors?
PittleyDunkin 2y ago
Tbh I think this has a lot more to do with sympathy for Palestinians and the last year of protests on college campuses. Besides, who cares if China is listening to us through the app. China and I have no beef with one another. China feeds me and clothes me and builds most of the stuff in my life and I give China my money. It's a good relationship! Much better than my relationship with this state, tbh.
dqv 2y ago
> The United States is currently in the middle of a cyber cold-war with China. The United States Government is. I'm a United States citizen. Importantly, they're not fighting for me or my stability, they're fighting for the stability of oligarchs. They will gladly destabilize me and my life in service of the ruling class. Appeals to nationalism only work on nationalists. I'd need a good reason to be a nationalist. The very few listed reasons are some vague reference to freedom as if just saying that makes it true. Get back to me when it's "China is threatening your guaranteed housing!" or "China is going to roll back the statutory work holiday laws in the US!" or "China is attacking the information systems used for our guaranteed child care program!" It's really simple: if you want people to love and defend the US and what it purportedly stands for, then give them concrete reasons to do so. Improve their quality of life. Until then, leave me the hell out of the fearmongering about China. I'm much more fearful of the systemic policies of the US making me homeless than some nation state's cyberopium ruining my mind or protecting information systems that were intentionally left insecure in service of profit and the intelligence apparatus.

quantumsequoia 2y ago

> Tiktok is actively suppressing the stories. Is there any evidence of this? FWIW, I saw plenty of tiktoks talking about the China hack

adamanonymous 2y ago
There is no evidence. This is just blind speculation. 95% of the population just doesn't care about telecom cybersecurity.
- WillPostForFood 2y ago
  I agree the evidence is weak, and circumstantial, but it is not true that there none. Quick overview of some of it (which includes critique of it): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_TikTok https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_TikTok
dvngnt_ 2y ago
Yeah i shared with relatives by taking a screenshot of a tiktok to show them the news
HamsterDan 2y ago
It's completely irrelevant whether they have done it or not. The only thing that matters is the fact that they can do it. We're not going let you have nukes just because you haven't nuked anybody yet.
- throwawayq3423 2y ago
  Also the idea that a country that has built the most extensive digital surveillance apparatus in the world will somehow avoid the temptation to use TikTok to monitor people abroad.. It's beyond naive.

archagon 2y ago

Respectfully, I should be able to install whatever the fuck I want on my phone. Regardless of which apps I choose to rot my brain with, neither the US nor Chinese government should have any say in it, period. If a red line is not drawn, websites will be next, then VPNs, then books. And then the Great Firewall of America will be complete.

postoplust 2y ago
If TikTok turned out to be State sponsored spyware, would you reconsider? I support your slippery slope argument. I wonder where your red line is relative to "state sponsored spyware" and "typical advertising ID tracking" or "cool new app from company influenced by an adversarial super power".
- tveita 2y ago
  All spyware should be illegal. A law to reign in the ubiquitous data collection on everyone's computing devices would be great. Maybe start by requiring all data collection to be opt-in and for a specific purpose. Make it illegal to deny functionality that doesn't strictly require the requested data. "Paying with your privacy" shouldn't be a thing. Crush every data broker. This law is different to that, it's all about specific actors, not about behavior and actions. A "people we don't like" list. CNN could be on a similar list soon. All constitutional of course - the law will specifically mention how this is all for national security. And no one's speech is being suppressed, the journalists can always write for a different news channel.
gpm 2y ago
I agree, you should be able to install whatever the fuck you want. Google and Apple shouldn't be helping China get you to do that, by hosting and advertising it in their app store though*. Oracle shouldn't be helping China spy on Americans by hosting their services. This isn't a law against you installing things on your phone. You're still free to install whatever you want on your phone. *And if there is a valid first amendment claim here, it would probably be Google and Apple claiming that they have the right to advertise and convey TikTok to their users, despite it being an espionage tool for a hostile foreign government. Oddly enough they didn't assert that claim or challenge the law.

ElevenLathe 2y ago

We just don't care. We know the all the American TLAs are on our phones, so what's a few more Chinese ones? It's a problem for Washington war wonks to freak out about, not teens in Omaha.

dyauspitr 2y ago
Oh we care. I care way, way less about an American company with my data over the CCP.
- hnuser123456 2y ago
  I've heard it put that, if you're not a government official, having your own government spy on you could be more consequential than a foreign one.
  - abduhl 2y ago
    Lots of people think this way and, to be honest, it speaks more to the inability of the thinker to consider the realities of the US's current relationship with China. A good thought experiment is whether you think the people of Crimea or Donetsk would prefer having the Ukrainian government spy on them instead of the Russian government and whether this preference changed in 2014 or 2022. It's easy to have a gut reaction that your own government has a greater impact on your life than a foreign one, but that does not reflect the reality that 1) the US government is generally benign in that it historically has not abused its power over citizens; 2) the Chinese government has; and 3) the US and China are going to war one day, and China might win.
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      > 1) the US government is generally benign in that it historically has not abused its power over citizens; 2) the Chinese government has And before someone hops in with Kent State, Tuskegee trials, et al., let's set the comparison bar at order-of x00,000 to x0,000,000 citizens killed by the government. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution#Death_toll https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution#Death_to...

glenstein 2y ago

>I can't tell if people just don't know that this is happening, or if they take their memes way too seriously. Exactly. Everyone is having fun bidding adieu to their Chinese spys. And I think they're losing sight of the fact that there's abundant reporting on harrassing expats and dissidents internationally, pressuring countries to comply with their extradition requests, to say nothing of jailing human rights lawyers and democratic activists and detaining foreigners who enter China based on their online footprint. Most of the time I bring this up I get incredulous denials that any of this happens (I then politely point such folks to Human Rights Watch reporting on the topic), or I just hear a lot of whataboutism that doesn't even pretend to defend Tiktok.

divbzero 2y ago
Do you have links to the Human Rights Watch reporting that you reference?
- abduhl 2y ago
  Not a link to the Human Rights Watch report; however, at oral argument this was stated by the US government (https://www.oyez.org/cases/2024/24-656 https://www.oyez.org/cases/2024/24-656 @ 1:58:32): Elizabeth B. Prelogar: And the one final point on this is that ByteDance was not a trusted partner here. It wasn't a company that the United States could simply expect to comply with any requirements in good faith. And there was actual factual evidence to show that even during a period of time when the company was representing that it had walled off the U.S. data and it was protected, there was a well-publicized incident where ByteDance and China surveilled U.S. journalists using their location data --this is the protected U.S. data --in order to try to figure out who was leaking information from the company to those journalists.
- glenstein 2y ago
  Here's one from October of last year: https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/10/09/japan-chinese-authorities-harass-critics-abroad https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/10/09/japan-chinese-authoritie... And here's their overall 2025 page on China which details, among other things, harassment of critics based out of Italy, detention of U.S. based artist, and even harrassment of protestors in San Fransisco. https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2025/country-chapters/china https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2025/country-chapters/china I think their suppression of criticism on Uighur forced labor has also encompassed harassment of extended support networks people from the region as well, but that's just off the top of my head and not necessarily on that page.

deleted 2y ago

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areoform 2y ago

The TikTok ban is security theater through and through. Chinese spy agencies don't have to make an app that millions of American teens use to harvest data on them. American companies have been doing the job for them. They — just like the FBI, NSA, American police departments and almost every TLA — can just buy the data from a broker, https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/01/nsa-finally-admits-to-spying-on-americans-by-purchasing-sensitive-data/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/01/nsa-finally-admi... https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/06/how-federal-government-buys-our-cell-phone-location-data https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/06/how-federal-government... The brokers don't care. They'll sell to anyone and everyone. And the people they sell to don't care either. They'll process and re-sell it too. And on and on, until it ends up in the hands of every interested party on Earth, i.e. everyone. So don't worry, the Chinese already have a detailed copy of your daily routine & reading habits. Just love this new world that we've created to make $0.002/click. EDIT — if it makes you feel any better, the Chinese are doing it too! https://www.wired.com/story/chineses-surveillance-state-is-selling-citizens-data-as-a-side-hustle/ https://www.wired.com/story/chineses-surveillance-state-is-s... > The vendors in many cases obtain that sensitive information by recruiting insiders from Chinese surveillance agencies and government contractors and then reselling their access, no questions asked, to online buyers. The result is an ecosystem that operates in full public view where, for as little as a few dollars worth of cryptocurrency, anyone can query phone numbers, banking details, hotel and flight records, or even location data on target individuals.

op00to 2y ago
The value is in the ability to influence what your enemy sees, and to push whatever narratives are best for you and worst for your enemy. They don’t give a shit about the data.
noman-land 2y ago
For anyone reading this who is knowledgeable about this topic, where, specifically, can a regular citizen buy personal data about people from data brokers?
- ethbr1 2y ago

pizza 2y ago

How can you call Americans naive when over and over again for the past 2 decades there have been non-stop news stories about how the US Gov spends insane amounts of effort ensuring the technology Americans use is not fully secure? Maybe you should understand that the public can actually recognize Machiavellianism. edit: before you downvote me, how many of you remember: - Bullrun - PRISM - Dual EC DRBG and the Juniper backdoors, that too also were exploited by secondary adversaries - FBI urging Apple to install a backdoor for the govt after the San Bernardino shootings - the government only recently mandating that partnered zero-day vendors must not sell their wares to other clients who would then target them against Americans - Vault7 - XKeyscore - STELLARWIND - MUSCULAR etc.?

henryfjordan 2y ago

I can think that China is up to no good with my data and still be mad at my own Govt for doing the exact same thing. The outrage is not that TikTok is banned, it's that Zuckerburg is doing the exact same harms to America that China is alleged to be doing, but only 1 app is banned. Hence people flocking to Rednote rather than using Reels.

insane_dreamer 2y ago
There is no legal way to ban FB -- nor would there be any way to ban TT if it were not owned and controlled by a foreign power.

bjourne 2y ago

> They hacked all of our major telco's and many of America's regulatory organizations including the treasury department. Please cite your sources. After decades of watching American propaganda, we know all too well that it is trivial to make up shit from thin air and have a large segment of the population eat it up.

ethbr1 2y ago
https://archive.ph/20241007181947/https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/china-cyberattack-internet-providers-260bd835 https://archive.ph/20241007181947/https://www.wsj.com/politi... https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/30/us/politics/china-hack-treasury.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/30/us/politics/china-hack-tr...
- jampekka 2y ago
  NYT would of course never back erroneous allegations by US officials on geopolitical matters like these.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    What satisfiable criteria would you like in a source?
    - bjourne 2y ago
      Read the sources carefully. It all boils down to "US officials says so". It's different from the Podesta hack as forensic evidence were published linking Russian hackers to the attack.
      - ethbr1 2y ago
        The Podesta "hack" was a spear phishing link, no? With the emails then published by Wikileaks? What forensic evidence was published? Afaicr, it was attributed on the basis of methods. Gmail didn't publicly disclose any internal logging. And the email chain of custody is unreliable, so post-leak analysis has the can't-spot-a-perfect-forgery problem.

m3kw9 2y ago

People are now using Rednote, so what’s new?

latentcall 2y ago

I think the fallout from this is many Americans like myself don’t see China as our enemy. Based on the recent RedNote phenomenon, Chinese citizens don’t see it that way either. Maybe the uniparty in the USA should make it a priority to improve the life of everyday Americans and not Zuck and Elon. Young people don’t care who the establishment is warring with because they know the establishment doesn’t represent them, they represent themselves.

cscurmudgeon 2y ago
Try posting a Winnie the Pooh meme on RedNote.
- latentcall 2y ago
  Ooooh! At least they have healthcare!

idle_zealot 2y ago

> Yet people are arguing that we should allow the people who did that to continue to install apps on millions of Americans phones This paternalistic framing is the disconnect between you and those opposed to the ban. The idea that it's TikTok insidiously worming its way onto American phones like a virus. In reality, people download the app and use it because they like it. This ban will, in effect, prevent people from accessing an information service they prefer. You must acknowledge this and argue why that is a worthy loss of autonomy if you want to meaningfully defend the ban to someone who doesn't like it. If it helps, reframe the ban as one on a website rather than an app. They're interchangeable in this context, but I've observed "app" to be somewhat thought-terminating to some people. For the record - I would totally support a ban on social media services that collect over some minimal threshold of user data for any purposes. This would alleviate fears of spying and targeted manipulation by foreign powers through their own platforms (TikTok) and campaigns staged on domestic social media. But just banning a platform because it's Chinese-owned? That's emblematic of a team-sports motivation. "Americans can only be exposed to our propaganda, not theirs!" How about robust protections against all propaganda? That's a requirement for a functional democracy.

abduhl 2y ago
Sure, but why can't my teenager smoke cigarettes? The point of my response is: sometimes you have to be paternalistic, and the federal government doesn't need to meaningfully defend the ban to someone who doesn't like it because those people don't matter. They meaningfully defended the ban to the courts.
- idle_zealot 2y ago
  I don't think we really disagree in general. I specifically said that I would favor a broader ban. Just that if you're going to be paternalistic you need a good reason. In the case of smoking, "it's literal poison" is a pretty good reason to ban it (which we haven't done, lol). My point is that I don't think "access to this information services will stoke negative sentiment towards the US government" is a good reason to ban access to said service in a liberal democracy. It would be a good reason to ban the service in an autocracy of some sort, but standards for individual freedoms are higher (though not infinitely high) here. At least, they ought to be higher. That's where the disagreement comes from: I do not care that access to TikTok threatens the US Government. I care about US citizens generally. The interests of these two parties are increasingly disconnected, a sign of a decaying democracy.

boredpeter 2y ago

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triyambakam 2y ago

> I can't tell if people just don't know that this is happening, or if they take their memes way too seriously. I would say both at the same time

Jimmc414 2y ago

So, should we also ban Chinese companies Alibaba, Baidu, Haier, Lenovo, Tencent, and ZTE from operating in the United States? Why just TikTok (Who is ironically also banned in China)? And should Israeli companies, like those associated with NSO Group, face similar scrutiny after reports of their tools being used to hack U.S. State Department employee phones?

wewtyflakes 2y ago
Yes
- throwawayq3423 2y ago
  On unfair trade practices and ethical violations, yes. Ban them all. Nothing of value will be lost.
  - herbst 2y ago
    Let's build the greatest great Firewall ever built!
    - throwawayq3423 2y ago
      No one is suggesting that.

EasyMark 2y ago

I am of 100% of the same opinion as you. I have told people for years about the cyber warfare going on and that we're losing it, and they just don't seem to care and want that serotonin hit and ignore the rest. I also want curbs on other social media, but TikTok and the war of China against the US on the internet is in a league of its own. The CCP are no doubt funneling the data to their servers, and no doubt have plans for further damaging our youths' minds through brain rot of tiktok diverting them from far more productive activities. There's a reason CCP has strong curbs on similar apps regarding young people in their nation.

tboyd47 2y ago

[flagged]

greenavocado 2y ago

> They hacked all of our major telco's Can I see the evidence?

stevenAthompson 2y ago
Yes, whether you understand it or not is a different question. Search for Salt Typhoon and Volt Typhoon.

sangnoir 2y ago

> Yet people are arguing that we should allow the people who did that to continue to install apps on millions of Americans phones Who are "the people who did that" - Byte Dance or China as a whole? If it's the latter, I'm afraid there are still plenty of apps made by Chinese companies like, DJI, Lenovo, and thousands of IoT apps to control random geegaws via WiFi or BT. It's not hard to see the pattern: any Chinese tech champion that does as well as, or better than American companies will find itself in legal peril. Huawei didn't get in trouble after hacking Nortel, but they got sanctioned much later, when their 5G base equipment was well-received by the markets. TikTok had the best ML-based recommendation systems when it burst in the scene, Google and Meta still haven't quite caught up yet.

ants_everywhere 2y ago

It's one of those things. If you asked most Hacker News readers how they feel about the authoritarian government of a single party state literally controlling the algorithm that determines everything you see, most would swear up and down that they would never stand for it. But yet what happens in practice is people line up to defend it. I can only guess most of the people defending it are active users and aren't aware of how distorted their perception of the world is by the content they see there.

noirbot 2y ago
There's some defending it in general, but it's also just a really tough precedent to allow when it could, so easily, be used to shut down any other service they want by just waving the magic "national security" flag. It's possible to believe TikTok is bad and that the pathway the US just proved out to banning it in the US has shown that no US court will seriously question the "security reasons" fig leaf. Telegram and Signal are both used by plenty of people the US could easily paint as "security threats" and it's unclear there's any defense to a ban that they could mount at this point.
- idontpost 2y ago
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urhmbutwait 2y ago

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HamsterDan 2y ago

There's at least three separate reasons that justify banning TikTok. If Trump bails them out, it's a complete betrayal of his base and the country at large. 1. Competitive balance. China does not allow US social media companies. If we allow theirs, our industry is essentially fighting with one hand tied behind its back. 2. China controls the algorithm for determining who sees what. This gives them tremendous ability to influence public opinion, and consequently public elections. That cannot be allowed to stand as long as China is hostile to the US. 3. China gets extremely detailed data about the interests and proclivities of millions of Americans, including military personnel and elected officials. This data is not otherwise publicly available and can be used for blackmail and other manipulation. Which is completely unacceptable when we have no mechanism to punish them from doing this short of global nuclear war. Even ignoring the enormous threat to national sovereignty, TikTok has no redeeming qualities. It's an addiction machine that profits off people wasting away in front a screen. That alone is not a reason to ban it, but it sure does make the case stronger. Banning TikTok is a clear-cut positive for the American people. Every American adult should be in support.

throwawayq3423 2y ago
> If Trump bails them out, it's a complete betrayal of his base and the country at large. There is no wall. The Trump "tax cuts" raised taxes on most Americans and cut them for the 1%. Trump has not faced any consequences for betrayal in the past, why would he now? In fact, TikTok helps promote the lack of awareness of all the above. If anything he'll want to keep it in place, to keep the public misinformed.
ramblenode 2y ago
All of your points except 1. are true of American social media companies. 2., in particular, is widely documented: the Facebook mood manipulation fiasco, Cambridge Analytica, Musk's personal tweaking of the Twitter trending hashtags, and YouTube's heavy-handed censorship of legitimate medical advice during Covid are just a few of the higher profile instances of this.
- ninkendo 2y ago

carabiner 2y ago

Senator I'm Singaporean.

coliveira 2y ago

The interesting thing is that, using these tactics, the supreme court has made the legal case for every other country to ban US owned social networks! My opinion is that the US government has made another stupid move.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

wumeow 2y ago

> I can't tell if people just don't know that this is happening, or if they take their memes way too seriously. I sort of wonder if they don't know it's happening because they get their news from Tiktok and Tiktok is actively suppressing the stories. No, it's just information asymmetry shaping public opinion. The US lets its dirty laundry air out. US whistleblowers, press, and historians dig up every shitty thing the US has ever done and US citizens are free to discuss it, sing about it, turn it into movies and viral memes, etc. China doesn't allow this. No one in China is going to become famous by calling for justice for those killed by Mao or exposing MSS-installed backdoors in Chinese telecoms. That kind of talk is quelled immediately. The result is that public discourse trends more anti-American than anti-China.

throwawayq3423 2y ago

> I can't tell if people just don't know that this is happening This. It's this. Don't waste your time thinking past this answer, you already nailed it.

sfifs 2y ago

Everyone outside of the US already knows the American three letter agencies and their allies like the Mossad can access, hack or destroy all their networks if push comes to shove. Most network services all over the world are run on infrastructure owned by a handful of American companies with deep defense and government ties - AWS, Google, MS. As other powers arise, they will naturally want equivalence. The American government may decide that is not in their interest to make this easy - but I'd suggest as Hacker News community, we retain the ability to see beyond propaganda and balance contrary viewpoint.In this case (or the case on Nippon steel),how does one differentiate between "security" considerations and potentially a straightforward cash grab attempt by rich American investors?

PittleyDunkin 2y ago

Tbh I think this has a lot more to do with sympathy for Palestinians and the last year of protests on college campuses. Besides, who cares if China is listening to us through the app. China and I have no beef with one another. China feeds me and clothes me and builds most of the stuff in my life and I give China my money. It's a good relationship! Much better than my relationship with this state, tbh.

dqv 2y ago

> The United States is currently in the middle of a cyber cold-war with China. The United States Government is. I'm a United States citizen. Importantly, they're not fighting for me or my stability, they're fighting for the stability of oligarchs. They will gladly destabilize me and my life in service of the ruling class. Appeals to nationalism only work on nationalists. I'd need a good reason to be a nationalist. The very few listed reasons are some vague reference to freedom as if just saying that makes it true. Get back to me when it's "China is threatening your guaranteed housing!" or "China is going to roll back the statutory work holiday laws in the US!" or "China is attacking the information systems used for our guaranteed child care program!" It's really simple: if you want people to love and defend the US and what it purportedly stands for, then give them concrete reasons to do so. Improve their quality of life. Until then, leave me the hell out of the fearmongering about China. I'm much more fearful of the systemic policies of the US making me homeless than some nation state's cyberopium ruining my mind or protecting information systems that were intentionally left insecure in service of profit and the intelligence apparatus.