Stripping Americans' screens of the app comes with its own troubles.
 | By Suein Hwang Business, Economics and Technology Editor, Opinion |
If you are a parent of a teenager, or know someone who is, you know just how hard it is to wrest TikTok, the wildly popular Chinese-owned phone app that captivates users with an endless stream of algorithmically optimized videos, from their phone. Now imagine trying to wipe it from the screens of everyone in the United States. |
Yet there is legislation before Congress that would do just that. And for a legitimate reason: fear that the Chinese government could force ByteDance, TikTok's owner, to hand over information about us or demand it feed us, or our children, disinformation. In fact, TikTok is banned in China itself; there, a similar, limited version that is explicitly subject to state censorship is allowed. |
Yet it's uncertain whether the federal government can simply ban access to a significant communications platform. Eliminating TikTok in the United States undermines America's ability to show the world it is an open and democratic country. And yes, the blowback from taking it away from an estimated 100 million people would be mighty. |
Wading into this extraordinary dilemma is Glenn S. Gerstell, the former general counsel of the National Security Agency and Central Security Service, who also looks at the geopolitical consequences of a ban. "In assessing incremental risks of Chinese technology, we need to think carefully about the cumulative long-term implications, since each step potentially both emboldens and further isolates China, thus jeopardizing our national security in more profound ways," he writes in a guest essay this week. |
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