U.S. president Donald Trump has been embroiled in a struggle with Chinese social media giant TikTok. But even though he started the conflict over national data security concerns, his actual complete reasoning has been difficult to gauge.
TikTok is a video sharing social media platform. It launched in 2016, and as of July 2020 it reported to have almost 700 million users over the world (Sherman, 2020). The U.S. president started voicing concerns earlier this year about national security hazards created by the presence of TikTok. The app is able to give a hyper-personalized experience thanks to all the data it generates from watching you interact with the videos. This is where Trump sees a problem, the app could give sensitive data of millions of Americans to the Chinese government. The United States would not be the first country to ban the app. Most notably, India banned it in June alongside 58 other Chinese apps following a rise in political tensions (Hamilton, 2020). When the U.S. secretary of expressed they were “certainly looking at” a potential full ban of the platform, it prompted TikTok to declare that “TikTok is led by an American CEO, with hundreds of employees and key leaders … here in the U.S.” and “We have never provided user data to the Chinese government, nor would we do so if asked.” (Doffman, 2020).
This dance is of course playing out against a backdrop of the U.S.-China trade war, which of itself has significant technological aspects. Making it uncertain whether national security risks were really Trump’s biggest motive. During his 2016 presidential campaign he declared China had carried out “the greatest theft in the world” and that “We can’t continue to let China rape our country” (BBC, 2016). The president has even implied that his ban would be revenge on China for the coronavirus. In response to a question about whether they were looking at TikTok he responded: “What happened with China with this virus, what they’ve done to this country and the entire world is disgraceful” (Hamilton, 2020).
In August Trump signed two executive orders, in which he indicated again that the “data collection threatens to allow the CPA access to American’s personal and proprietary information” (Trump, 2020). However, the president seems to have changed his mind afterwards, changing his position. Now he is demanding payment from TikTok in exchange for their stay in the U.S.A. This made TikTok rightfully point out that a demand for payment would not have any relationship to any national security concerns, adding: “The president’s actions clearly reflect a political decision to campaign on an anti-China platform.” (BBC, 2020).
Without going into all the details, it now seems that Trump is demanding 5 billion dollars from TikTok to be put into ‘real history’ education for American youths (Benveniste & Disis, 2020). Seemingly pulling another political factor into the mix and trying to get everything he can out of this situation. Meanwhile, any real gain for national security, the original argument for banning TikTok, will be small (FT, 2020). So Trump’s true original intentions are dubious. It looks like he will take his cut, without really addressing his supposed concern all that much in the end. If this happens it will set a questionable precedent for the treatment of digital platforms, with Trump deciding he can force companies to pay if they want access to the U.S. market.
References
BBC. 2020. “TikTok calls Trump ban ‘political’ in lawsuit”. [online] Available at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-53894586 [Accessed 21 Sept. 2020].
Benveniste, A. & Disis, J. 2020. “Trump wants the TikTok deal to pour $5 billion into ‘real history’ education. It’s not that simple”. [online] Available athttps://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/20/business/trump-education-fund/index.html [Accessed 22 Sept. 2020].
Doffman, Z. 2020. “Yes, TikTok Has A Serious China Problem – Here’s Why You Should Be Concerned”. [online] Available at https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2020/07/09/tiktok-serious-china-problem-ban-security-warning/#7287c5711f22 [Accessed 21 Sept. 2020].
FT. 2020. “TikTok Global: victory lap”. [online] Available at https://www.ft.com/content/741e0257-54e3-4c71-a8df-639a31741b4b [Accessed 21 Sept. 2020].
General, J. 2020. “GETTY IMAGES/TIKTOK/GRAPHICS BY JOHN GENERAL”. 780×438. CNN. [online] Available at https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/14/perspectives/tiktok-trump-ban/index.html [Accessed 22 Sept. 2020]
Hamilton, I. 2020. “Trump said he’s considering banning TikTok to punish China over the coronavirus”. [online] Available at https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-considering-banning-tiktok-2020-7?r=US&IR=T [Accessed 21 Sept. 2020].
Sherman, A. 2020. “TikTok reveals detailed user numbers for the first time”. [online] Available at https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/24/tiktok-reveals-us-global-user-growth-numbers-for-first-time.html [Accessed 22 Sept. 2020].
Trump, D. 2020. “Executive order on addressing the threat posed by TikTok”. [online] Available at https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-addressing-threat-posed-tiktok/ [Accessed 21 Sept. 2020].
Hey Stan, thank you for sharing this interesting post! Again it seems like president Trump does not know what he‘s doing. Trying to force a domestic company to pay money due to potential data sharing with China is a ridiculous political decision. If Trump would really be concerned about privacy concerns, he would have to start to impose stricter laws to all American tech-companies. However, it seems like Trump is using Tik Tok only to increase political tensions with China. Hopefully, this international conflict will end soon, otherwise global supply chains will break down eventually.