> If China is unwilling to allow US companies to compete fairly in their digital ecosystem, why the hell should we continue to grant Chinese firms unrestricted access to our market?
I understand what you're saying and I actually support the ban as tiktok can be used as a giant botnet at-will by Chinas government, but an eye for an eye doesn't end well and the US is supposed to be "free" so this part of the argument I wouldn't agree with.
This simplification misses key nuances. Strategies like Tit-for-Tat (TFT) are context-sensitive and not universally "optimal." Effectiveness varies with game structure, communication clarity, and the presence of noise. Moreover, the "optimal" strategy adjusts in finite games (which you didn't clarify which type of game) due to the endgame effect.
Simple hole in your simplification: one simple misunderstanding could lead to an endless cycle of defection where everyone will defect on each other: game over.
>Strategies like Tit-for-Tat (TFT) are context-sensitive and not universally "optimal."
Of course. Hence why I didn't claim it to be universally optimal. All I'm saying is that your willingness to defect against defectors should always be non-zero, just to keep the players in line who start out with a higher predisposition towards defecting.
The noisiness of the real world should probably bias us more in the direction of cooperation, to avoid a cascade of defection as you mention, but a player who only cooperates will get taken advantage of regardless of the precise details of the game. Some amount of this dynamic can be seen currently in the relationship between western companies and the Chinese state, a relationship that is currently very different from the relationship between Chinese companies and the rest of the world.
It is also generally true that the longer the game, the more defectors suffer.
Not if there's a player for whom defecting is always better than cooperating, no matter what the other players do. And not if there's another player for whom cooperating is always better than defecting, no matter what the first player does. Then the first player should always defect and the second always cooperate.
What's being described isn't an eye for an eye, but tit for tat. And tit for tat is the norm for international relations and has been since time immemorial.
Usually it's relatively dull stuff, like if country A requires citizens of country B to have a visa to visit, country B will as a matter of course require citizens of country A to have visas to visit too.
Tit for tat makes sense in a situation where you expect to work out a deal, both sides agree to stop, and everyone is better off. E.g. allowing visa-free travel in both directions between A and B.
But for the Chinese government, social control is an existential issue, not something that can be negotiated away in a trade deal. They're always going to "tit", because allowing people to freely express themselves on the internet could end their rule overnight.
So the "tat" cannot be used as a bargaining chip, but needs to be weighed on its own merits. Does the US benefit from the ability to arbitrarily declare companies to be "foreign adversaries" and shut them down or force their owners to divest? Mightn't TikTok decide to relocate their US headquarters to Europe instead? And shouldn't Chinese founders in the US see the writing on the wall and contemplate a similar move? Is that good or bad for the US?
Drop "Chinese." Just..."Government." But I'm not even framing this as a malicious control thing. A society could just as easily break down if there's not some form of social...you used the word "control," I choose "framework." Paid on Friday, national holidays, do your taxes in April. You could frame these as a sort of control.
Also, a country not allowing citizens to pop off about committing terroristic acts against foreign entities would mitigate the potential for said country to be labelled an "enemy" by everyone else. Diplomacy is hard, but sometimes the rules are in place for a reason. I don't know though; I've never ran a country.
> But for the Chinese government, social control is an existential issue, not something that can be negotiated away in a trade deal. They're always going to "tit", because allowing people to freely express themselves on the internet could end their rule overnight.
Sounds like it’s bad idea to freely open the door to China.
> Mightn't TikTok decide to relocate their US headquarters to Europe instead?
The law says they can’t exist in China, Russia, NK, Iran so this is fine.
> And shouldn't Chinese founders in the US see the writing on the wall and contemplate a similar move?
If they leave China, and its influence, it sounds like a clear win for the US goals. If they’re already in the US then it’s a no-op and they shouldn’t be affected because why would they?
So if China bans all American literature and news sources, the US should do the same? If China deports all Chinese Americans from their country, should the US do the same?
> So if China bans all American literature and news sources, the US should do the same?
At least their propaganda outlets, yes.
> If China deports all Chinese Americans from their country, should the US do the same?
No one is calling for a return to the ugly times of WW2 [1], but banning new immigration outside of asylum claims and especially banning investment into real estate certainly should be on the table.
I disagree but I understand where you're coming from. There's an aspect of being an idealist vs being a realist in the final result. Perhaps some sort of balanced strategy is the way to go. Just definitely don't give leeway for governments to do shitty things (to their people and others) just because others are doing it.
I used to be on the idealist side myself - after all, Germany has been the driving force behind the idea "change (towards democracy) by trade" - but as we've seen with Russia and China, all that did was make us completely dependent on them, and in the case of China the resulting loss of domestic production jobs led to massive issues with "left behind" areas and a loss of trust in democracy itself.
In Africa, it's a similar situation - we poured in boatloads of money and aid, in exchange for the demand of a bare minimum of human rights, and now a lot of the countries there are falling to the lure of Russia and China. My personal position is, drop them. Let Russia and China deal with the mess, fail at it, and keep an open invitation once they realize that Chinese imperialism is just as bad as historic Western imperialism.
As someone from Africa who's currently studying in Germany, it greatly saddens me that you view the situation this way. I hope you gain a better perspective on the issue and all the suffering there.
> What’s being described isn’t an eye for an eye, but tit for tat.
Those are exact synonyms.
> And tit for tat is the norm for international relations
It’s commonly been a norm (not the norm), and its a norm that usually produces escalatory spirals, because actors tend to be more sensitive to harms to themselves from others policies and less sensitive those from other’s policy.
Eye for an eye connotes, if not denotes, proportionate justice. International relations, childish propaganda notwithstanding, is not at all about justice.
Tit for tat on the other hand is specifically a game theory term as used here, and it applies exactly to this sort of diplomatic strategic calculation.
> Eye for an eye connotes, if not denotes, proportionate justice.
No, the law of retribution is not about proportionate justice. It is about retribution.
It’s a association with justice is that it is seen as less unjust and a step toward justice and less socially disruptive than accepting deliberately-escalatory retribution for perceived wrongs as a norm.
Interesting... "eye for an eye" has an almost identical meaning to "tit for tat" in my mind. Both of them effectively mean "retaliation in kind". One slight difference I guess is that "eye for an eye" often relates specifically to justice or just punishment.
"eye for an eye" is actually a retaliation limiter, not a call to arms. It means if someone pokes out your eye, then you are limited to a maximum retaliation of poking out their eye. You are not allowed to kill them.
For this China having TikTok spread propaganda or addiction in the USA does not then give the USA permission to nuke China as a consequence.
> but an eye for an eye doesn't end well and the US is supposed to be "free" so this part of the argument I wouldn't agree with.
"stay on the moral high ground" only works when the other side is roughly playing by the same rules as you are.
With authoritarian nations, with authoritarian leaders? They see any kind of even the slightest allowance as a weakness to exploit, an explicit allowance to move the Overton window. We should have kneecapped China years ago, when the first complaints about industrial espionage came in, and same for Russia after the 2014 invasion of Ukraine. We didn't, and now we're a bunch of lame ducks swimming in a pond of manure.
That’s part of what is being criticized. Human rights are supposed to be universal, and some countries actually handle them like that, applying them to citizens and foreigners alike.
What human right is being violated? This is about what types of business are allowed to domestic and foreign entities. I've never heard anyone declare "its a basic human right for institutions designed to do business behind a liability shield to do as they please anywhere and any time".
Human rights are just made up. It means nothing to talk about them. You can scream in a desert that water is a human right as much as you want, doesn't mean it is going to rain.
Of course people are people. The person I was responding to misunderstood the US constitution as a list of human rights, as well as the enforcing mechanism for the US constitution, and who it applies to.
Yes, and Americans should have the freedoms to receive whatever information they want, including whatever is on Tik Tok. This is covered by the first amendment.
It's not the information that's banned, it's TikTok. People don't seek to ban TikTok because they fear the content, they fear the power that an enemy nation has over their citizens. It's not a free speech issue.
Imagine if a company developed a new form of paper and published many books on it. If the paper turns out to be toxic and is banned, the company can't then say "oh, no, we're being censured". It has nothing to do with the message.
The courts can look at the effect of the ban, not just the intention. If the effect is that it ends up limiting Americans' access to information (which it would, unless ByteDance gave in and sold) then a court could find it unconstitutional.
IANAL, but this is my understanding.
Same holds true of your 2nd example, if it required Americans to turn in all the books they owned printed on that paper, for example.
> it ends up limiting Americans' access to information
it is not a right to have unlimited access to any and all information.
It is only a constitutional violation (by the gov't) to _prevent_ an american citizen from any speech. It would not be a violation to legislatively ban a company, unless that company was the only place you could make speeches, and thus resulting in the outcome where there's defacto speech repression.
However, such a company ban, if it werent due a violation, would erode the trust in the US financial system. Because if the US decides they can just divest you without you violating any current known laws, it will make foreign investment in the US more difficult.
Where on earth does it say that the government cannot limit access to information? If that were true then how on earth is book censorship legal?
For that matter, how was it legal to change to digital tv broadcasts? CCP tiktok can absolutely still operate a website that wont be blocked. The medium of delivery isnt protected speech.
Yes, and Americans should have the freedoms to receive whatever information they want
And they do. This isn't a content-based ban. If a non-Chinese company acquires TikTok, they can continue to host exactly the same material without restrictions.
Can't tell if the new company would be able to host the same exact material. It's already come out that the White House pressured Google and Facebook to promote covid19 vaccine content. YouTube banning Russia-linked channels doesn't seem like their own decision either. The US doesn't control its media nearly the same way many other countries do, but there's still some control.
If you look at the rhetoric of lawmakers and lobbyists supporting the ban, a lot of it is about the content.
Totally. This is the main thing agaisnt the free speech argument. We have also passed this same law in radio and TV. It's about influence at a mass scale more than anything. I don't know why we would want a foreign ADVERSARY to have free reign.
This framing is all backwards. Americans go to TikTok for content of their own free will. This law effectively prevents Americans from using an information service they prefer.
Unless, of course, you want to admit that social media applications, through some combination of peer pressure, advertising, propaganda, manipulation, and deception subvert the free will of some portion of their users. In which case naturally they ought to be regulated in order to protect your citizens. Except... then the regulation drafted reads as "only American companies are allowed to subvert the free will of Americans", which comes off as pretty sinister.
> Except... then the regulation drafted reads as "only American companies are allowed to subvert the free will of Americans", which comes off as pretty sinister.
Sinister or not this framing makes a lot more sense than the alternative if you write it like this:
“Only companies [beholden to American interests] are allowed to [influence] Americans”.
The core premise is really rather dull. If the company poses a risk to Americans, then it should exist fully within reach of the US Gov regulations and completely out of the control of adversaries.
I’m not arguing if a us citizen should be allowed to use a property controlled by foreign adversary.
I’m arguing should a foreign adversary be able to control such a large US property in the first place?
In my opinion, having a direct line to > 100 million people where they can send push notifications that tell people to contact their government for a specific purpose is not so great. That’s leaving out the more subtle untraceable black box of deranking things their government doesn’t like.
It's called reciprocity, and has been used since time immemorial for trade agreements, border control, ceasefire agreements, retaliatory strikes and a lot of other very high level geopolitics. "An eye for an eye" works perfectly well in such contexts.
There's definitely areas of advertising that are banned/controlled so that comparison seems more damning than beneficial (e.g. alcohol to minors, medication in any country other than the US
It's not useful though. I actually think it's very cool that TikTok got a bunch of young people to contact their representatives. If this ban goes through, the political blowback is going to be extreme. It will be like the Streisand effect x100,000,000.
People aren't fools. They know that TikTok is being put into this position by the US government. You can go on any social media platform right now and see how outraged TikTok users are. This is going to have incredible political blowback from the younger generations and there won't be any "lawyering" around that. Even if the ban doesn't go through, a lot of damage has already been done.
The bill is overwhelmingly bipartisan though. There isn't anyone for some kids to go after, if it's almost a unanimous bi partisan effort.
Those kids lost. It's over.
And if people are this upset, then that is all the more reason to pull the trigger now, instead of giving our foreign adversaries more time to retaliate.
Anyway, tiktok almost divested the last time this happened. Unless they are OK will losing 10s of billions of dollars for nothing, well chances are they'll just divest, despite the current posturing they are doing.
When they're deliberately coordinated by foreign states with malicious intent? When the demands become more and more extreme towards the opposing side?
Opposing this ban isn't "malicious intent" lots of people think it's an infringement upon their rights for the US government to decide what they can and cannot see.
Businesses/commerce/trade have never been “free”. I’m not sure why this keeps being used as a rebuttal. These topics are covered in basic macroeconomics classes in the United States.
I understand what you're saying and I actually support the ban as tiktok can be used as a giant botnet at-will by Chinas government, but an eye for an eye doesn't end well and the US is supposed to be "free" so this part of the argument I wouldn't agree with.