TRIGGERnometry - Melissa Chen - Should We Ban TikTok？

00:00:01.000 What we're seeing is that legislators are very concerned on two grounds.

00:00:05.240 The first grounds is a national security argument.

00:00:08.760 What happens to that data?

00:00:10.200 You know, does that data end up in the wrong hands?

00:00:12.860 And then there's the other argument, which is content manipulation.

00:00:17.980 TikTok is the one that decides to take it dark hours before the deadline.

00:00:23.260 And that's why I call what I call the Zoomer nom,

00:00:26.740 because they didn't know what to do with their lives.

00:00:29.000 So this is a bit like psychological manipulation, if you think about it.

00:00:33.780 The outrage that was expressed during this 12 hours is a bit of a, it's a propaganda play.

00:00:39.680 That, to me, is a foreign influence operation.

00:00:42.400 And if that's happening, that's really what the concern I think ought to be.

00:00:47.780 Melissa Chen, welcome back to Trigonometry.

00:00:49.940 You are our go-to person for all things China.

00:00:52.880 And one of the things that's been really big in the news,

00:00:54.980 and I think is a really important conversation, actually,

00:00:56.960 is TikTok, whether it should be banned.

00:00:59.940 And that is something you have a very interesting perspective on.

00:01:03.420 So give us your take and why you think what you think.

00:01:07.520 So TikTok is a app, a U.S.-based app,

00:01:11.460 but it's actually owned by a Chinese company called ByteDance.

00:01:14.100 And that necessarily entails that ByteDance, because it's a Chinese company,

00:01:21.420 there is this law in China that exists called the National Intelligence Law,

00:01:26.560 and it compels any company that is Chinese to hand over any kind of data.

00:01:33.000 And so it recruits basically anyone in individuals, companies, in Chinese societies,

00:01:38.580 could be organizations as well.

00:01:40.140 It recruits them to basically be part of an intelligence gathering effort whenever the Chinese state requires it.

00:01:47.000 And because of that corporate structure, TikTok is a huge liability.

00:01:54.160 There are actually two concerns that we have about the, and by we, I mean, you know, U.S. lawmakers,

00:02:01.340 because we haven't seen something like that happen in a long time.

00:02:06.320 This bill to ban TikTok, which I'm using, you know, inverted quotes,

00:02:12.100 because it's not really a ban.

00:02:14.400 It is a forced divestment.

00:02:16.900 The legislators are saying to TikTok that you cannot be owned by a Chinese company.

00:02:24.840 And so what we're seeing is that legislators are very concerned on two grounds.

00:02:29.820 The first grounds is a national security argument,

00:02:33.020 which is there is this entity that has, which is the Chinese Communist Party,

00:02:39.480 that has set up, you know, these kinds of laws which compel a company to transfer data over.

00:02:47.200 And so Americans, it's hoovering up a lot of data.

00:02:50.500 You know, when you launch this app, I don't know if you guys are on it.

00:02:53.920 I guess, Frances, maybe you are on it because it's a, you know, a lot of comedians are on it,

00:02:58.540 and it has great content on it.

00:03:03.020 It immediately starts to load.

00:03:05.500 It's collecting so much information about you.

00:03:08.720 Everything from your keystrokes to, I mean, if you think of it, it's biometric.

00:03:13.260 Your face is biometric data.

00:03:14.780 So when you are doing your, you know, monologues and you're looking into the camera,

00:03:20.200 it's logging your facial expressions.

00:03:22.660 And you can actually, a lot of psychologists have done these studies where based on just the expressions,

00:03:31.840 which can be, you know, measured through some sort of like software,

00:03:36.040 you can know so much about what someone is feeling in that moment.

00:03:40.860 A good example of this is there's this concept called gay face, 0.89

00:03:44.300 which I think you should know, Frances, really well.

00:03:47.880 What do you mean?

00:03:49.600 Where they give people just pictures of 10 people and say like, wait, is this person gay or not?

00:03:55.320 Just based on first impressions.

00:03:57.100 And oftentimes, this is statistically significant,

00:04:00.880 people can tell when someone is gay.

00:04:03.720 And it's not just about gay, not gay.

00:04:07.000 There is, you can actually tell, is someone feeling sad?

00:04:11.120 Is the corner of their lips a downturn?

00:04:13.200 Are they feeling maybe egotistical at that moment?

00:04:16.080 And so you can collect so much real-time data about people.

00:04:19.480 So there's the data collection aspect to this argument.

00:04:23.380 Exactly whether or not, what happens to that data?

00:04:28.200 You know, does that data end up in the wrong hands?

00:04:30.880 And then there's the other argument, which is content manipulation.

00:04:35.600 So the idea that this app can actually be throttled and, you know,

00:04:42.260 what topics get discussed, not discussed, suppressed, not suppressed,

00:04:46.940 based on the whims of a geopolitical adversary at the end of the day behind the wall.

00:04:53.340 So those are the two concerns with regard to TikTok

00:04:57.340 and why the legislators wanted it to be banned.

00:04:59.400 And what we saw was that it passed the House, overwhelming, bipartisan majority passed it.

00:05:08.220 The same thing happened in the Senate.

00:05:10.460 And by the time it landed on Joe Biden's desk in April of last year, 2024, he signed it.

00:05:17.600 And it was challenged in the courts.

00:05:20.480 And the two courts that took up the Federal Appeals Court in December of last year,

00:05:28.260 again, ideologically diverse judges sitting on it, unanimously upheld the law.

00:05:33.700 And the Supreme Court of the United States, by a decision of 9-0, upheld the law.

00:05:40.820 And so we've seen overwhelming support for this legislation to ban TikTok.

00:05:48.640 And President Trump has just said that actually this may not happen after all, right?

00:05:54.520 Am I wrong about this?

00:05:55.580 Yes, he did, which is very ironic because President Trump was the first one to actually propose a TikTok ban

00:06:03.540 towards the end of his first term.

00:06:07.320 So this is going back to about August 2020.

00:06:11.240 President Trump passed an executive order.

00:06:15.140 And the executive order was very much in line with exactly the divestment plan that was advanced by Congress this time.

00:06:25.760 And shortly after he loses the election, Biden comes into office.

00:06:29.920 So Biden ends up doing what Trump wanted to do, but through Congress.

00:06:34.760 And by Biden, the end of Biden's term, Trump basically starts signaling that he has a change of heart.

00:06:43.200 By the summer of last year, Trump joins TikTok.

00:06:48.320 And shortly after he joins TikTok, Kamala Harris joins TikTok.

00:06:52.120 And you started to see all these videos kind of laundering Kamala Harris's image.

00:06:58.140 You know, the brat videos, her with the coconut and the weird dances. 0.56

00:07:02.340 And Trump does very well on TikTok.

00:07:04.020 He's quite a TikTok-able character.

00:07:07.100 At that time, though, Trump needed a lot of money for his campaign.

00:07:11.180 He wasn't raising as much funds as Kamala was.

00:07:14.220 And he was also kind of bogged down with civil lawsuits.

00:07:19.340 In steps a Republican billionaire donor by the name of Jeff Yass.

00:07:25.280 He runs a hedge fund and he sits on the board of ByteDance.

00:07:29.420 And he becomes one of Trump's major donors.

00:07:31.480 And Trump starts to say that he wants to save TikTok.

00:07:38.180 And what's interesting about this new development is that the content of Trump saying that starts appearing on the app.

00:07:45.320 And he starts to notice that all of a sudden, Zoomers love him.

00:07:51.480 He does the podcast circuit.

00:07:52.880 He really is able to appeal to a demographic that didn't really have any interest for him before.

00:08:00.920 And once this law actually went into effect, which was January 19th, a day before the inauguration, which is a total coincidence, by the way.

00:08:09.840 Trump then, you know, he kind of says, oh, we're going to try and save it.

00:08:17.340 I'm going to write an executive order.

00:08:18.680 He says this to the press.

00:08:20.080 All the while, the inauguration is going on.

00:08:23.040 Meanwhile, the CEO of TikTok is sitting in the rotunda at the inauguration ceremony next to Tulsi Gabbard.

00:08:30.700 And this is quite symbolic.

00:08:34.300 Like, you know, it's an honor to be invited to such an event and being placed so prominently as he was next to all his cabinet members.

00:08:44.400 So you started to see Trump then, you know, signal he wants to save TikTok.

00:08:50.800 People are cheering.

00:08:51.920 There's a lot of TikTok users are on edge.

00:08:54.340 And eventually he, you know, the app goes dark on just hours before the ban was actually supposed to be in effect.

00:09:06.760 And by the way, we should have a moment of silence, right, for the Zoomers, for whom they experienced like the worst 12 hours of their life when this app went dark.

00:09:18.460 I mean, this was their nom.

00:09:19.680 Um, they, no, I'm not even joking in the sense of like, if you look at the, um, hysterics of just how they were expressing themselves.

00:09:31.420 There's a Reddit thread.

00:09:32.400 If you go look it up, it's called, it's like our stroke TikTok ban.

00:09:36.040 People didn't know what to do with their lives.

00:09:38.280 Uh, they were like, I don't have hobbies outside of this.

00:09:40.900 They, a lot of, a lot of young folks use TikTok, I sound so old saying that, but they use TikTok like a search engine.

00:09:47.160 So instead of like going to Google, looking up a recipe, looking up something, they actually, the first thing they do is to, um, go to TikTok.

00:09:53.740 So that is the way they interface with the world and have been for the last, you know, a couple of years.

00:10:00.780 Um, and so they were all in hysterics.

00:10:03.360 There were a lot of meltdown videos being posted, but the app goes dark and there was a pop-up.

00:10:09.380 So if you tried to load it, there was a pop-up saying, unfortunately, this, you know, app is banned, um, and there, you cannot access it right now.

00:10:19.260 But they say something about President Trump might save it.

00:10:22.640 Okay.

00:10:22.880 So you get this pop-up.

00:10:24.260 Melissa, can I stop you there?

00:10:25.140 Because I understood that it wasn't a ban.

00:10:27.760 When I was reading it, I heard that TikTok took itself down.

00:10:31.580 That's correct.

00:10:32.180 I was actually about to get into that because what the law stipulates is that no American entity can update, maintain, or distribute the app in question.

00:10:43.920 And the app in question is TikTok.

00:10:46.000 So what that means is that app stores run by Google, run by Apple, had to delist the app from the app store.

00:10:53.040 So in theory, the law can go into effect on January 19th.

00:10:57.100 And the app that you already have downloaded on your phone will still function because you don't have to go to the app store for new downloads.

00:11:04.880 The only thing is that it can be updated, right?

00:11:07.460 So over time, the app would actually degrade in terms of functionality because they're unable to patch the software.

00:11:14.560 But in theory, ByteDance or TikTok could have just left the app in place on your phone if you had it, if you were accessing it through a browser and you didn't close that browser, you could still access it.

00:11:27.100 But TikTok is the one that decides to take it dark hours before the deadline.

00:11:33.760 And that's what I call the Zoomer nom because they didn't know what to do with their lives.

00:11:39.860 And what that created was this giant backlash and people didn't know how to react to this.

00:11:48.820 So this is a bit like psychological manipulation if you think about it.

00:11:52.700 It's a bit like poker where you just keep raising the stakes and then you're like trying to call out somebody's bluff.

00:12:01.120 And I think that's what they were trying to do because the outrage that was expressed during these 12 hours is a bit of a propaganda play.

00:12:09.300 And then putting out this message pop up on everybody's phone saying that Trump is going to step in to save that, which, again, for the average Zoomer, imagine like they just took away your app.

00:12:20.980 And now literally Hitler is going to swoop in to save this app. 0.81

00:12:25.500 I mean, at this point, I think TikTok is contractually obligated to be called Trump Talk.

00:12:29.780 And they restored the app after about 12 hours or so.

00:12:35.360 The app comes back online.

00:12:36.540 And again, it says now that we're trying to find a solution.

00:12:40.740 President Trump is trying to find a solution.

00:12:42.940 And so they seem to be wanting to credit him with this.

00:12:46.960 And so, you know, there's rumors now of buyers, possible exit strategies.

00:12:52.700 Trump floated this ridiculous idea of a 50-50 joint venture between American-owned and a Chinese-owned.

00:12:58.160 I don't know how that's going to work because the legislation says that it cannot be controlled at all by a Chinese entity.

00:13:05.640 And so 50-50 doesn't solve that.

00:13:07.840 But there are rumors like Elon Musk might buy it.

00:13:12.360 There's another one, a consortium involving Kevin O'Leary from Shark Tank might buy it as well.

00:13:18.980 But it's running into, you know, the saga is still playing out.

00:13:22.860 One of the things that I found really interesting about it, actually, was this entire saga is,

00:13:26.820 before I really delved into it, I found it a surprise that Trump signed that executive order.

00:13:32.860 But then when I started reading into it, in 2022 on True Social, he said that he was in favor of TikTok

00:13:39.820 because it meant that it lessened Meta's power.

00:13:44.440 Because it lessened traffic towards Meta.

00:13:46.940 And then he called Zuckerberg in that tweet or truth or whatever it's called,

00:13:50.780 he called him Zuckerschmuck.

00:13:53.000 Zuckerschmuck. 1.00

00:13:53.560 Which is very funny.

00:13:55.380 But I found that so interesting in the way he positioned it.

00:13:59.400 And because I was thinking, well, of course that makes sense.

00:14:02.700 If you've got Zuckerberg who de-platformed you in 2020 and kicked you off not one platform,

00:14:09.820 but two platforms and two of the most powerful and influential ones,

00:14:13.340 why are you going to want to then take away competition for Zuckerberg?

00:14:18.380 You just won't.

00:14:19.060 And it's the same, I mean, Twitter took Trump off as well.

00:14:22.880 Yeah.

00:14:23.680 Yeah, there is this other angle.

00:14:26.180 I mean, how much of it is Trump saying that, you know, this is, not retaliation,

00:14:31.520 but whether it's motivated by vengeance, whether it's motivated by making sure we're not rewarded.

00:14:36.980 Because the thing is that when TikTok goes dark, where are the 170 million users going to go?

00:14:41.320 Presumably, you know, Instagram has reels, right?

00:14:45.680 And so it's kind of like a TikTok-like competitor.

00:14:49.080 And so the idea was that, okay, they're going to flock there.

00:14:52.300 And that would just help someone who, you know, maybe Trump blames for what had happened to him.

00:15:00.900 I guess maybe he didn't notice that Zuckerberg has been on a, you know, change, has had a change of heart.

00:15:08.500 A miraculous, an inexplicable, certain change of heart.

00:15:11.800 I mean, he's starting to look quite human.

00:15:15.200 And, you know, the way he's dressing, doing his jiu-jitsu, he's now, you know, doing a whole PR tour,

00:15:21.480 went on Joe Rogan and announced that, you know, his company has, like so many other tech companies, gone too feminine.

00:15:30.380 We need to bring masculinity back to Silicon Valley. 1.00

00:15:33.760 You know, we need to, the policies have gotten maybe too empathetic.

00:15:37.340 Like, that's what he seems, which is so ironic, guys, because this is the, you know, Silicon Valley is a place where, I don't know,

00:15:46.520 just six, seven years ago, you couldn't even say that maybe there were more male engineers because male and females want different things, right? 0.76

00:15:55.300 Because, like, James Damore gets fired from Google for literally writing something very banal and supported by evolutionary psychology.

00:16:02.440 Um, and so, I don't think we can discount that motivation, but I think the more easy one is just, you know,

00:16:11.260 you have somebody who has donated to Trump's campaign, who sits on the board of ByteDance, who stands a lot to gain from it.

00:16:18.160 Um, but also, it's just sheer popularity play.

00:16:20.920 Trump does like to be popular.

00:16:23.560 Um, and regardless of what you actually think about the decision to ban TikTok,

00:16:29.840 at the end of the day, the procedural issues around, you know, you had let this legislative branch of government vote to pass a law.

00:16:39.180 You had the judicial branch of government uphold the law.

00:16:44.000 How is it that, you know, the executive branch, a president, can just go around these two branches and go, like, now we're good,

00:16:52.600 and then the app just works again?

00:16:55.380 You know, it just seems like these are supposed to be equal branches, and he's kind of overstepped, I think.

00:17:02.360 I think another facet of it is, it's so, in a way that I don't think we can appreciate because of our age,

00:17:08.900 but it's so culturally relevant, and it's also relevant in a financial sense.

00:17:13.860 Like, you look at all of these meme coins, the way that you get a meme coin trending is by putting it on TikTok and creating memes.

00:17:22.980 And then that's how people can make billions and billions of dollars.

00:17:25.740 If your meme coin catches hold because of the memes that you create, you can make billions.

00:17:31.200 And then you look at Trump, Trump's just released a meme coin, and you're going, well, why would you?

00:17:37.060 You can make literal billions out of this.

00:17:39.320 So why would you cancel the app that is going to be the jet fuel for your meme coin?

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00:19:18.780 TikTok has been an engine of culture.

00:19:22.080 I think we can't really deny that, right?

00:19:24.200 I mean, at first it was just regular people, you know, posting what I think is the worst genre of video content out there,

00:19:31.520 which is lip-syncing videos.

00:19:33.340 I mean, am I just too old to understand the appeal of lip-syncing videos?

00:19:37.540 You are not even singing.

00:19:39.620 You are a talentless hack.

00:19:41.160 Just mouthing the words, okay, maybe, you know, I shouldn't be so mean, because, look, TikTok is, has created a platform for people who have poured their heart and soul into content, you know.

00:19:56.340 And a lot of it is really good.

00:19:58.460 It's really entertaining.

00:20:00.260 Entire comedians' careers have really blossomed because of TikTok.

00:20:05.660 There are TikTok celebrities now that, you know, just produce content for that app.

00:20:10.540 So people's income streams, cooking videos, I can't, I have deep sympathies for the people that have, you know, put so much into creating content.

00:20:21.820 And they have deep friendships on this app.

00:20:24.580 I mean, it's just like people on Twitter have, you know, forming deep networks and friendships, although you could say a lot of it is just fake if you don't take it off the app.

00:20:34.340 And these are communities.

00:20:36.060 So, I think a lot of it changed also when, I think it was, I'm not cool enough to know, there was a rapper, I just know he was a black cowboy rapper, who dropped a song.

00:20:48.520 Like, that was a new way that the music industry, with Billy Ray Cyrus, do you know what I'm talking about?

00:20:53.660 KK definitely does not, but you might have a shot at knowing.

00:20:56.120 Yeah, I don't, I know Billy Ray Cyrus are very, you know, achy-breaky heart.

00:21:01.420 Lil Nas X.

00:21:02.680 Right.

00:21:03.020 And Billy Ray Cyrus drops, they drop a song called, like, some old town cowboy thing.

00:21:09.920 And, okay, this sounds so boomer of me, but that song goes viral on TikTok.

00:21:14.940 And for music executives, this was another way, they realized, like, oh, this is another way to get a song popular.

00:21:22.420 And the structure, the format of TikTok now introduced a brand new way for musicians to get their songs out there and to make it popular.

00:21:33.420 It's such a good point, because now the music industry, when they produce music, I talk to musicians, and they say, well, you've got to produce something that is going to go viral on TikTok.

00:21:46.140 And if it doesn't go viral on TikTok, then you're probably not going to have a hit record.

00:21:50.500 Exactly.

00:21:51.300 Which is just a completely different way of actually looking at it.

00:21:54.820 But then you think, as well, you look at the people who own TikTok.

00:21:58.780 You know, we talk about, you know, the billionaire who owns TikTok, but BlackRock's involved in TikTok.

00:22:05.840 Are BlackRock not going to apply a little bit of pressure to Trump and go, hey, we've invested however much money into it, a hell of a lot of money into it?

00:22:13.040 Are you, they're not going to be happy that it's suddenly their investment goes overnight?

00:22:18.160 Yeah, but, you know, I don't think perhaps BlackRock is also, what leverage points, you know, does BlackRock really have on Trump?

00:22:27.140 I think at the end of the day, that is more of the issue.

00:22:30.340 And the reason why, say, this China play with TikTok is so, such a big deal, it's really about what are the leverage points, right?

00:22:38.700 I mean, a good analogy to this is really like, would we, if we rewind time and we're back during the Cold War, would we allow a Soviet-backed firm to buy NBC News, right?

00:22:53.840 And we would be absolutely crazy to allow something like that.

00:22:58.500 There's been a long history of the U.S. at least restricting foreign ownership of media.

00:23:05.400 It goes back to the 1912, there was a 1912 Radio Act, which prohibited foreign individuals and foreign companies from owning a license to broadcast radio.

00:23:15.920 I mean, back then it was radio in America.

00:23:18.620 It was later expanded, and so, you know, that's why someone like Rupert Murdoch, who is an Australian citizen, had to get an American citizenship in order to buy News Corp, which runs Fox News and Wall Street Journal.

00:23:32.580 And likewise, in your country now, where we sit, there was a takeover bid, right?

00:23:38.220 There was an attempted takeover bid for the Telegraph and the Spectator, and Parliament had to convene this session because the Emiratis kind of put together a group.

00:23:48.500 And there were concerns, should we be letting the Emiratis own, you know, a newspaper, a broadsheet in the U.K.?

00:23:57.380 And eventually, you know, the pressure worked.

00:24:01.040 It was, no, we shouldn't, and it was sold to a British, you know, a British owner.

00:24:06.800 So we have these laws and restrictions in place.

00:24:10.180 But I don't want to be glib also about the potential First Amendment issues, and maybe we should actually discuss that, right?

00:24:17.300 Because there is a legitimate concern in many libertarian types, Thomas Massey was very much against this legislation.

00:24:25.760 And they said, look, you know, we have to be worried about civil liberties here.

00:24:32.360 There's two issues with the potential First Amendment violations.

00:24:37.160 The first one is that one could argue that foreign propaganda is basically editorial discretion by another name, right?

00:24:47.820 One could argue that.

00:24:49.720 And there is actually precedent for this argument as well.

00:24:55.120 In 1965, there was a Supreme Court case.

00:24:58.500 It was called Le Mans versus the Postmaster General.

00:25:01.300 So back then, there was a federal law that instructed the postmaster to destroy pamphlets.

00:25:08.940 This was like in the 1960s in the Cold War, to destroy any kinds of pamphlets that they see that were obvious Soviet propaganda.

00:25:15.980 You know, stuff that looks like this, right?

00:25:18.080 The moment you see it, you're supposed to destroy it.

00:25:19.760 This is anti-Soviet propaganda.

00:25:21.440 But it's done in the Soviet style.

00:25:22.900 Yes, exactly.

00:25:23.980 And the idea was to just not get this Marxist influence into American minds.

00:25:30.520 And the Supreme Court actually struck that down because they said it violated the ethos of the First Amendment of open debate.

00:25:39.080 And so there are always these concerns.

00:25:40.640 And I think this concern is actually legitimate.

00:25:43.480 Well, yes, but the question I suppose that would be probably worth asking is, how many foreign social media platforms does China allow?

00:25:52.640 Is Twitter available in China?

00:25:55.100 Is Facebook?

00:25:57.120 Is Instagram?

00:25:58.640 None.

00:25:58.900 The Chinese have walled off their entire ecosystem, media ecosystem. 1.00

00:26:03.500 But the issue of reciprocity is very different from the issue of foreign propaganda in America, right?

00:26:11.000 And whether or not we should, quote unquote, allow it.

00:26:15.420 Just on that, Melissa, there's a follow up, I think, that's important as well.

00:26:19.000 I have heard a lot of people say that TikTok for Chinese people is totally different to TikTok for Westerners.

00:26:27.780 And this is where I think you start to get into meddling operations because if it was universally the same, you'd go, well, you know, this is, yeah, okay, this app's owned by China, but it's freedom of discussion, whatever.

00:26:41.580 But in this instance, my understanding is the Chinese content is all wholesome and prim and proper, whereas all the degenerate stuff is being pumped into the West effectively. 1.00

00:26:52.420 Is that an accurate assessment?

00:26:54.380 Yes.

00:26:54.840 And so basically, we have to go back to 2016 to discuss this particular issue because ByteDance Buys develops an app called Douyin.

00:27:07.260 And Douyin is a video sharing app.

00:27:09.100 And that becomes so popular in China that they then hive off a foreign version called TikTok.

00:27:16.260 So TikTok is then a derivative of Douyin. 0.99

00:27:19.860 But the point of doing that is to separate, I think, users.

00:27:24.940 They don't want American users corrupting, you know, bringing whatever.

00:27:30.160 Think about TikTok as a vector for woke ideology.

00:27:33.740 Why would any country want that, right?

00:27:36.140 And it was, especially the stuff about gender and, you know, please pick your mental, you know, issue for the day.

00:27:45.220 It was promoting a lot of even eating disorders.

00:27:47.900 So why would the Chinese want that kind of influence on their platforms? 0.96

00:27:51.160 And then Douyin, so Douyin has been hived off from TikTok. 0.99

00:27:56.920 And you're right that the content is not only different, it is also limited.

00:28:02.540 I think because the Chinese government became very concerned with too much use, heavy Internet use in general.

00:28:09.380 So the, you know, the moment they felt like, okay, our youth are playing too many video games, they limited the number of hours that youth, the youth in China can actually log on to play video games.

00:28:22.180 This is the kind of thing you can do in an authoritarian country, right?

00:28:25.140 Like we try to ban big gulp sodas and it's like, oh my gosh, like fascism is here, you know, Hitler is here.

00:28:32.320 So we can't do that kind of thing, but the Chinese government can.

00:28:36.240 And yes, the content is different.

00:28:39.360 And I think there has been evidence that it was a study done by Rutgers University and another institute called the Network Contagion Research Institute, which, by the way, is not a left-wing institute at all.

00:28:53.840 They do a lot of work on far-right misinformation stuff that, for me, is a little overboard on what they claim and they don't really focus on Antifa's violence, for example.

00:29:06.320 But this group have put out now two reports.

00:29:10.900 And what they show is that when you compare the total volume of posts on Instagram versus TikTok, and they looked at it across various hashtags.

00:29:22.640 They looked at pop culture stuff.

00:29:24.240 So like Taylor Swift, hashtag Taylor Swift, hashtag Cristiano Ronaldo, there's a certain baseline ratio of number of posts on Instagram versus TikTok.

00:29:33.660 But then all of a sudden when you compare that with hashtags, you know, like Tiananmen Square, Hong Kong protests, or anything that is culturally sensitive to the Chinese government, it is completely out of whack.

00:29:46.620 And that was used as evidence to show that TikTok was suppressing topics that were, you know, not, the Chinese government just did not want people to know about.

00:30:03.000 And that is the argument I agree with in terms of potentially being able to throttle discussion.

00:30:12.800 Or shape discussion would be a more...

00:30:16.000 Shape, yes.

00:30:17.120 Because that's more worrying to me.

00:30:18.680 Throttling is obvious.

00:30:19.700 But when you shape discussion of certain things beyond just Tiananmen Square, but more about, you know, America's attitude to China or whatever, that to me is a foreign influence operation.

00:30:32.660 And if that's happening, that's really what the concern I think ought to be.

00:30:36.160 But then would you have a problem if it's an American or if it's, say, a British owner?

00:30:42.360 Spotify, for example, is owned by a Swedish company, right?

00:30:45.660 It's a Swedish company.

00:30:46.860 So is it a problem?

00:30:48.880 Is it a problem just because it's a foreigner or is all, you know, because I think the United States has a legal precedent of saying that companies are people, too, because of Citizens United.

00:31:03.440 And therefore, companies actually do have free speech rights in America.

00:31:07.980 And when a social media company makes editorial choices, meaning throttling things, that is well within their speech rights.

00:31:18.020 So this is a case called the Net Choice case.

00:31:20.620 And it allows social media companies.

00:31:23.720 So essentially, the old Twitter, for example, old Twitter, where they ran into trouble before Elon rescued it, was not that it was throttling conservative voices and, you know, boosting pro-trans, pro-gender ideology people.

00:31:40.400 That was not the issue.

00:31:41.820 The issue was the collusion factor.

00:31:43.660 The issue was the government telling the old regime or telling, you know, engineers at Twitter what should and what should not be boosted.

00:31:54.660 That was the issue, the First Amendment issue.

00:31:56.960 It wasn't actually that Twitter was censoring people at all because if you run a social media company or platform, you should be able to censor people however you like.

00:32:07.080 If tomorrow, you know, you decide, I'm going to start, you know, KK.com or something, and you, you know, just say, I don't want to hear anyone who's gay. 1.00

00:32:16.180 I'm just going to ban everyone because I don't like to hear anything gay. 1.00

00:32:20.340 That same joke twice and one other. 0.96

00:32:23.060 Then it's your right to do so.

00:32:26.680 But there's the other side of it, which is when it poses a national security risk.

00:32:31.400 And let's be fair as well, there has been precedence for this.

00:32:34.820 It's not a social media app, but the example of Grindr to carry on with the gay thing. 1.00

00:32:39.600 Which is how they met.

00:32:41.460 Yeah.

00:32:41.760 Yeah.

00:32:42.000 Before on trigger.

00:32:43.320 Yeah.

00:32:44.280 Yeah, it is.

00:32:45.260 That's how this beautiful.

00:32:46.020 That's how we met.

00:32:46.820 That's how this beautiful.

00:32:47.440 That's how this beautiful romance began.

00:32:48.980 Yeah, exactly.

00:32:50.280 On a Chinese app.

00:32:51.540 But, um.

00:32:52.220 Yes.

00:32:52.460 So the, and what happened was, and correct me if I'm wrong, it was the American government looking into it and going, well, this poses.

00:33:01.400 It's a very clear, very real security risk because there are people who are gay who are in government or whatever else that this can be used as a tool to blackmail. 0.98

00:33:11.100 Yeah. 0.99

00:33:11.400 Because dick pics are obvious compromise. 0.99

00:33:14.040 Yeah. 0.99

00:33:14.480 Right. 0.98

00:33:14.660 And who's gay, who's not seeking, you know, maybe homosexual tursts. 0.99

00:33:20.280 All that is, can be used for blackmail. 0.86

00:33:23.880 The app was then, went through the same treatment.

00:33:27.580 Uh, the U.S. government eventually managed to successfully force his divestment.

00:33:32.520 And, uh, Grindr was sold to a U.S. company for $600 million.

00:33:37.200 Now, notice that no one said anything about, you know, censorship when my rights were deprived.

00:33:45.040 Um, but that's because Grindr complied.

00:33:47.620 And so I do find it very disingenuous when TikTok turns around and says, oh, you know, our rights are, um, actually being eroded here because if you comply, all the speech still stands.

00:34:04.040 And that's one of the arguments that all, most of the Supreme Court justices actually made in the hearing.

00:34:10.520 You know, they said that all the speech, all the content that currently exists on TikTok, they remain the same.

00:34:17.220 This is not about manipulating speech.

00:34:19.780 This is not about taking away speech.

00:34:21.440 As long as the ownership structure is changed, as long as it sells to a U.S. buyer, all the speech remains.

00:34:30.400 Everything is the same.

00:34:31.300 So that's how they tried to shut down the, the, you know, the argument about this being a First, um, First Amendment violation.

00:34:41.160 No, but you're right about, about Grindr.

00:34:43.320 And there are other cases that are coming up soon.

00:34:47.120 Um, I don't know if you guys have heard about the DJI case, uh, potentially.

00:34:53.940 So DJI is a Chinese company that makes drones.

00:34:58.060 They are the world, world's leader in the drone market.

00:35:02.140 They produce, you know, all, all the commercial stuff.

00:35:04.380 Like if you have friends that own drones, you know, farmers that want to do agricultural surveys or just hobbyists, they all have DJI.

00:35:11.760 And, uh, recently there has been a lot of, uh, furrow about, about DJI drones because, you know, it's collecting a lot of information.

00:35:22.400 You're flying these drones around, um, you know, your house, maybe near a military installation or near an airport or something.

00:35:30.880 And there are actually these things called geofences where the software can block the drone from entering certain protective spaces determined by the FAA.

00:35:40.000 Um, but, I don't know, last week, I think, the geofences were dropped.

00:35:45.600 And so it was maybe five, six days before the inauguration.

00:35:49.360 Um, the software, the DJI software dropped the geofencing.

00:35:53.760 So that meant that the drones could actually go a lot closer to airports and things like that.

00:35:58.740 That's why there were, uh, concerns.

00:36:00.100 Um, but imagine that you're, again, this is another issue with who's controlling the stuff.

00:36:06.160 Like, you have a geopolitical adversary.

00:36:09.040 Um, this is a Chinese company that essentially can just change their software and change the performance and, and what you're doing with these drones.

00:36:18.520 This is a scary situation to be in, not to mention that currently as it stands, because we've outsourced our, you know, so much of our industrial capacity, the United States cannot build a drone exclusively and solely in America.

00:36:33.220 We cannot make all the parts.

00:36:35.380 We've lost the capacity to do so.

00:36:37.560 And in a world in which we've just seen, you know, the dangers of an unsecured supply chain, we just saw one of the most, uh, brilliant, uh, you know, counter-terrorism attempts ever made, uh, when Israel managed to infiltrate supply chains for pagers, for Hezbollah pagers. 0.66

00:36:59.580 And all these pages simultaneously blowing up in a very surgically, uh, tuned attack, you would want to secure your supply chains.

00:37:11.400 Imagining, you know, letting your drones, which are now dispersed, I mean, there are millions and millions of drone owners now in the United States.

00:37:18.760 And so this same national security issue is going to come up with DJI very soon.

00:37:24.800 There are, there have been national security probes into it.

00:37:27.120 There is talk of potentially banning it.

00:37:29.960 So it's, yeah, it's not just, you know, Grindr.

00:37:32.200 It's a lot of other companies that, that are now at risk of, um, being banned.

00:37:37.460 Do you think the issue here, Melissa, is that I think, you know, the Francis Fukuyama, uh, the end of history in 1991, that there's been this sort of sense that, well, we don't really have adversaries anymore.

00:37:50.080 It's one big world.

00:37:51.480 We're all going to hold hands and sing Kumbaya and trade.

00:37:54.560 And, and a lot of efforts and overtures were made to China, uh, to try and bring them into the, into the global economy, which has happened.

00:38:02.480 But what hasn't happened is what everybody claimed would happen, which was the idea that, well, if, if they get richer, then they're going to become freer.

00:38:09.800 And that really hasn't happened.

00:38:11.700 And, and the standoff that now exists between geopolitically seems to me like a standoff between democracies and authoritarian countries, effectively.

00:38:20.080 It's not so much about ideology as much as it is about the form of government.

00:38:24.060 And this way, this Western way of thinking is a kind of luxury belief, almost the idea that we don't have enemies.

00:38:32.580 We don't have people who would use power that we give them over us and the vulnerabilities that we expose to them in order to do things or achieve things at our expense.

00:38:43.440 Do you think this conversation about, about forcing TikTok to divest or people talk about having a band, likewise, some of the issues you mentioned is really fundamentally a gradual process of realization that we're not in the end of history world.

00:38:59.200 We're in a world where at least two countries are attempting to prize the leadership away from the Western world.

00:39:06.740 And we're going to have to reckon with that somehow.

00:39:09.860 Yeah, I, I, to some extent, I do think the fever has kind of broken over this.

00:39:14.380 We have started to realize that the world that we were promised pursuing a, you know, pro engagement attitude towards China in the hopes that they would liberalize, in the hopes that they would open up, turn out to be a bad miscalculation.

00:39:33.260 Because it turns out that they were then kind of exporting their own authoritarian ways.

00:39:39.320 Like, you know, the Chinese state has not only built a surveillance system for their own people, but they've exported that surveillance system now to us.

00:39:50.880 And if they are able, well, through the Internet of Things, through the technologies, you know, and if they're able to actually use our own laws against us.

00:40:02.820 Like, we're essentially cucking ourselves with our own laws, if you think about it.

00:40:06.160 Because if they, if they can use that, if they can claim, imagine if they were successful in claiming First Amendment violations, right?

00:40:13.960 The irony of just the situation where an authoritarian state that denies free speech to its own citizens can claim First Amendment violations to its own benefit, then I think we deserve to lose World War III.

00:40:27.600 We might as well just wave the white flag, just, you know, cut our losses, just, just at this point, just give up prematurely.

00:40:34.160 Because we just cannot, you know, closed societies can hack open societies very easily.

00:40:40.500 We've seen so many examples of this.

00:40:42.280 And if we cannot, you know, have muscular principles that we are able to defend our, our way of life and our system and our laws, then on the grounds that somebody is denying some, you know, basic freedoms, I just don't know how we're even going to face up against the reality that we do have foreign adversaries.

00:41:10.260 They want control in this, you know, increasingly bipolar world.

00:41:16.040 We've seen Russia and China really get pushed together.

00:41:21.540 It's, they've gotten closer since the, you know, the, the Russia-Ukraine war as well.

00:41:27.000 And it's, they're now coming together to even form things like, you know, digital currencies that own central banks, digital banks.

00:41:35.320 And it's very worrying because the world is now decoupling.

00:41:40.240 But I do think that decoupling is necessary, right?

00:41:42.680 Because the Soviet Union collapsed on its own contradictions.

00:41:48.520 It, you know, pursued glass knot and then perestroika. 0.87

00:41:53.720 And it collapsed because it just could not sustain itself economically.

00:41:59.660 The problem with China is that they studied the Soviet Union's collapse very carefully because they know that that's exactly what they need to avoid. 0.81

00:42:09.520 And so they did the reverse, where they actually opened up markets first before anything else, right?

00:42:15.540 So they, they welcomed the world.

00:42:17.720 Okay, we're going to, we're going to trade.

00:42:20.040 And so they imported, well, they, I wouldn't say imported capitalism, but they, they just opened up their markets.

00:42:25.320 And so they were able to get rich and, and, you know, raise the standard of living, which is by no means, I'm not going to discount that.

00:42:32.540 Like they have, if you look at the average Chinese person's life today, it is remarkable.

00:42:37.460 They have really provided riches really for, for, you know, large swaths of the Chinese population.

00:42:44.540 And so many people have just been lifted out of poverty in, in, in a matter of just one generation.

00:42:52.080 But now they, their, you know, way of life, it's, for many Chinese, even coming to America is a downgrade.

00:42:58.400 If you've seen our trains, if you've seen our way of life with crime and everything.

00:43:02.060 And so there is this real sense that the, you know, the Chinese government's policies were, they're very grateful for them.

00:43:08.720 Um, and, and they have not opened up politically and socially at all.

00:43:15.640 So despite being so wealthy, and that's partly, you know, it's, it's because also that they have actually closed off their entire system.

00:43:23.800 And the government is able to control, you know, what, what the whole pipeline.

00:43:29.060 So if you go, you know, from kindergarten, what you're reading, you have to study Marxist thought, Xi Jinping thought.

00:43:34.020 It's kind of drilled into you, um, since you were a kid.

00:43:39.840 And the Chinese system is robust.

00:43:43.560 There's no indication at all that it is going the way of the Soviet Union.

00:43:47.980 Um, it, the advances that the Chinese state has made on AI, on a lot of these technologies that are just boosting productivity at the forefront.

00:43:57.440 About five years ago, China didn't make a single EV.

00:44:00.920 Today, it's the world market leader, surpass Tesla.

00:44:04.020 In, in EVs.

00:44:05.760 So I think nobody has really any idea how to deal with a rich communist.

00:44:12.080 Because the communists failed because they, they just failed because they were poor.

00:44:17.280 Yeah.

00:44:17.440 They, they couldn't actually, you know, their ideas could not survive contact with reality.

00:44:22.580 But the Chinese state has figured out how to do that.

00:44:26.740 And it is a weird combination, hybrid combination.

00:44:31.420 Uh, James Lindsay talks about this, actually, that you can't really see China as just a communist country.

00:44:36.640 They say they are.

00:44:37.520 Um, but it's really, they've kind of taken elements of both.

00:44:41.040 They're communist and fascist.

00:44:42.300 They're capitalist and socialist.

00:44:44.180 Um, and they've kind of created this blend.

00:44:47.300 Uh, that is really formidable.

00:44:50.660 And there's no clear sign of how we're really going to actually deal with this.

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00:46:09.920 Trim your chesticles with the besticles. 0.87

00:46:13.920 It makes no sense.

00:46:15.640 It's such a profound point about the moulding of the two economic systems.

00:46:21.740 Because when I went to Beijing in 2006, I was blown away by the amount of Louis Vuitton stores.

00:46:28.580 In particular, there was one Louis Vuitton store in the centre of Beijing.

00:46:33.540 It looked like Ikea.

00:46:35.140 This thing had about six different levels and it was massive.

00:46:37.760 And there were people just piling in and buying what seemed to me mountains of Louis Vuitton.

00:46:43.320 The wealth in China is huge.

00:46:45.500 And also, it represents a very real threat to the countries around it.

00:46:52.040 In particular, Taiwan.

00:46:53.720 When you think actually, I think it was a couple of years ago, that Taiwan was accusing TikTok of helping to push pro-Beijing, anti-Taiwanese propaganda into the minds of young people via the app.

00:47:10.620 Yeah, although, interestingly, Taiwan hasn't actually banned TikTok.

00:47:15.260 It's only banned from military devices.

00:47:17.020 Unlike, say, India, which banned the app entirely in July 2020.

00:47:23.460 There were border clashes between the two countries and India was like, enough, we're just going to ban not just TikTok, they ban a bunch of other Chinese-owned apps.

00:47:32.720 The propaganda worry is real, right?

00:47:35.980 I mean, you can see it from, you know, the basic fact that, like, people are, you know, picking their identities through TikTok as well.

00:47:49.260 It's so easy, it so easily influences young people that you have phenomenons that are social contagions that spread like wildfire on this app.

00:47:59.500 Susie Weiss wrote a great piece for the Free Press documenting the rise of, like, pick-your-own-mental-health issue.

00:48:10.840 So, things like Tourette's syndrome, you know, with the verbal tics, because it looks very cute on camera, but kind of like the more performative kind of mental-health issues.

00:48:20.360 Not until they start talking.

00:48:21.440 That doesn't look that cute at all.

00:48:23.180 Yes, but it makes them kind of special.

00:48:25.020 It makes them special, you know?

00:48:26.980 No, I've just, I have heard quite a few people with Tourette's use language that wouldn't go down so well on social media.

00:48:35.120 Let's just put it like that.

00:48:35.800 You know, get your band.

00:48:36.800 Yeah.

00:48:37.760 But, and you have also eating disorders that have spread like wildfire on the same app.

00:48:46.040 And so, you know, social contagions so easily take to TikTok.

00:48:50.760 Why wouldn't, you know, the ability to actually change people's minds on a single topic?

00:48:57.620 There have been some theories about this, you know, this idea that the entity behind orchestrating this whole desire to ban TikTok is actually Israel.

00:49:08.740 I'm sure.

00:49:09.020 I don't know if you guys have come across this online.

00:49:11.060 You have.

00:49:12.640 And the idea is that...

00:49:13.400 Israel? 0.53

00:49:13.700 Yes.

00:49:14.200 Why? 0.98

00:49:15.040 Well, it's always the Jews' fault. 1.00

00:49:16.580 Oh, it's just Jews. 1.00

00:49:17.580 All right.

00:49:17.900 What their argument is, is that there's been too much pro-Palestinian messages have been spread via TikTok.

00:49:27.060 And that has engendered sympathy to the Palestinian cause.

00:49:30.580 And what the Jews, Israel and Mossad have done is then pressure the US government to shut it down because it's making people too aware of Israel's war crimes.

00:49:41.960 I see.

00:49:42.640 That is the argument.

00:49:43.540 Of course, this is an artifact of what the...

00:49:48.200 So anything that is allowed, that trends on TikTok, that becomes popular, is essentially allowed to trend.

00:49:54.860 Right?

00:49:55.000 So that is a function of what is happening in terms of the levers of control on TikTok.

00:50:02.820 But regardless, this argument is based on the idea that there's no other way for pro-Palestinian content to show up, which is completely false on other platforms.

00:50:14.980 I mean, you have, you know, influences like Candace Owens, like Ian Carroll, who have amassed huge audiences.

00:50:24.200 And even after veering into anti-Semitic territory, far beyond just pro-Palestine, they have built even bigger followings on other platforms.

00:50:37.460 I see them on Twitter.

00:50:38.680 I see them on, you know, Instagram and other platforms.

00:50:41.360 So it doesn't look to me like they needed TikTok to boost their content.

00:50:47.380 It's not like there's a dearth of, you know, opportunities for pro-Palestine content to surface on other platforms.

00:50:54.920 This argument seems to me kind of rooted in this, you know, everything, just try to find the Jewish connection and just blame it on that.

00:51:05.340 The irony of that is that Jeff Yass is actually Jewish. 0.91

00:51:08.340 So the guy who has one of the biggest stakes in ByteDance, who wants ByteDance to continue to own TikTok, is Jewish. 0.99

00:51:14.900 So it's like, which is it?

00:51:17.500 Like, you know, it just seems like it's Srojanica's Jew all over again. 1.00

00:51:21.220 Do you think, looking at it and everything that we've discussed, do you think it has a future in the U.S.?

00:51:29.220 Because I think the executive order lasts for 75 days off the top of my head, which means that they've got about 10 or so weeks, really.

00:51:39.820 Yeah.

00:51:40.280 Two and a bit months in order to sort this out.

00:51:42.360 Now, that's not a long time when you think about the deal that needs to be struck, the various parties, the fact that the Chinese government, ByteDance, have dug their heels in.

00:51:53.860 Yeah.

00:51:54.340 This is a tricky deal to get over the line, isn't it?

00:51:57.320 It is.

00:51:57.740 But, you know, they had so much more time than that.

00:52:00.160 I mean, the original bill said 270 days.

00:52:02.760 They had nine months to actually find a buyer from the moment Joe Biden actually signed the law, the bill into law.

00:52:12.560 And they didn't bother.

00:52:14.300 They kept insisting, you know, TikTok cannot be sold.

00:52:18.740 We are, you know, going to, we would rather shut it down, the CEO said.

00:52:23.400 So there was this idea that, like, this cannot happen.

00:52:26.520 They blamed it on Chinese export controls.

00:52:28.960 They said China just, you know, Beijing has export controls on algorithms, and this is one that falls under them, which, again, is very ironic because you just were trying to base your argument that TikTok is not a Chinese company and there's no Chinese influence.

00:52:43.980 But then apparently China is not allowing you to sell this app, which is cuts against your argument.

00:52:50.240 And so, yeah, fast forward to where we are now.

00:52:55.400 Trump has signed, has passed an executive order saying, all right, we're going to, you know, try to find some time.

00:53:02.000 By the way, I don't even know if this executive order can actually stand in court.

00:53:06.140 Again, because the law has gone into effect.

00:53:08.940 The idea of whether or not there's been qualified buyers lined up, it doesn't seem like a deal is anywhere close to being looked at.

00:53:24.360 It's just in such early stages.

00:53:27.520 But the latest reports I've read is that there is some indication that ByteDance is softening.

00:53:33.900 They seem to entertain this idea of a 50-50 joint venture situation with China.

00:53:43.900 My worry, though, is that, you know, and this is kind of the day work, my day job, what that entails is analyzing China risk, China exposure, and, you know, advising companies on how to navigate that.

00:54:01.120 But is that, let's say the leading candidate is Elon Musk, okay?

00:54:06.560 And by the way, I'm an Elon fan.

00:54:08.980 I think he's done wonderful things for not just America, but humanity at large.

00:54:13.880 So you're pro-not. 0.55

00:54:15.980 I'm pro-autism.

00:54:18.560 But my concern is that, let's say the Chinese government just comes out and says, you know, the only person that you can sell this app to is Elon Musk.

00:54:26.720 The problem with that is that Elon is very exposed to Chinese markets through his other companies.

00:54:38.800 So, yeah, we don't have a Chinese owner.

00:54:41.400 But if Elon Musk owns it, he, through Tesla and SpaceX, because of, you know, they have factories in China, they can't manufacture a lot of things without the Chinese market.

00:54:52.720 He himself is actually exposed.

00:54:56.000 And, you know, one of the things that Elon is that, I mean, I love the fact that he is so troll-y.

00:55:03.820 A lot of people don't like it.

00:55:05.020 They kind of, you know, they say, like, if Elon just shuts his mouth, it's the same thing they used to say about Trump, right?

00:55:10.060 If he just shuts his mouth, think of, you know, how much more people will like him and his policies.

00:55:13.640 I actually kind of like that we have the richest man on Earth, serious billionaire who knows everything about rockets and, you know, brain chips, tweeting memes about cocks or something.

00:55:26.080 I personally enjoy that.

00:55:27.980 It doesn't bother me.

00:55:29.680 So he's quite a loose cannon on a lot of things.

00:55:32.160 And we know that.

00:55:32.980 He'll say things that are sometimes wrong.

00:55:34.740 He's been tweeting a lot about U.K. politics recently.

00:55:37.040 But the one thing he's very careful about, try to find the worst thing he's ever said about the CCP or about China, it's hard to find, right?

00:55:49.420 And so my concern is that through exposure, and this is why it does matter, Elon might be a little bit beholden to the Chinese government in other ways.

00:56:02.580 I mean, he's not obligated to turn it over, you know, to turn American user data to the Chinese, like in the current structure, but he might be beholden to the Chinese government in other ways.

00:56:12.960 And now that Donald Trump, with Elon Musk's support, is in charge of America, how do you see that play out vis-a-vis China?

00:56:23.800 Because that was a big talking point in his first presidency.

00:56:27.740 China, you know, every comedian had a routine about it, the whole thing.

00:56:31.780 And that's gone pretty quiet now.

00:56:34.300 So obviously the war in Ukraine has meant that the focus is there.

00:56:37.860 The war in Gaza has taken the focus there too.

00:56:42.040 And what I see from Donald Trump is a willingness to do deals that might not be, that allow him to get a deal without necessarily getting the best outcome for the side that he might have been seen to be supporting, let's put it that way, right?

00:57:02.180 You know, you look at Israel talking about the ceasefire, which I think a lot of people feel is, I mean, you're getting the hostages back, but you're doing exactly the same thing that caused October 7th in the first place, which is you're releasing terrorists from jails.

00:57:16.500 You're sending them back to Hamas, who are celebrating. 1.00

00:57:19.860 On Ukraine, clearly he's going to try and do a deal as quickly as possible without necessarily regard for the long-term consequences.

00:57:28.580 Is he going to, what do you make of his China approach now in that context?

00:57:34.560 That's a very good question.

00:57:37.140 So my cards on the table, when I first did your show, it was 2019, right?

00:57:40.780 So almost towards the end of Trump's term, I appeared very Trump sympathetic.

00:57:46.340 And that's because, you know, 2016, I was actually quite upset that he, in shock that he won against Hillary.

00:57:53.940 I was an Obama stan.

00:57:55.900 I used to watch Daily Show with Jon Stewart all the time.

00:57:58.500 And so that was my factory settings going into, you know, the Trump term.

00:58:03.000 So I was upset.

00:58:03.920 But midway through, I noticed that Donald Trump had single-handedly reversed what was the consensus that drove U.S. foreign policy for decades since Nixon went to China.

00:58:17.700 From something that was pro-engagement or some sort of like tacit acceptance of China's rise in the world to a offensive position. 0.52

00:58:29.220 He knocked Beijing off balance.

00:58:31.400 He started trade wars.

00:58:32.620 He essentially changed our posture.

00:58:37.760 And I really liked that he did that.

00:58:41.640 And, you know, when I went on in 2019, you could probably hear I was quite sympathetic to Trump.

00:58:47.240 I didn't hate Trump in the way that a lot of, you know, at the time was quite fashionable to do.

00:58:53.080 A few months later, COVID was going to upend all our lives.

00:58:58.780 And I think that then shifted everybody to realize exactly, like the mass slipped basically during COVID.

00:59:05.700 Like everybody realized, okay, actually, China is a threat. 0.91

00:59:09.460 They are not an ally.

00:59:11.480 And it was obvious in the way they conducted themselves, you know, how they retaliated against countries that wanted the investigation into COVID origins by economic pressure.

00:59:21.880 And, you know, this whole thing about China extending its censorship tentacles to even companies beyond China.

00:59:29.780 American companies couldn't, you know, say what they wanted to say.

00:59:32.400 You couldn't tweet what you wanted to tweet in support of Hong Kong if you were a basketball coach.

00:59:37.120 So all of this made people realize, like, okay, this was not the sleeping dragon that we thought it was.

00:59:43.800 And so fast forward to today, you know, I thought Donald Trump was going to be able to build upon that legacy, which, to Biden's credit, he continued.

00:59:55.900 He extended a lot of Trump's tariffs on China and even in some ways actually doubled down on America first.

01:00:06.240 You know, the CHIPS Act and a lot of things that he had passed.

01:00:08.940 And so I thought, okay, wow, it's like a permanent change in the entire foreign policy establishment.

01:00:16.120 And so what's shocking is that that's why this reversal is taking me by surprise because, you know, this is Trump's last term.

01:00:26.680 He doesn't have to get reelected.

01:00:28.040 He doesn't actually have to do anything that's popular. 0.98

01:00:30.980 He can actually just be a total jackass and make America great again. 0.95

01:00:35.980 Like, just pursue all the unpopular things. 0.99

01:00:37.960 He doesn't have to seek for anyone's approval.

01:00:40.920 And so it's a bit shocking to me that he has taken this posture.

01:00:45.120 And I think, you know, there seems to be this uneasy balance right now.

01:00:50.540 MAGA 2.01, because it was such a broad tent, you have, it was like a weird band of people that kind of came together to deliver the White House, right, for Trump.

01:01:01.480 And a big part of it was the tech right, which was non-existent the first time.

01:01:06.860 And the tech right and the original MAGA right, they don't agree on a lot of things, except that they just hate woke people.

01:01:13.500 They just hate what the Democrats have done, and rightly so, right, to America.

01:01:19.320 The first fissure of this was obvious over Christmas when there was this huge war about H-1B visas and this debate about, you know, how many H-1B visas.

01:01:31.500 And the tech bros are very pro-H-1Bs because they hire a lot of them to staff their companies in Silicon Valley. 0.96

01:01:38.980 The MAGA right was just like, no, why do we want to turn America into India, right? 0.54

01:01:43.680 That was their argument.

01:01:44.840 And so, not only do they not agree on these issues about immigration, they also don't agree on, say, like, lifestyle.

01:01:54.240 Like, the tech bros are Burning Man going hedonists, right, who want to, you know, play transhumanism to its logical conclusion.

01:02:04.020 The MAGA 1.0 are social conservatives that want to return to tradition or they tend to, you know, be more Christian, right?

01:02:11.160 And so, on lifestyle, they are also very different.

01:02:16.320 And then on the China issue, that's the other issue where in tech, generally, there is this more, because they're all, you know, business people have been a lot more pro-engagement, a lot more willing to work with China and to, you know, try a different tact.

01:02:32.420 I think that is quite natural when you are just doing business in general.

01:02:38.140 There's always a deal to be made, right?

01:02:40.160 Exactly.

01:02:40.600 That's the world of business.

01:02:42.280 Yeah.

01:02:42.520 There's always a deal to be made.

01:02:44.140 Exactly.

01:02:44.780 And even, you know, if you're a venture capital company, it's hard to not want to be tempted by certain startups in China that are, you know, making huge advances in robotics to AI.

01:02:56.860 So, you want to look at those deals as well.

01:02:58.420 So, there's a natural predilection for wanting to see China in that older, you know, pre-Trump way than compared to the MAGA folks.

01:03:08.320 Like, so, if you've heard Steve Bannon talk recently, he thinks Elon is a demon.

01:03:15.220 Like, he's said things like that.

01:03:17.560 And if you see both of these individuals as figureheads for their respective sides in this broader Trump, you know, 2.0 tent, it's – I don't know how this is going to play out.

01:03:30.040 Because, to be fair to the tech right, I would say that even within the tech right, there are the China hawks and there are the non-China hawks.

01:03:37.980 So, Peter Thiel is a huge China hawk.

01:03:40.400 Yeah, we've had him on the show talking about that.

01:03:42.200 Yeah, I've seen that episode.

01:03:43.660 So, it's not monolithic even on that side of the tent.

01:03:49.640 But one of the things I think we need to remember, though, is that they need each other, I think.

01:03:57.400 You know, in the same way that a healthy society needs conservatives and liberals, I think MAGA 2.0, they need the tech right and they need the MAGA right.

01:04:06.960 Because the tech right is what drags them into the future.

01:04:09.320 Think about getting to Mars.

01:04:11.920 Think about, you know, being future-oriented, innovation.

01:04:15.520 You need to have high trade openness for that.

01:04:17.440 And then MAGA right is like, okay, don't go too far, guys.

01:04:20.740 Like, you know, the thing you want to implant in your head or the artificial wounds, that is way too far.

01:04:27.080 So, it's kind of like the gas pedal and the brakes within that movement.

01:04:31.440 But given all the personalities and there are a lot of egos there, I don't know how that will last.

01:04:38.560 Yeah, and that's the key point, I think, is the ego element of it.

01:04:42.280 And that all of these people involved in this movement, particularly at the figurehead, they've all got huge egos.

01:04:49.620 And how able are they going to be to step back and let something that they profoundly disagree with or challenges their worldview get implemented at party level?

01:04:59.860 Yeah, no, I agree.

01:05:01.020 We recently reached a huge YouTube milestone with a million subscribers.

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01:07:35.840 The obvious question is what happens the first time Elon Musk disagrees with Donald Trump on an issue they both care about.

01:07:44.280 What happens the first time RFK Jr. and Donald Trump, who don't agree on a lot of things, are forced to recognize and deal with that.

01:07:53.660 What happens on all those things, right?

01:07:56.800 And the question is, have all those people, do they have the ability for four years to set their ego inside and say, this is the guy that got elected.

01:08:06.840 We're going to do whatever he says.

01:08:08.680 Right.

01:08:09.060 Is that going to happen?

01:08:11.260 Well, I guess we'll find out.

01:08:12.580 There should be a poly market to bet, you know, like when we think the coalition falls, like on these all these pairwise relationships, because I know I agree with you.

01:08:21.120 I mean, the one thing Trump seems very different this time around is that he seems very much more willing to credit a team.

01:08:28.100 He has actually kind of dialed back his central need for being front and center.

01:08:35.700 He's given, you know, he steps aside, he gives Elon a lot of credit.

01:08:38.380 He's like, oh, JD, come over here.

01:08:40.020 Even when he had his acceptance speech on November, on the night he won the election, he credited his chief of staff.

01:08:47.480 You know, he said this woman that came out, I can't remember her name, Susan something.

01:08:52.500 If it was a man, you'd remember. 0.96

01:08:55.580 Well, to be fair, she didn't want the credit.

01:08:58.400 She was that kind of woman who was like, you know, you actually look up to a lot of people.

01:09:02.400 Even if you can't remember her name, exactly.

01:09:05.480 Or what she looks like.

01:09:06.440 Yeah.

01:09:07.040 Well, it's a fascinating time.

01:09:09.100 And I guess what has surprised me is how just quite a few positions that Donald Trump has expressed in the past don't seem to be nearly as strong in his mind at the moment and the way he's communicating them.

01:09:24.000 Like what?

01:09:24.460 What else do you think?

01:09:25.220 Well, I think China is one of them.

01:09:27.040 I think the, like I said, I think the Israel deal I found quite surprising, to be honest, because I don't, it's a good deal for the parents of the hostages.

01:09:37.160 I don't think it's a good deal for Israel, not even remotely. 0.99

01:09:40.060 It feels like to me, although I understand that Netanyahu is under a lot of pressure internally.

01:09:45.200 So that may have been the main factor there.

01:09:48.860 And I just guess it remains to be seen.

01:09:51.460 I suppose I said this the day on, I did this thing with Stephen Bartlett on Diary CEO with Scott Galloway and Daniel Priestley, which is, I think, ultimately, the presidency is a reactive position.

01:10:03.260 Like Donald Trump was on course to be reelected in 2020 and then COVID happens and it ruins everything, right?

01:10:11.460 So the war in Ukraine is another example.

01:10:14.180 There are lots of these things that will, October 7th is another example.

01:10:18.000 There are lots of these things that happen that change the course of history and the president, all they can do is react to that.

01:10:24.380 And that's what's going to be interesting to see because, as you say, there are internal dividing lines within the MAGA coalition.

01:10:33.460 And when those events happen, that's when there's the propensity for that to start breaking apart because people are going to take different positions.

01:10:42.540 I mean, one of the things about, you know, illegal immigration, are they actually going to be able to get rid of all the people that they promised to get rid of? 0.99

01:10:50.980 Is the birthright citizenship executive order going to stand up in court?

01:10:55.820 Almost certainly not.

01:10:57.040 Yeah, there will be legal challenges.

01:10:58.460 It's going to get challenged in court.

01:11:00.200 And by my understanding of the American legal structure, birthright citizenship is part of America, right?

01:11:07.780 So what happens on that?

01:11:09.560 What happens on all the other things?

01:11:11.440 It's going to be a very, very interesting four years.

01:11:13.600 Very interesting.

01:11:14.520 But America right now is filled with a sense of optimism and possibility, which is a great thing to see.

01:11:19.900 That's fantastic for any country to have that.

01:11:22.900 The question is what's going to happen when these hard moments come.

01:11:25.820 Yeah.

01:11:26.200 Particularly if, and there's been a lot of people talking about this, the future of Taiwan.

01:11:31.080 What happens if China, you know, they've made the odd noise, you know, they've done the odd cheeky maneuver. 0.99

01:11:36.960 But what happens if they actually, in the next couple of years, decide to make a real play for Taiwan?

01:11:41.760 And do you think that will happen, Melissa?

01:11:43.180 So, yes, the question is just when.

01:11:47.820 That's the, you know, that's the big question.

01:11:50.300 Because U.S. military estimates by 2027, China will make a move on Taiwan.

01:11:58.080 But if, who, why would you put out such a, you know, hard and fast kind of threshold on this?

01:12:05.500 It's not like, has any war in history ever been, you know, preemptively predicted like that?

01:12:11.700 No, these things kind of happen on the timeline of the perpetrator, right?

01:12:16.120 So whenever actually China decides to move is when China decides to move.

01:12:19.300 But it is intrinsically baked into Chinese, it's, it's, it's, the Chinese state has for the longest time said that reunification is almost like manifest destiny.

01:12:35.500 So it is going to happen.

01:12:37.400 The question is when and how, right?

01:12:39.740 The other question is how is Taiwan going to be taken militarily?

01:12:44.880 Are we going to, you know, have paratroopers come in and storm the island, amphibious vehicles landing?

01:12:51.120 Or is it just going to be something more like a soft coercion over time where you almost give Taiwan no choice, whether it's in the form of a naval blockade?

01:13:01.200 If you can move ships and, you know, choke off certain points in the sea surrounding Taiwan and prevent oil, prevent food from coming in and out.

01:13:13.240 Well, you've kind of choked Taiwan out and given it no choice. 1.00

01:13:17.120 The worry about Trump specifically is that, you know, he is, has campaigned on being a anti-war president.

01:13:26.960 And that's very much baked into his expectations as well.

01:13:31.720 So what does Trump think of Taiwan?

01:13:34.160 He said a lot of things.

01:13:35.180 And one of the things that, unlike President Biden, who was very clear on, like, Taiwan, we will intervene if Taiwan is taken, which is, you know, actually Biden kind of defied U.S., what was the standard for U.S. foreign policy back then, which is strategic ambiguity.

01:13:57.820 It's like, we will never say we will, but, you know, the understanding is kind of like, don't ask, don't tell, but for foreign policy.

01:14:05.780 And then after Joe Biden says this, his national security people then come out and say, oh, no, no, no, he doesn't mean that.

01:14:13.960 We still respect the one China policy. 0.86

01:14:16.540 We're not going to intervene.

01:14:17.800 Or, you know, it should be ambiguous.

01:14:21.760 And so it's like a weird thing where for the last four years, we've had a situation where the official posturing of the United States towards the Taiwan issue was strategic ambiguity about strategic ambiguity because of this, like, seesaw thing going on at the executive level.

01:14:39.100 Trump comes in and, you know, he's been asked a lot of questions about what do you think about Taiwan?

01:14:43.120 How should we deal with that?

01:14:44.400 And he essentially says that, oh, you know, it's very important to Taiwan produces a lot of our chips.

01:14:52.840 But he kind of insinuated that if we're able to, you know, deal with that problem, the chips problem, basically China can have it.

01:15:03.760 So he's kind of insinuated that.

01:15:06.700 That sounds like exactly what I would think Trump would say, which is, well, we need the chips, so let's do a deal.

01:15:12.080 Who cares about this piece of land?

01:15:13.260 Right.

01:15:14.140 And, yeah, and we, you know, we don't know what, you know, that's a thing about also, I think one of the worst legacies of the whole 20 years of war on terror is just the American appetite for any kind of intervention is essentially zero.

01:15:30.700 So that's also precisely why we saw, you know, recently when you had this whole debate about the TikTok ban being that, well, Congress unanimously upheld it.

01:15:41.980 And SCOTUS unanimously uphold it.

01:15:44.420 There's a certain kind of person for whom that kind of action where everyone, including the media, agrees with something.

01:15:52.420 Oh, we must now take the other side.

01:15:53.980 And it's because of the hangover, I think, from, you know, the WMD fiasco leading up to the Iraq invasion. 0.88

01:16:00.200 So how we are going to deal with this remains to be seen because Trump also is one of those figures where what he says and what he does, you have to have a lot of room for that.

01:16:11.860 And that's why I'm, you know, not necessarily going to think it's the end of the world.

01:16:19.080 Even right now when he's playing these games, he often does this where he'll say, he'll, you know, talk very sweetly to, you know, people like Kim Jong-un and the press has like a freak out over stuff like that.

01:16:34.560 But then if you look at what he does, like he would praise C, but then he, you know, slapped massive tariffs on China and like becomes very assertive on trade issues.

01:16:46.240 So it's like Trump, that's just always been his style.

01:16:49.860 So when he says things like, oh, yeah, you know, anti-war, don't want to, we should minimize the chances of war.

01:16:55.780 And I don't know what that really means in terms of it's, we're back in a way, if you really know how to read Trump, to strategic ambiguity and his unpredictability in this day and age with the chaos of the global war orders.

01:17:11.220 Actually, I think it's a huge pro in our favor.

01:17:16.460 Couldn't agree with you more.

01:17:17.740 Well, Melissa, it's been wonderful to have you back on the show.

01:17:21.200 We're going to head on over to Substack where our audience are going to ask you their questions in a second.

01:17:25.520 But before we do, we always end with the same question, which is what's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be?

01:17:31.120 Before Melissa answers a final question at the end of the episode, make sure to head over to our Substack. 1.00

01:17:37.600 The link is in the description where you'll be able to see this.

01:17:42.060 What is Xi Jinping like as a person?

01:17:45.140 What are his basic personality traits?

01:17:48.380 China has a vision for where they want to be in 100 years.

01:17:51.160 How can we encourage more long term thinking in the West?

01:17:54.820 How do you think China's looming demographic crisis will change things?

01:18:01.020 Are you recording this?

01:18:02.820 Excellent.

01:18:03.380 This is great bonus content.

01:18:06.600 We should be banning OnlyFans also.

01:18:10.960 Since we're talking about banning TikTok, I think OnlyFans is the other one.

01:18:17.760 What about the free speech element?

01:18:18.940 There is no free speech to show you're, yeah, you shouldn't be.

01:18:26.700 Ban OnlyFans.

01:18:28.320 Yeah, I do think OnlyFans is particularly toxic to society.

01:18:32.940 And in, you know, in ways that stripping or escorting or prostitution isn't. 0.99

01:18:42.140 And that's because it lowers the costs of participating in these professions.

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01:18:56.440 And, you know, a lot of people make money from that.

01:18:59.180 But the problem is especially insidious with OnlyFans because I think it just rewires dynamics between men and women.

01:19:05.920 And because the costs are so low, I don't have to put myself at risk.

01:19:10.880 I don't have to actually physically touch, you know, a man.

01:19:14.440 I don't have to physically give him a lap dance or sleep with him as an escort.

01:19:18.920 Now I'm on OnlyFans.

01:19:19.900 It's just a parasocial relationship.

01:19:21.780 I'm, you know, showing my body to my fans for money.

01:19:25.720 But the men on the other side are also thinking that they are in a real relationship with these women.

01:19:33.840 And so they don't then seek out actual real relationships.

01:19:38.260 Their entire relationship to sex and love is massively transformed in ways that they just, you know,

01:19:47.020 we look at the dating crisis, which leads to the marriage crisis, which leads to the childbirth crisis.

01:19:52.100 It is all related.

01:19:53.120 And I think something like OnlyFans, which one of the reports I saw was that the total amount generated on OnlyFans

01:20:00.880 has now exceeded the entire combined salaries of all NBA players.

01:20:04.860 Okay?

01:20:05.160 Like, this is so disturbing.

01:20:07.740 So disturbing.

01:20:09.140 Because now all these women who are like, you know, oh, I'm just going to strip to get myself through college. 1.00

01:20:15.460 Now you can just do it forever on OnlyFans.

01:20:19.240 Why would you ever get a real job again?

01:20:21.740 Although maybe that's moot because AI is just going to end up taking all our jobs. 0.57

01:20:26.340 So anyway, I will say that if you are a parent, you literally have one job.

01:20:31.740 Don't let your girl get on OnlyFans. 0.99

01:20:33.760 And don't let your boy pay for OnlyFans.

01:20:36.880 That's it.

01:20:37.680 That's the bar now.

01:20:38.600 It's like this low.

01:20:39.860 Well, the takeaway from this episode is we need to get on OnlyFans.

01:20:42.400 That's how we're going to make the real money.

01:20:45.580 All right.

01:20:46.260 Follow us over to Substack where we ask Melissa your questions.

01:20:51.900 As a Singaporean, how do you view the low-trust, cynical, and toxic relationship we have between the Electra and the state compared to Singapore?

01:21:00.280 We'll see you next time.

TRIGGERnometry - January 26, 2025

Melissa Chen - Should We Ban TikTok？

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