Topics: TikTok, China broadly, thawing geography, a cute cancel culture Rorschach test, and quick question: are we all just literally going crazy? Oh, also aliens.

TikTok block party. The question this week most hotly discussed was whether or not TikTok, a Chinese company under control of the Chinese Communist Party, employing thousands of CCP content moderators specifically charged with upholding Chinese censorship laws, posed to the United States of America a significant enough security threat that operation of that company should here be banned. What seemed at first an early and obvious bi-partisan yes to the question was soon complicated by such prominent media personalities as the New York Times reporter focused on that company, per her tweet crediting recent concern about TikTok to racism, as well as venture capitalists Josh Constine and fan favorite Hunter walk, both of whom seemed to argue Mark Zuckerberg was in some way a danger to the average American comparable to the government of China, a totalitarian, genocidal ethnostate now violently annexing territory across Asia. Before we break this one down, it’s worth noting some of the most thorough reporting on the horrors now facing the Uyghur people of China has come from the New York Times. Colleagues of the above-mentioned TikTok reporter have worked hard to follow what increasingly appears to be one of the great humanitarian crimes of this century, and were no doubt as perplexed by her editorializing on the topic as were many who followed the story on Twitter. Most people, across industries, do appear to be on the right side of this issue. But the pro-China reaction was popular enough — and here as well across industries — that it warrants concern, and clearly requires a thorough dismantling lest the sentiment be any further normalized.

I myself was late to the potential dangers inherent of Chinese social media, as my strong biases toward openness and a generally free market blinded me to what now seems obvious, and it wasn’t TikTok that first roused me to the problem. It was a quaint little “dating” app called Grindr. In March of this year the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) forced Grindr, which had been acquired in 2018 by the Chinese company Kulun Tech, to sell the property on national security grounds (Kunlun reportedly never submitted a request to acquire the company, as per a report from the Verge). When the move was first announced, I opposed the sale. This struck me as a wild imposition on free trade. But in the first place there has never been free trade between the United States and China. The Chinese government has withheld significant access to their market, while selling unencumbered into our own, for decades — all while blatantly stealing American IP. Still, our too-often one-sided trade policy, while frustrating, isn’t really the issue here. At the beginning of this year, in conversation with a patient, former Obama staffer, I was reminded espionage is not limited to the technology industry. We must assume it is a danger to most, if not every, critical American institution, including our government and military. There has likely been no piece of information shared on Grindr from 2018 through 2019, and possibly earlier depending on that company’s former data practices — or perhaps even now depending on what actions have been taken since the sale was forced — that is not sitting on a server in Beijing. For straight readers who may not immediately grasp the problem here, we’re talking about highly-graphic sexual material shared exclusively between men. Homosexuality is still taboo in many corners of the country, and evidence of taboos, especially sexual taboos, constitutes leverage — even before one considers the additional social complications for closeted men. How confident are you we’ve never had a Senator on the Intelligence Committee who liked to share an unwise chat or two on lonely, Washington nights? Because if the gay whisper network is to be believed (and I’d frankly call it 50/50, with reliability inversely proportional to the fame and hotness of the subject (sorry, I don’t make the rules)) the correct answer is “not confident.” With the data practices of TikTok exposed, one can imagine any number of ways the government of China could extort citizens of the United States. But the threat of TikTok is in my opinion far greater than Grindr, and not only for the tremendous difference in scale. TikTok does not limit itself to collecting information from active chatters, as it is rather principally designed for spreading information among passive consumers. This presents new possibilities for the Chinese government, and considerable new risks for the United States.

Let’s talk about propaganda.

We are already experiencing a spectacular, perhaps existential information crisis, something I explored in detail a handful of weeks back in an essay called Jump. But our national conversation about foreign propaganda has so far mostly focused on 1) the nebulous Russia-Trump connection, a topic so convoluted by hopelessly partisan Americans in media and government that I genuinely have no idea what to believe, and to a lesser extent 2) China’s obvious attempts a few months ago, at the top of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, if you believe propaganda can succeed at all, you should naturally wonder what successful propaganda might look like in the context of our contemporary world. My sense, which I cannot imagine controversial, is the best propaganda would not look like propaganda at all. We already know TikTok employs an army of content moderators working for the Chinese government. But greater than the obvious danger of content banned from that platform must absolutely be a danger far more difficult to prove, which would be the amplification of content for purposes damaging to this country. In all likelihood anti-Americanism is just innately popular among young Americans. This is after all a core aspect of the religion we are taught at university, but there are also no shortage of legitimate, youthful critiques of our country (housing, healthcare, and the indentured servitude we call ‘student debt’ all come to mind). There’s also no evidence the Chinese government has yet used TikTok to disseminate propaganda. But Jack Dorsey pushes curated, editorialized trending topics to millions of Americans a day with Twitter Moments. We don’t hear much criticism of the practice, as the content team at Twitter plainly shares a perspective of the world nearly indistinguishable from that of our tech press, but it is absolutely a power that could, in the hands of an actor so committed, be used for any number of nefarious ends. So, for purposes of national security, we do have to ask ourselves whether we trust the government of China not to use this power. But can we trust the government of China at all?

It’s worth checking out the recent work of Jacob Helberg on this topic. I also recommend picking up The Hundred Year Marathon, by Michael Pillsbury, and The Three-Body Problem, by Cixin Liu. The former is a thorough translation of Chinese foreign policy by an American intelligence expert, as well as a critique of a now decades-long American blindness on the issue. The latter is a fascinating portrait of war-time Chinese psychology by a talented Chinese science-fiction writer, as well as what is in my opinion a totally-accidental portrait of the Chinese conception of America. Roughly, the Chinese government has always considered America a hostile foreign power, and has strategized accordingly, while Americans have mostly taken China for granted (when we’ve thought about China at all). But all you really need to do is consider the events of the last six months removed from all our daily dramas and distractions. Because stripped to their barest bones, it is hard to read the events in any way other than damning: a virus, that is possibly product of a lab accident related to gain-of-function research taking place in Wuhan, crippled the globe; the government of China systematically lied about the nature of the virus, manipulated the hopelessly-compromised leadership of the World Health Organization into disseminating months of disinformation to the rest of the world with a cost in life now at least in the tens of thousands, and did this while cornering the market on PPE; they annexed Hong Kong, and invaded disputed border territory with India; they initiated an information war with the United States, activating a network of propagandists, including a social media army and actual, sitting Chinese diplomats, who have spread lies on every topic from Hong Kong terrorism and Chinese benevolence to the origin of COVID-19 (at times Italy, at times America, and at times China, but only for a quite fantastically fabricated biological attack perpetrated by the U.S. military), while deporting from their country American journalists from the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal; all while engaged in what increasingly seems to be a genocide of the Uyghur people, and a barbaric series of actions from forced sterilizations at actual internment camps to organ harvesting. Ring any Twentieth-century bells?

In contrast, Facebook often serves you well-placed adds for trendy leather boots that — I truly hate to break the news here — you may want, but definitely don’t need.

We’re not at war with China. We’re not even at cold war with China. But the world changes fast, and America isn’t the global cop it was a few decades ago. It’s time to abandon that notion we were all raised with that the violent aspects of human history, and the threat of real conflict with a foreign nuclear power, is over, as well as the notion that progress of all kinds — from scientific to moral — is guaranteed. Geography is thawing. I don’t know what the world will look like a decade, or even five years from now. I only know that probably none of us will see it coming. Prepare for the worst, hope for the best. Protect yourself. For fuck’s sake, delete TikTok. And while we’re at it eat your vegetables.

A cute Rorschach. There has been a spectacular media drama unfurling now in twists and turns for many days since the much-discussed open letter decrying cancel culture, which evoked immediate calls for the firing or banning of signatories (colloquially known as “canceling”) on grounds cancel culture doesn’t exist. Several signatories apologized, and the letter was followed by another open letter, largely composed of dogma popular among the intersectional, authoritarian left.

What is really left to say about this? I myself try as best I can to avoid group speech of this nature, excepting of course the spectacular founding documents (which I was anyway not asked to sign some couple hundred years ago), as I hate when people speak for me. But I suppose I stand in favor of the spirit of the first letter (surprise!), the latter being in my estimation a little too militant, no offense. Then, in general, I do support the entire circus on grounds that it is funny and demeaning for all parties involved, including myself for writing about it now, which frankly every one of us deserves. BUT. On the topic of cancel culture, I did recently stumble on a cute sort of Rorschach test.

An acquaintance of mine is being extorted with an erroneous social justice claim. With cultural authoritarianism now so completely normalized she felt incapable of defending herself in public, an opinion only further supported by the above response from the crisis PR firm ostensibly paid to assist people in such crisis. I did not further comment on the matter publicly, though if I had it would not have been about the extortion. Chiefly, I was shocked by the egregious uselessness of the PR shop, reaching lows in utility heretofore unknown (almost impressive tbh). But the reaction to my tweet was interesting.

I noticed first an immediate and pronounced defense of the aggrieved party (my acquaintance), which made more sense on account of my clearly sympathetic tone. But then, it was a defense of the extortionist. My acquaintance was accused of privilege, of bias, of tech arrogance. She should absolutely pay the price, I was told. There was simply no defending an abuse of power, and justice must come both swift and severe.

Folks, I don’t know who needs to hear this but YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT. The woman being extorted runs a small business, isn’t in tech, and I didn’t share the details of the accusation with which she is being threatened. Literally what are any of you talking about? She could have been accused of anything. Or nothing! What if I made this whole thing up? I didn’t, because I’m not a psychopath, but come on, people. I expect a little more rigor, and not only from my much beloved haters. This was all just a sad and obvious retreat into tribalism, which continues to be the bane of our internet in 2020. Bespoke identity is truly a plague on the land.

Is everyone just literally crazy? This week’s MVP to Sonya for wading into the mental health discussion. This is one of those things we really aren’t capable of parsing with any kind of honesty in public, cultural sensitivities as they are, so discussions are usually limited to some version of “mental health is so important.” Agree! But also:

I have wondered for a while now how much of the misery we’ve created online has been in some significant part catalyzed by legitimate mental illness, inadvertently amplified by platforms like Twitter in a way historically not possible. To be clear, we are facing many challenges unique to a world of ubiquitous social media, but we are a species that memes. Ideas are contagious, and successful thoughts aren’t limited to the logical, or even to the coherent. Ideologies are likewise contagious. Are mental states? We low key live inside the internet now. Our minds are all, in some significant sense, connected. Are we spreading disease along our social networks… in virtuality?

FFS, what didn’t Stephenson get right with Snow Crash?

Charter cities, anyone? Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong here we come.

Oh, also aliens. Check out the last episode of Problematic for an extended chat on UFOs, and the Wilson Documents.

-SOLANA