• Following a classified meeting apparently related to a recent crackdown on Chinese espionage, lawmakers have rushed to push a TikTok divestment bill

• If passed, the TikTok bill will not ban TikTok, but require Bytedance to sell TikTok or face a ban in America (it is difficult to interpret the opposition’s framing of the bill as an outright ban as anything other than malicious information)

• The real motivation of TikTok’s loudest defenders, which now include Trump, appears to be political support ($$$) from Bytedance investor Jeff Yass

• Jeff Yass has funneled MILLIONS of dollars into relentless TikTok defender Vivek Ramaswamy's "American Exceptionalism PAC"

• With pro-China backroom globalism back on the GOP menu, the future of “America First” is called into question
  

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All is fair in love and info war. Last week, following a classified hearing with officials from the FBI and Justice Department — which we still know nothing about, and which, for some reason, almost nobody has covered — a bi-partisan group of lawmakers resurrected Trump’s attempt at TikTok divestiture, which would force TikTok’s Chinese parent ByteDance to sell the company. Ostensibly, the purpose of the bill is to mitigate CCP surveillance of US citizens, which has persisted for years despite TikTok’s “Project Texas” promises to the contrary. Of course, there are a number of likely motives behind the bill, and a far more insidious array behind the bill’s resistance. But this time around, in a surprise political twist, Democrats are relatively quiet on the issue, while Republicans, the driving force behind divestiture under Trump, are loudly divided. Here, no pivot has been more surprising than that of Trump himself, who Thursday evening took to Truth Social with his position: “If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business. I don’t want Facebook, who cheated in the last Election, doing better. They are a true Enemy of the People!”

Trump’s apparent change of heart in favor of America’s most popular Chinese spy app followed days of ‘libertarian’ Rand Paul’s defense of the company, begging an interesting question. What do Paul and Trump have in common? Allow me: his name is Jeff Yass, a major GOP donor, and an investor in ByteDance (thereby TikTok) presently sitting on a stake in the company worth over $30 billion. For years, Yass has both supported Paul, and lobbied hard against a TikTok divestiture (though never harder, rumor has it, than he lobbied Republicans last week). He has also, for the past couple years of his swampland career, been a fierce opponent of Trump. But all that changed just days before the TikTok drama bubbled over, when he met with the former president for… reasons. Who knows what! And Trump immediately signaled he was “back in love” with Club for Growth, Yass’s super-PAC. A few days after that, Trump turned against the TikTok policy he himself first championed. “America First”? Sure, right after China.

An incredible scandal.

While Trump kept his critique of the divestiture bill relatively soft, and open to interpretation (an interesting thread we’ll tug in a moment), Rand predictably defended TikTok on sacred moral grounds, invoking the First Amendment. Americans have a right to use TikTok, Rand argued (of the company that will, he well knows, still exist following its decoupling from China). But then, in service of his weak hand, there followed a spectacular stream of total lies:

If you’ll be so kind as to indulge me, a brief history lesson: 1) Project Texas was developed by TikTok, not the government. 2) It was not developed under Trump’s tenure, but President Biden’s. 3) Following China’s refusal to let go of TikTok — on account of (and I can’t believe it needs repeating) we are obviously in a state of significant conflict with this country, and their government’s ability to spy on US citizens is a powerful tool at their disposal — Trump actually ordered the app be sold or banned, a policy that 4) Biden REVERSED.

Over the course of Biden’s tenure, available evidence indicates TikTok repeatedly abetted the CCP’s spying on US citizens, but the President’s abrupt turn in favor of divestiture, along with the entire House Commerce Committee, seems more to do with the classified security revelations mentioned at the top of this piece. These, by the way, didn’t happen in a vacuum. Just as the TikTok story was exploding, a series of Chinese spies were captured and charged, including one former Googler. There’s clearly more to the story than we know. But Trump and Rand? I’ve got the feeling they know better.

In any case, not every shred of pushback against divestiture is fueled by corruption so transparent. Some of the criticism is merely idiotic. Historically, TikTok divestiture has been attacked on the following grounds: ‘right wing people are trying to ban a left wing platform,’ ‘American tech companies want to dethrone a competitor,’ and ‘Trump said it so I don’t want it!’ The first and third positions are not only unserious, but clearly outdated. Then, the second position is actually compelling, though more charitably framed in terms of our nation’s grossly unfair trade asymmetry. The CCP has itself banned — the real kind of ban, where a company is actually, literally banned from operating — every single American social media company. Why should their social media companies be permitted to sell unencumbered into the American market? In other words, critiques here are right in the sense that trade retaliation is probably in part motivating the push for TikTok’s divestiture (including for me personally), but wrong on the issue. China’s ongoing trade war is a bad thing, actually, and we should obviously fight back.

Now, it’s worth noting every high-profile TikTok defender has felt the need to lie about the bill in order to make their critique even remotely palatable. But despite their insistence to the contrary, TikTok has not been “banned.” There is no bill to ban TikTok. There is presently a bill in play to force a CCP-controlled company to sell TikTok, which would remain in operation — but free of the CCP. Politicians and public figures getting this wrong are doing so purposely, and while the question of TikTok’s existence might be more understandably controversial, why would it matter so greatly, to any American, that the CCP specifically maintain control of the spy app? This brings me to Vivek Ramaswamy, truly one of the worst losers in the bunch. The thing is, good old fashioned quid pro quo corruption, while disgusting, is as American as apple pie, and at least it’s understandable — in that I literally understand the motive. But to the best of my knowledge, Yass isn’t paying Vivek, and Vivek’s supposed to be a “nationalist,” naturally amenable to more symmetric trade. So what gives? (UPDATE: while this is basically impossible to find on Google, a reader tipped me off, and oops, lol, turns out Jeff Yass has funneled MILLIONS of dollars into Vivek's PAC)

Famously, Vivek pivoted from the position TikTok should be banned because it is a uniquely powerful form of “digital fentanyl,” to the position TikTok should not be banned because — I kid you not — he had dinner with Jake Paul, who told him TikTok was important to the youth. But Vivek’s message Thursday evening, in support of a fairly distorted depiction of Trump’s position, really left me wondering: what does this guy actually want?

Immediately following the now standard bit of “ban” propaganda (which he altered after I roasted him for it, alas), Vivek “debunked” a string of arguments nobody in Washington is making. First, he tackled the “addictive social media” critique of TikTok that he himself popularized months before his first pivot in favor of the CCP. Then, he drew a false equivalency between ByteDance’s actual legal obligation, given it’s a Chinese company, to share American data with the CCP, and Airbnb’s scandalous sale of US user data, which led to national uproar and high-profile firings. Vivek’s position: yes, sending data to the CCP is bad, but this bill only targets one company — another lie, also endlessly repeated by the Yass Queens — and really all of them should be targeted. The first piece here is easily debunked: the bill targets companies from China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. But the second bit consists of a more cleverly constructed piece of rhetoric.

Sure, a broad privacy bill targeting sloppy American companies in addition to literal Chinese spies sounds great. But Vivek knows how hard it is to pass legislation, he knows a small handful of companies pose outsized risk to the United States, and he knows some broader privacy push will be mired in Washington bullshit for years. Practically, then, it’s clear he just wants the CCP to control the company. Which is insane. How did we drive all the way from “China virus” to “I will defend China’s access to American data with my life”?

It’s a strange position for a purportedly “America First” politician, as was Vivek’s position the entire US startup ecosystem should die following the collapse of a regional bank. Back then, in the case of Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse, he fell on standard libertarian rhetoric entirely out of step with his otherwise populist campaign, arguing every startup that made the grave sin of trusting their cash in a bank should go to 0 for their ignorance, while every other American, at every other bank, should be protected. Odd behavior for a “nationalist,” who presumably sees interest in the ongoing existence of an American business ecosystem.

While popular figures in Trump’s orbit, from Hope Hicks to David Urban, were recently bought by ByteDance, my sense is there is nonetheless too much momentum for divestiture, and Trump doesn’t want to fully torch his anti-globalist reputation. As bad as it looks — on account of it is actually bad — it’s worth keeping in mind Trump is sufficiently influential among Republicans that he could probably kill the divestiture overnight if that’s what he really wanted. Instead, he published a transparently silly post, clearly in exchange for money, and did not explicitly call to stop the bill. In other words, the man said ‘Suckerberg’ and called it a night, but ByteDance is still on the chopping block. That feels significant to me, and my sense is he is trying now to have his Yass and eat it too. How that goes? Tbd.

For my part, I acknowledge, within the confines of a peaceful anarchist utopia, any American’s god given right not only to use TikTok, but to enter into an agreement with a hostile foreign nation in which sensitive, potentially compromising personal information is traded for clips of ambiguously-gendered lunatics dismantling the patriarchy, and whacky cooking videos. It’s just I’m no longer an anarchist, so I no longer care. Sane trade or nothing, and I think the First Amendment will survive its failure to extend to hostile foreign agents.

Divestiture is way too moderate. Ban the app.

-SOLANA