The Tik Tok Ban & Elite Incompetence

When a civilization is in decline, its elites start making obvious mistakes.

When a civilization is in decline, its elites start making obvious mistakes. Foresight and creative problem solving give way to exhausted heuristics. And so everything becomes a matter of limiting options—of arranging choices—so that the citizen body will act in a way that is manageable and predictable.

It is in the late stage that a Great Power grows concerned with maintaining its hegemony. But at the same time, it acquires a tendency to become easily distracted. Diversions, adventures, niche issues, domestic curiosities and the like, suddenly appear as threatening ghosts; as potentials, that may snowball into a full-blown crisis. The ruling class become busy bodies—but a new Great Power, or a confident one, has no such paranoia. It learned quickly that it is best to touch less, and to save drastic actions for Historical Moments.

But such is decline. It is like growing old. Or a parent who knows only the belt and the fist. In trying to rigidly control every single outcome, they succeed only in producing the opposite of what they wanted. The Tik Tok ban is a symptom of this.

The Weak Argument

It should be stated first that the pretended concern with American data theft is precisely that: pretended. Meta, Google, Oracle, Experian, Microsoft, Epsilon, Amazon, Apple, Walmart, your bank and internet provider all collect your data and sell it. Including when you “opt out.” There is simply too much money involved to not do it.

It is likewise well-documented that in the post 9/11 era, mass surveillance by the government became justified and legitimate. We must acknowledge that the legal and “constitutional” restraints on the new surveillance State have completely failed to preserve liberty and privacy. In fact, the public and private sectors coordinate purposely to collect, analyze, use and sell your data—every day.

Now, there is a part of the argument that is true: if a foreign entity is able to collect vast amounts of American user data, it can be used maliciously or incorporated into its wider goals. The stolen data would then be used in a horrifying way, should the United States enter into conflict with that entity. And yet, this is never believed.

The reason has to do with the start of this section. American trust in its government is perpetually low. Americans cannot be expected to believe the United States when it says it is acting for their benefit, when the United States has spent over two decades spying on them and profiting thereby. The private sector being brought into this is what makes it even grosser, perfecting American resentment.

Lacking detailed foreign policy knowledge, Americans will not understand nor respect the difference between the US and US companies stealing their data, and China doing it. The end result has been spite toward the American ruling class, and toward oligarchs (their new favorite word).

Egg on their Face

Continuing our dose of realism . . . there is nothing business-like in creating mafia-esque legislation that says “give me the thing that generates your profit for less money than you’d make by keeping it long-term.” The US always knew that Bytedance would reject this proposal and leave. The true issue, and the true catalyst of this entire ordeal, was dissent . . . It was dissenting discourse over Gaza, and the accidental revelation that Millennials and Gen Z are opposed to a certain lobby.

Suddenly, the ruling class began to catch on. Prior, Tik Tok users successfully coordinated a boycott of Starbucks that tanked its stock price. Through Tik Tok, people were grasping that they could coordinate at unheard of levels to socially agitate. And thanks to a few intelligent creators with large accounts, they were able to hit the public and private sector where it hurts. This culminated in the proposal of several anti-boycott bills, some of them explicitly aiming to ban the boycott of a very specific country by name . . .

No ruling class, no group of elites, will ever allow such coordinated dissent to ferment—be they enlightened or ignorant, ethical or unhinged. A ban was guaranteed when they realized how Tik Tok was being used and the potential that it presented. That data protection became the Red-Herring to conceal this, is plain.

But the US badly miscalculated. It prompted millions of Americans to give their data to an actual mainland Chinese company on purpose. Not only that, American and Chinese citizens are having positive and in-depth interactions with each other. All this at a time when the US wants to boost its military recruitment due to ongoing global crises and a likely invasion of Taiwan. But this fiasco runs the serious risk of making a defense of Taiwan into an unpopular policy amongst young people (the demographic that America must recruit).

To blow decades of propaganda and carefully crafted anti-Chinese sentiment at a critical juncture of hegemony—is incompetent. It indicates incredibly poor foresight in both the short and long-term. China has not lifted a finger, and yet acquired massive amounts of data, and positive regard from millions of young Americans.

Even if Trump undoes the ban, what’s happened has happened. The seal on Pandora’s Box has been loosened. To injure the self through an obvious, unforced error, is an indicator of decline.