Usually, there is a fair amount of chance and accident when it comes to who makes the cut at political events and where exactly they sit. Journalists sometimes like to read into it all, but if we’re honest, we know chaos frequently reigns behind the scenes at these events. That said, it’s hard not to read just a little bit into who made the cut at President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday.
The fact that it took place inside the Capitol building rather than outside meant that the invite list probably had to be trimmed as well, and everyone who did go ended up sitting rather close to one another. That made for some interesting seating arrangements. It meant that a beaming George W. Bush got to sit quite close to Barack Obama (whose smile looked a little forced) and the Clintons (who weren’t smiling at all). (READ MORE: Is the Obama Divorce Rumor Just a Rumor?)
On the other side, right up front, the greatest tech minds in the country all sat next to one another, looking slightly uncomfortable — all except for one. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew sat toward the front but off in a corner, rather awkwardly close to Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard.
Chew’s position was odd, but not accidental. On Saturday evening, his social media app went dark in the U.S. after a law (signed by President Biden) penalizing app stores for updating or hosting TikTok on their platforms went into effect. Less than a day later, on Sunday afternoon, users were welcomed back to their accounts and told, “As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.!”
And Trump did not disappoint. Among the executive orders signed on day one was an order that will ostensibly delay the enforcement of the TikTok ban for another 75 days, giving the company a chance to try and reach a deal with the U.S. government (something it has failed to do since the law was signed last spring) or with a potential buyer.
The House and Senate passed the law as part of a package deal that included foreign aid to Israel and Ukraine, and TikTok immediately challenged it on First Amendment grounds. Back in December, three federal judges upheld the ban, and the U.S. Supreme Court agreed last Friday, the day before the law was supposed to go into effect. For now, despite Trump’s executive order, app stores still aren’t carrying the app or updating it — probably because the law that went into effect mandates a $5,000 fine per user levied against app stores granting access to the app.
You would think that Donald Trump might not mind the law. Just five years ago, during his first presidential term, he had tried to ban the company over national security concerns. A few years later, TikTok got the hint and moved its U.S. data storage to Texas, but it didn’t really help matters politically. Congress, tipped off by Donald Trump, couldn’t quite stomach the fact that ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, operates out of China. Thus the forced-sale-or-ban deal it came up with.
There are, of course, all sorts of things at issue in the case. The First Amendment rights of both the company and its users could be at play, although the Supreme Court’s argument that national security is a good enough reason to curtail those rights seems more than fair. During oral arguments, Chief Justice John Roberts pointed out that “expression” wasn’t at issue in the matter, rather Congress was addressing “a foreign adversary, as they’ve determined it is, gathering all this information about the 170 million people who use TikTok.”
It’s not often that Congress, as a whole, is concerned about things worth being concerned about, but this seems to be one of those very few instances in which they are. We know that Chinese companies are frequently forced to play the CCP’s national and international games. After all, the CCP “claims ownership of the state, the people, and businesses — leaving no boundary between the state and society.” (READ MORE: The Frightful Legacy of the Republican Never Trumpers)
As Shaomin Li pointed out astutely in our pages at The American Spectator, there are measurable consequences of this influence in the ratio of hashtags related to political topics sensitive to the CCP. The hashtag #FreeUyghurs, for instance, did much better on Instagram than it did on TikTok.
While the popularity of certain political topics on TikTok isn’t proof that the Chinese government is harvesting American data from the company, it is evidence that the CCP is interested in using the app for its own purposes.
The way out is simple. An American, or group of Americans, needs to purchase the app, and buyers are lining up. Jimmy Donaldson (better known as MrBeast) and billionaire Frank McCourt’s Project Liberty have both expressed interest in purchasing TikTok.
In all likelihood, the TikTok crisis will probably end in a deal that allows Americans to continue to spend their evenings scrolling through endless video clips recommended to them by an addictive algorithm. The only difference will be that their data is slightly less likely to be harvested and used against them by our nation’s adversaries.