Melissa Chen - Should We Ban TikTok?

What we're seeing is that legislators are very concerned on two grounds. The first grounds is a national security argument. What happens to that data? Does that data end up in the wrong hands? And then there's the other argument, which is content manipulation.

TikTok is the one that decides to take it dark hours before the deadline. And that's why I call it what I call the Zoomer Nom because they didn't know what to do with their lives. So this is a bit like psychological manipulation if you think about it. The outrage that was expressed during this 12 hours is a bit of a, it's a propaganda play. That to me is a foreign influence operation. And if that's happening, that's really what the concern I think ought to be.

Minister Chen, welcome back to Trigonometry. You are a go-to person for all things China. And one of the things that's been really big in the news, and I think it's a really important conversation actually, is TikTok, whether it should be banned. And that is something you have a very interesting perspective on. So give us your take and why you think or what you think.

So TikTok is a app, a US-based app, but it's actually owned by a Chinese company called ByteDance. And that necessarily entails that ByteDance, because it's a Chinese company, there is this law in China that exists called the National Intelligence Law.

And it compels any company that is Chinese to hand over any kind of data. And so it recruits basically anyone in individuals, companies in Chinese societies could be organizations as well. It recruits them to basically be part of an intelligence gathering effort whenever the Chinese state requires it.

And because of that corporate structure, TikTok is a huge liability. There are actually two concerns that we have about the, and by we, I mean, US lawmakers, because

We haven't seen something like that happen in a long time. This bill to ban TikTok, which I'm using, you know, inverted quotes because it's not really a ban. It is a forced divestment. The legislators are saying to TikTok that you cannot be owned by the

a Chinese company. And so what we're seeing is that legislators are very concerned on two grounds. The first grounds is a national security argument, which is there is this entity that has, which is the Chinese Communist Party that has set up these kinds of laws, which compel a company to transfer data over. And so Americans, it's hoovering up a lot of data. When you launch this app,

I don't know if you guys are on it. I guess, Francis, maybe you are on it because a lot of comedians are on it and it has great content on it. It immediately starts to load. It's collecting so much information about you. Everything from your keystrokes to, I mean, if you think of your face is biometric data. So when you are doing your monologues and you're looking into the camera,

It's logging your facial expressions. And you can actually, a lot of psychologists have done these studies where based on just the expressions, which can be measured through some sort of like software, you can know so much about what someone is feeling in that moment. A good example of this is there's this concept called gay face, which I think you should know Francis really well.

where they give people just pictures of 10 people and say like, right, this is person gay or not, just based on first impressions. And oftentimes, this is statistically significant, people can tell when someone is gay. And it's not just about gay, not gay. There is, you can actually tell is someone feeling sad, is the corner of their lips downturn, are they feeling maybe egotistical at that moment.

And so you can collect so much real-time data about people. So there's the data collection aspect to this argument, exactly whether or not what happens to that data, you know, does that data end up in the wrong hands? And then there's the other argument, which is content manipulation.

So the idea that this app can actually be throttled and what topics get discussed, not discussed, suppressed, not suppressed, based on the whims of a geopolitical adversary at the end of the day, behind the wall. So those are the two concerns with regard to TikTok and why the legislators wanted it to be banned. And what we saw was that it passed the house.

overwhelming bipartisan majority passed it. The same thing happened in the Senate. And by the time it led it on Joe Biden's desk in April of last year, 2024, he signed it. And it was challenged in the courts. And the two courts that took up the Federal Appeals Court in December of last year

Again, ideologically diverse judges sitting on it unanimously upheld the law and the Supreme Court of the United States by a decision of 9-0 upheld the law. And so we've seen overwhelming support for this legislation to ban TikTok. And President Trump has just said that actually this may not happen after all, right? Am I wrong about this?

Yes, he did, which is very ironic because President Trump was the first one to actually propose a TikTok ban.

towards the end of his first term. So this is going back to about August 2020. President Trump passed an executive order. And the executive order was very much in line with exactly the divestment plan that was advanced by Congress this time. And shortly after he loses the election Biden comes to no office. So Biden ends up doing what Trump wanted to do but through Congress.

And by the end of Biden's term, Trump basically starts signaling that he has to change your heart. By the summer of last year, Trump joins TikTok. And shortly after he joins TikTok, Kamala Harris joins TikTok. And you started to see all these videos kind of laundering Kamala Harris' image, the brat videos, her with the coconut and the weird dancers.

And Trump does very well on TikTok. He's quite a TikTok-able character. At that time though, Trump needed a lot of money for his campaign. He wasn't raising as much funds as Kamala was. And he was also kind of bogged down with civil lawsuits. In steps a Republican billionaire donor by the name of Jeff Yes, he runs a hedge fund and he sits on the board of ByteDance. And he becomes one of Trump's major donors.

And Trump starts to say that he wants to save TikTok. And what's interesting about this new development is that the content of Trump saying that starts appearing on the app.

And he starts to notice that all of a sudden, Zoomers love him. He does the podcast circuit. He really is able to appeal to a demographic that didn't really have any interest for him before. And once this law actually went into effect, which was January 19th, the day before the inauguration, which is a total coincidence, by the way, Trump then

You know, he kind of says, oh, we're going to try and save it. I'm going to write an executive order. He says this to the press. All the while the inauguration is going on. Meanwhile, the CEO of TikTok is sitting in the rotunda at the inauguration ceremony next to Tulsi Gabbard.

And this is quite symbolic. It's an honor to be invited to such an event and being placed so prominently as he was next to all his cabinet members. So you started to see Trump then signal. He wants to save TikTok. People are cheering. A lot of TikTok users are on edge. And eventually, he

The app goes dark on just hours before the ban was actually supposed to be in fact.

And by the way, we should have a moment of silence, right, for the Zoomers, for whom they experience the worst 12 hours of their lives when this app went dark. I mean, this was their nom. I'm not even joking in the sense of, like, if you look at the hysterics of just how they were expressing themselves, there's a Reddit thread. If you go look it up, it's like our stroke TikTok band.

People didn't know what to do with their lives. They were like, I don't have hobbies outside of this. A lot of young folks use TikTok sounds so old saying that. But they use TikTok like a search engine. So instead of like going to Google, looking up a recipe, looking up something, actually the first thing they do is to go to TikTok. So that is the way they interface with the world and have been for the last, you know, a couple years.

And so they were all in hysterics. There were a lot of meltdown videos being posted, but the app goes dark.

and there was a pop-up. So if you try to load it, there was a pop-up saying, unfortunately, this app is banned and you cannot access it right now, but they say something about President Trump might save it. So you get this pop-up. Listen, can I stop you there? Because I understood that it wasn't a ban. When I was reading it, I heard that TikTok took itself down.

That's correct. I was actually about to get into that because what the law stipulates is that no American entity can update, maintain, or distribute the app in question. The app in question is TikTok. What that means is that App Stores, run by Google, run by Apple, had to delist the app from the App Store. In theory, the law can go into effect on January 19th.

The app that you already have downloaded on your phone will still function because you don't have to go to the app store for new downloads. The only thing is that it can be updated, right? So over time, the app would actually degrade in terms of functionality because they're unable to patch the software.

But in theory, ByteDance or TikTok could have just left the app in place on your phone. If you had it, you were accessing it through a browser and you didn't close that browser, you could still access it. But TikTok is the one that decides to take it dark hours before the deadline. And that's what I call the Zoomer Nom because they didn't know what to do with their lives. And what that created was this giant backlash

and people didn't know how to react to this. So this is a bit like psychological manipulation if you think about it. It's a bit like poker where you just keep raising the stakes and then you're like trying to call out somebody's bluff.

And I think that's what they were trying to do because the outrage that was expressed during these 12 hours is a bit of a, it's a propaganda play. And then putting out this message, pop up on everybody's phone saying that Trump is going to step in to save that, which again, for the average Zoomer, imagine, like, they just took away your app and now literally Hitler is going to swoop in to save this app. I mean, at this point, I think TikTok is contractually obligated to be called Trump Talk.

And they restored the app after about 12 hours or so the app comes back online. And again, it says now that we're trying to find a solution, President Trump is trying to find a solution. And so they seem to be wanting to credit him with this. And so there's rumors now of buy your possible exit strategies. Trump floated this ridiculous idea of a 50-50 joint venture between American owned and a Chinese. I don't know how that's going to work because

The legislation says that it cannot be controlled at all by a Chinese entity, and so 50-50 doesn't solve that. But rumors like Elon Musk might buy it. There's another one, a consortium involving Kevin O'Leary from Shark Tank might buy it as well. But it's running into, does the saga still playing out?

One of the things that I found really interesting about it actually was this entire saga is, before I really delved into it, I found it a surprise that Trump signed that executive order. But then when I started reading into it, in 2022 on True Social, he said that he was in favor of TikTok because it meant that it lessened Meta's power. Because it lessened traffic towards Meta, and then he called Zuckerberg in that tweet or truth or whatever it's called. He called him Zuckerschmuck.

Which is very funny, but I found that so interesting in the way he positioned it. And because I was thinking, well, of course that makes sense. If you've got Zuckerberg who de-platformed you in 2020 and kicked you off not one platform, but two platforms and two of the most powerful and influential ones, why are you going to want to then take away competition for Zuckerberg? You just won't.

And it's the same, I mean, Twitter took Trump off as well. Yeah. Yeah, there is this other angle. I mean, how much of it is Trump saying that, you know, this is not retaliation, but whether it's motivated by vengeance, whether it's motivated by making sure we're not rewarding? Because the thing is that when TikTok goes dark, where are the 170 million users going to go? Presumably, you know, Instagram has reels, right? And so it's kind of like a TikTok-like competitor.

And so the idea was that, okay, they're going to flock there. And that would just help someone who, you know, maybe Trump blames for what had happened to him. I guess maybe he didn't notice that Zuckerberg has been on a, you know,

has had a change of heart. Exactly. I mean, he's starting to look quite human. And the way he's dressing, doing his jujitsu, he's now doing a whole PR tour, went on Joe Rogan.

And announced that his company has, like so many other tech companies, gone too feminine. We need to bring masculinity back to Silicon Valley. The policies have gotten maybe too empathetic. That's what he seems. And we're just so ironic, guys, because this is the... Silicon Valley.

is a place where, I don't know, just six, seven years ago, you couldn't even say that maybe there were more male engineers because male and females want different things, right? Because James DeMoor gets fired from Google for literally writing something very banal and supported by evolutionary psychology.

And so, I don't think we can discount that motivation, but I think the more easy one is just, you know, you have somebody who has donated to Trump's campaign, who sits on the board of fight dance, who stands a lot to gain from it. But also, it's just sheer popularity play. Trump does like to be popular.

And regardless of what you actually think about the decision to then to talk, at the end of the day, the procedural issues around, you know, you had this legislative branch of government vote to pass a law. You had the judicial branch of government uphold the law. How is it that, you know, the executive branch of a president can just go around these two branches and go like,

Now we're good, and then the app just works again. It just seems like these are supposed to be equal branches, and he's kind of overstepped, I think. I think another facet of it is it's so in a way that I don't think we can appreciate because of our age, but it's so culturally relevant, and it's also relevant in a financial sense. You look at all of these meme coins, the way that you get a meme coin trending,

is by putting it on TikTok and creating memes. And then that's how people can make billions and billions of dollars. If your meme coin catches hold with your because of the memes that you create, you can make billions. And then you look at Trump, Trump's just released a meme coin and you're going, well, why would you? You can make literal billions out of this. So why would you cancel the app that is going to be the jet fuel for your meme coin?

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TikTok has been an engine of culture. I think we can't really deny that. At first, it was just regular people posting what I think is the worst genre of video content out there, which is lip syncing videos. Am I just too old to understand the appeal of lip syncing videos? You are not even singing. You are a talentless hack.

Now think the words, okay, maybe I shouldn't be so mean because TikTok has created a platform for people who have poured their heart and soul into content. And a lot of it is really good. It's really entertaining. Entire comedians' careers have really blossomed because of TikTok.

There are TikTok celebrities now that just produce content for that app. So people's income streams, cooking videos, I have deep sympathies for the people that have put so much into creating content. And they have deep friendships on this app. It's just like people on Twitter forming deep networks and friendships, although you could say a lot of it is just fake.

if you don't take it off the app. And these are communities. So I think a lot of it changed also when I think it was, I'm not cool enough to know that was a rapper. I just know he was a black cowboy rapper who dropped a song. That was a new way that the music industry with Billy Ray Cyrus, do you know what I'm talking about?

Kiki definitely does not, but you might have it shot it in a way. Yeah, I know Billy Ray Cyrus are very, you know... Little Nas X. Little Nas X. And Billy Ray Cyrus drops a song called like some old town cowboy thing. And, okay, this sounds so boomer of me. But that song goes viral on TikTok.

And for music executives, this was another way. They realized, like, oh, this is another way to get a song popular. And the structure, the format of TikTok, now introduce a brand new way for musicians to get their songs out there and to make it popular.

It's such a good point because now the music industry, when they produce music, I talk to musicians, and they say, well, you've got to produce something that is going to go viral on TikTok. And if it doesn't go viral on TikTok, then you're probably not going to have a hit record. Exactly. Which is just a completely different way of actually looking at it. But then you think,

as well. You look at the people who own TikTok. You know, we talk about, you know, the billionaire who owns TikTok, but black rocks involved in TikTok are black rock. I'm not going to apply a little bit of pressure to Trump and go, hey, we've invested however much money into it, a hell of a lot of money into it. Are you, they're not going to be happy that it's suddenly their investment goes overnight. Yeah, but, you know, I don't think

perhaps Black Rock is also, what leverage points does Black Rock really have on Trump? I think, at the end of the day, that is more of the issue. And the reason why, say, this China play with TikTok is so such a big deal. It's really about what are the leverage points, right? I mean, a good analogy to this is really, like, would we, if we were one time and we're back doing the Cold War?

would we allow a Soviet backed firm to buy NBC News, right? And we would be absolutely crazy to allow something like that. There's been a long history of the US at least restricting foreign ownership of media. It goes back to the 1912, that was the 1912 Radio Act.

which prohibited foreign individuals and foreign companies from owning a license to broadcast radio, I mean back when I was radio, in America. It was later expanded. And so that's why someone like Rupert Murdoch, who is an Australian citizen, had to get an American citizenship in order to buy news corps.

which runs Fox News and Wall Street Journal. And likewise, in your country now, where we sit, there was a takeover bid, right? There was a attempted takeover bid for the telegraph and the spectator. And Parliament had to convene this session because Emiratis kind of put together a group. And there were concerns, should we be letting the Emiratis own, you know, a newspaper, a broadsheet

in the UK and eventually, you know, the pressure worked, it was no, we shouldn't, and it was sold to British, you know, British owner. So we have these laws and restrictions in place, but I don't want to be glib also about the potential First Amendment issues, and maybe we should actually discuss

that, right? Because there is a legitimate concern in many libertarian types. Thomas Massey was very much against this legislation. And they said, look, we have to be worried about civil liberties here. There's two issues with the potential First Amendment violations. The first one is that one could argue that foreign propaganda is basically editorial discretion by another name.

One could argue that. There is actually precedent for this argument as well in 1965. There was a Supreme Court case. It was called Lamont versus the Postmaster General. Back then, there was a federal law.

that instructed the Postmaster to destroy pamphlets. This was like in the 1960s in the Cold War to destroy any kinds of pamphlets that they see that were obvious Soviet propaganda. You know, stuff that looks like this, right? The moment you see you're supposed to destroy it. This is anti-Soviet propaganda. But it's done in the Soviet style.

And the idea was to just not get this Marxist influence into American minds. And the Supreme Court actually struck that down because they said it violated the ethos of the First Amendment of open debate. And so there are always these concerns. And I think this concern is actually legitimate. Well, yes. But the question I suppose that would be probably worth asking is how many foreign social media platforms do China allow?

Is Twitter available in China? Is Facebook? Is Instagram? None. The Chinese have walled off their entire ecosystem, media ecosystem. But the issue of reciprocity is very different from the issue of foreign propaganda in America, right? And whether or not we should, quote unquote, allow it. Just on that, Melissa, there's a follow up. I think that's important as well. I've heard a lot of people say that

TikTok for Chinese people is totally different to TikTok for Westerners. And this is where I think you start to get into meddling operations, because if it was universally the same, you'd go, well, you know, this is, yeah, okay, this app is owned by China, but it's freedom of discussion, whatever. But in this instance, my understanding is the Chinese content is all wholesome and prim and proper, whereas all the degenerate stuff is being pumped into the West effectively.

Is that an accurate assessment? Yes, and so basically we have to go back to 2016 to discuss this particular issue because

ByteDance by develops a app called DoYin. And DoYin is a video sharing app. And that becomes so popular in China that they then hive off a foreign version called TikTok. So TikTok is then a derivative of DoYin. But the point of doing that is to separate, I think, users.

They don't want American users corrupting and bringing whatever. Think about TikTok as a vector for woke ideology. Why would any country want that? And it was, especially the stuff about gender and please pick your mental issue for the day. It was promoting a lot of even eating disorders. So why would the Chinese want that kind of influence on their platforms?

And then Doian, so Doian has been hived off from TikTok. And you're right that the content is not only different. It is also limited, I think, because the Chinese government became very concerned with too much heavy internet use in general.

So, the moment they felt like, okay, our youth are playing too many video games, they limited the number of hours that youth in China can actually log on to play video games. This is the kind of thing you can do in authoritarian country, right?

try to ban big gold sodas and it's like, oh my gosh, like fascism is here, you know, Hitler is here. So we can't do that kind of thing, but the Chinese government can. And yes, the content is different. And I think there has been evidence that

It was a study done by Rutgers University and another institute called the Network Contagion Research Institute, which, by the way, is not a left-wing institute at all. They do a lot of work on far-right misinformation stuff that, for me, is a little overboard on what they claim, and they don't really focus on antifa as violence, for example. But this group have put out now two reports.

And what they show is that when you compare the total volume of posts on Instagram versus TikTok, and they looked at it across various hashtags. They looked at pop culture stuff. So like Taylor Swift, hashtag Taylor Swift, hashtag Christian Ronaldo, there's a certain baseline ratio of number of posts on Instagram versus TikTok. But then all of a sudden when you compare that with hashtags,

you know, like Tiananmen Square, Hong Kong protests or anything that is culturally sensitive to the Chinese government, it is completely out of whack.

that was used as evidence to show that TikTok was suppressing topics that were, you know, not the Chinese government just did not want people to know about. And that is the argument I agree with in terms of potentially being able to throttle discussion.

or shape discussion would be a more. Shape, yes. Because that's more worrying to me. Throttling is obvious, but when you shape discussion of certain things beyond just Tiananmen Square, but more about America's attitude to China or whatever, that to me is a foreign influence operation. And if that's happening, that's really what the concern I think ought to be.

But then would you have a problem if it's an American or if it's a British owner? Spotify, for example, is owned by a Swedish company, right? Is a Swedish company? So is it a problem just because it's a foreigner or is all, you know, because I think

The United States has a legal precedent of saying that companies are people too because of Citizens United, and therefore companies actually do have free speech rights in America. And when a social media company makes editorial choices, meaning throwing things,

that is well within their speech rights. So this is a case called the net choice case. And it allows social media companies. So essentially the old Twitter, for example,

All Twitter, where they ran into trouble before Elon rescued it, was not that it was throttling conservative voices and boosting pro-transpro-gender ideology people. That was not the issue. The issue was the collusion factor. The issue was the government telling the old regime or telling

you know, engineers at Twitter, what should and what should not be boosted. That was the issue, the first amendment issue. It wasn't actually that Twitter was censoring people at all because if you run a social media company or platform, you should be able to censor people however you like. If tomorrow, you know, you decide, I'm gonna start, you know, kk.com or something and you, you know, just say, I don't wanna hear anyone who's gay. I'm just gonna ban everyone because I don't like,

to hear anything. That same joke twice. Then it's your right to do so. But there's the other side of it, which is when it poses a national security risk and let's be fair as well. There has been precedence for this.

It's not a social media app, but the example of Grindr to carry on with the gay theme. We just how they met. Yeah, before we're on track. Yeah. That's how we met. That's how this beautiful romance began. Yeah, exactly. On a Chinese app. And what happened was, and correct me if I'm wrong,

It was the American government looking into it and going, well, this poses a very clear, very real security risk because there are people who are gay who are in government or whatever else that this can be used as a tool to blackmail. Yeah, and because dick pics are obvious compromise. Yeah. Right? And who's gay, who's not seeking, you know, maybe homosexual tourists, all that is can be used for blackmail.

The app was then went through the same treatment. The US government eventually managed to successfully force this divestment. And Grinder was sold to a US company for $600 million. Now, notice that no one said anything about censorship or my rights were deprived. But that's because Grinder complied.

And so I do find it very disingenuous when TikTok turns around and says, oh, you know, our rights are actually being eroded here. Because if you comply, all the speech still stands. And that's one of the arguments that

all most of the Supreme Court justices actually made in the hearing. They said that all this speech, all the content that currently exists on TikTok, they remain the same. This is not about manipulating speech. This is not about taking away speech as long as the ownership structure is changed, as long as

It sells to a US buyer. All the speech remains, everything is the same. So that's how they try to shut down the argument about this being a First Amendment violation.

No, but you're right about Grindr. And there are other cases that are coming up soon. I don't know if you guys have heard about the DJI case, potentially. So DJI is a Chinese company that makes drones. They are the world's leader in the drone market. They produce all the commercial stuff, like if you have friends that own drones, farmers that

want to do agricultural surveys or just hobbyists, they all have DJI. Recently, there has been a lot of furrow about DJI drones because it's collecting a lot of information. You're flying these drones around your house maybe near a military installation or near an airport or something.

There are actually these things called geofences where the software can block the drone from entering certain protected spaces determined by the FAA. But I don't know, last week, I think the geofences were dropped. And so it was maybe five, six days before the inauguration.

The software, the DJI software, dropped the geofencing. So that meant that the drones could actually go a lot closer to airports and things like that. That's why there were concerns. But imagine that you're, again, this is another issue with who's controlling the stuff. Like you have a geopolitical adversary. This is a Chinese company.

that essentially can just change their software and change the performance and what you're doing with these drones. This is a scary situation to be in, not to mention that currently as it stands because we've outsourced on so much of our industrial capacity. The United States cannot build a drone exclusively and solely in America. We cannot make all the parts. We've lost the capacity to do so.

And in a world in which we've just seen, you know, the dangers of an unsecured supply chain, we just saw one of the most brilliant, you know, counter-terrorism attempts ever made when Israel managed to infiltrate supply chains for pagers, for Hezbollah pagers, and all these pagers simultaneously blowing up in a very surgically tuned attack.

You would want to secure your supply chains, imagining, you know, letting your drones, which are now dispersed. I mean, there are millions and millions of drone owners now in the United States. And so this same national security issue is going to come up with DJI very soon. There are, there have been national security probes into it. There is talk of potentially banning it. So it's, yeah, it's not just, you know, grinder. It's a lot of other companies that, that are now at risk of being banned.

Do you think the issue here, Melissa, is that I think the Francis Fukuyama, the end of history in 1991, there's been this sort of sense that, well, we don't really have adversaries anymore. It's one big world, we're all going to hold hands and sink them by iron trade, and a lot of efforts and overtures were made to China.

to try and bring them into the global economy, which has happened. But what hasn't happened is what everybody claimed would happen, which was the idea that, well, if they get richer, then they're going to become freer. And that really hasn't happened. And the standoff that now exists between geopolitically seems to me like a standoff between democracies and authoritarian countries effectively. It's not so much about ideology as much is about the form of government.

And this way, this Western way of thinking is a kind of luxury belief almost, the idea that we don't have enemies. We don't have people who would use power that we give them over us and the vulnerabilities that we expose to them in order to do things or achieve things at our expense.

Do you think this conversation about forcing TikTok to divest up with people who talk about having a band? Likewise, some of the issues you mentioned is really fundamentally a gradual process of realisation. Now, we're not in the end of history world. We're in a world where at least two countries are attempting to prize the leadership away from the Western world, and we're going to have to reckon with that somehow.

Yeah, to some extent, I do think the fever has kind of broken over this. We have started to realize that the world that we were promised pursuing a pro-engagement attitude towards China in the hopes that they would liberalize, in the hopes that they would open up.

turn out to be a bad miscalculation because it turns out that they were then kind of exporting their own authoritarian ways. Like, you know, the Chinese state has not only built a surveillance system for their own people, but they've exported that surveillance system now to us. And if they are able...

through internet of things, through technologies, and if they're able to actually use our own laws against us, we're essentially cucking ourselves with our own laws, if you think about it, because if they can use that, if they can claim, imagine if they were successful in claiming First Amendment violations. The irony of just the situation where an authoritarian state that denies free speech to its own citizens can claim

First, amendment violations to its own benefit, then I think we deserve to lose World War III. We might as well just wave the white flag, just cut our losses, just at this point, just give up prematurely, because we just cannot, you know, close societies can hack open societies very easily. We've seen so many examples of this. And if we cannot

have muscular principles that we are able to defend our way of life and our system and our laws, then on the grounds that somebody is denying some basic freedoms, I just don't know how we're even going to face up against the reality that

We do have foreign adversaries. They want control. In this, you know, increasingly bipolar world, we've seen Russia and China really get pushed together. It's, they've gotten closer since the, you know, the Russia-Ukraine war as well. And it's, they're now coming together to even form things like, you know, digital currencies that own central banks.

digital banks, and it's very worrying because the world is now decoupling, but I do think that decoupling is necessary, right? Because the Soviet Union collapsed on its own contradictions.

you know, pursued glass knot and then peristroika and it collapsed because it just could not sustain itself economically. The problem with China is that they studied the Soviet Union's collapse very carefully because they know that that's exactly what they need to avoid.

And so they did the reverse where they actually opened up markets first before anything else. So they welcomed the world. Okay, we're going to trade. And so they imported, well, I want to import a capitalism, but they just opened up their markets.

And so they were able to get rich and raise the standard of living, which is by no means not going to discount that. If you look at the average Chinese person's life today, it is remarkable. They have really provided riches really for large source of the Chinese population.

And so many people have just been lifted out of poverty in a matter of just one generation. But now they're way of life. For many Chinese, even coming to America is a downgrade. If you've seen our trains, if you've seen our way of life of crime and everything. And so there is this real sense that the Chinese government's policies, they're very grateful for them.

And they have not opened up politically and socially at all, so despite being so wealthy. And that's partly, you know, it's because also that they have actually closed off their entire system. And the government is able to control, you know, what

the whole pipeline. So if you go from kindergarten, what you're reading, you have to study Marxist thoughts, Xi Jinping thought. It's kind of drilled into you since you were a kid. And the Chinese system is robust. There's no indication at all that it is going the way of the Soviet Union. The advances that the Chinese state has made on AI, on a lot of these technologies that are just boosting productivity, the forefront.

About five years ago, China didn't make a single EV. Today, it's the world market leaders to pass Tesla in EVs. So I think nobody has really any idea how to deal with a rich communist. Because the communists failed because they just failed because they were poor. They couldn't actually, their ideas could not survive contact with reality. But the Chinese state has figured out how to do that.

And it is a weird combination, hybrid combination. James Lindsay talks about this, actually, that you can't really see China as just a communist country. They say they are. But it's really, they've kind of taken elements of both their communists and fascists, their capitalists and socialists. And they've kind of created this blend that is really formidable. And there's no clear sign of how we're really going to actually deal with this.

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It's such a profound point about the molding of the two economic systems, because when I went to Beijing in 2006, I was blown away by the amount of Louis Vuitton stores. In particular, there was one Louis Vuitton store in the center of Beijing. It looked like Ikea. This thing had about six different levels, and it was massive. And there were people just piling in and buying what seemed to be mountains of Louis Vuitton. The wealth in China is huge.

And also, it represents a very real threat to the countries around it, in particular Taiwan. When you think actually, I think it was a couple of years ago, that Taiwan was accusing TikTok of helping to push pro-Beijing anti-Taiwanese propaganda into the minds of young people via the app.

Yeah. Although, interestingly, Taiwan hasn't actually been TikTok. It's only been for military devices, unlike, say, India, which banned the app entirely in July 2020. There were border clashes between the two countries and India was light enough. We're just going to ban, not just TikTok, they've banned a bunch of other Chinese-owned apps.

The propaganda worry is real, right? I mean, you can see it from, you know, the basic fact that, like, people are, you know,

picking their identities through TikTok as well. It's so easily influences young people that you have phenomenons that are social contagions that spread like wildfire on this app. Susie Wise wrote a great piece for the Free Press.

documenting the rise of, like, pick your own mental health issue. So things like Tourette syndrome, you know, with a verbal tics, because it looks very cute on camera, but kind of like the more performative kind of mental health issues. No, until they start talking. That doesn't look that cute at all.

Yes, but it makes them kind of special, you know? No, I've just, I have heard quite a few people with Tourette's use language that wouldn't go down so well in social media. Let's just put it like that. Yeah, get your band. Yeah. And you have also eating disorders that have spread like wildfire on the same app. And so, you know, social contagions so easily take the TikTok. Why wouldn't

the ability to actually change people's minds on a single topic. There have been some theories about this idea that the entity behind orchestrating this whole desire to ban TikTok is actually Israel. I'm sure I don't know if you guys have come across this online. You have.

And the idea is that... Yes, why? Oh, it's always the juice fault. Oh, it's just juice, all right. What their argument is, is that there's been too much pro-Palestinian messages have been spread via TikTok, and that has engendered sympathy to the Palestinian cause.

And what the Jews Israel and Moss had have done is then pressure the US government to shut it down because it's making people too aware of Israel's war crimes. Let's see.

That is the argument. Of course, this is an artifact of what the, so anything that is allowed that trends on TikTok that becomes popular is essentially allowed to trend, right? So that is a function of what is happening in terms of the levers of control on TikTok.

But regardless, this argument is based on the idea that there's no other way for pro-Palestinian content to show up, which is completely false on other platforms. I mean, you have influences like Candace Owens, like Ian Carroll, who have amassed huge audiences. And even after veering into anti-Semitic territory far beyond just pro-Palestine,

They have built even bigger followings on other platforms. I see them on Twitter. I see them on Instagram and other platforms. So it doesn't look to me like they needed TikTok to boost their content. It's not like there's a darth of opportunities for pro-Palestine content to surface on other platforms.

This argument seems to me kind of rooted in this, you know, everything, just try to find the Jewish connection and just blame it on that. The irony of that is that Jeff Yas is actually Jewish. So the guy who has one of the biggest stakes in bike dance, who wants bike dance to continue to own TikTok is Jewish. So it's like, which, which is it? Like, you know, it just seems like it's Shrodhin who goes Jew all over again.

Do you think looking at it and everything that we've discussed, do you think it has a future in the US?

because I think the executive order lasts for 75 days off the top of my head, which means that they've got about 10 or so weeks, really. Two and a bit months in order to sort this out. That's not a long time when you think about the deal that needs to be struck, the various parties, the fact that the Chinese government bite-dance have dug their heels in. This is a tricky deal to get over the line, isn't it?

It is, but you know, they had so much more time than that. I mean, the original bill said 270 days. They had nine months to actually find a buyer from the moment Joe Biden actually signed the

the law, the bill into law. And they didn't bother. They kept insisting, you know, TikTok cannot be sold. We were rather shut it down, the CEO said. So there was this idea that, like, this cannot happen. They blamed it on Chinese export controls. They said China just, you know, Beijing has export controls on algorithms, and this is one that falls under them.

which again is very ironic because you just were trying to base your argument that TikTok is not a Chinese company and there's no Chinese influence but then apparently China is not allowing you to sell this app which is cuts against your argument.

And so, yeah, fast forward to where we are now. Trump has signed, has passed an executive order saying, all right, we're gonna, you know, try to find some time. By the way, I don't even know if this executive order can actually stand in court. Again, because the law has gone into effect.

the idea of whether or not there's been qualified buyers lined up. It doesn't seem like a deal is anywhere close to being

looked at, it's just in such early stages. But the latest reports I've read is that there is some indication that ByteDance is softening. They seem to entertain this idea of a 50-50 joint venture situation with China.

My worry, though, is that, and this is kind of the day work, my day job, what that entails is analyzing China risk, China exposure, and advising companies on how to navigate that.

is that let's say the leading candidate is Elon Musk. And by the way, I'm an Elon fan. I think he's done wonderful things for not just America, but humanity at large. So you're pro-nots. I'm pro-autism. But my concern is that let's say the Chinese government just comes on and says, the only person that you can sell this app to is Elon Musk. The problem with that is that

Elon is very exposed to Chinese markets through his other companies. So yeah, we don't have a Chinese owner. But if Elon Musk owns it, he threw Tesla and SpaceX because of, you know, they have factories in China. They can't manufacture a lot of things without the Chinese

market, he himself is actually exposed. And you know, one of the things that Elon is that, I mean, I love the fact that he is so trolly. A lot of people don't like it. They kind of, you know, they say, like, Elon just shuts his mouth. It's the same thing they used to say about Trump, right? If he just shuts his mouth, think of, you know, how much more people will like him and his policies.

I actually kind of like that we have the richest man on Earth, serious billionaire who knows everything about rockets and brain chips, tweeting memes about cocks or something. I personally enjoy that. It doesn't bother me.

So he's quite a loose cannon on a lot of things. And we know that. He'll say things that are sometimes wrong. He's been tweeting a lot about UK politics recently. But the one thing he's very careful about, try to find the worst thing he's ever said about the CCP or about China. It's hard to find, right? And so my concern is that through exposure, and this is why it does matter,

Elon might be a little bit beholden to the Chinese government in other ways. He's not obligated to turn American user data to the Chinese in the current structure, but he might be beholden to the Chinese government in other ways.

And now that Donald Trump with Elon Musk support is in charge of America, how do you see that play out vis-a-vis China? Because that was a big talking point in his first presidency. China, you know, every comedian had a routine about it, the whole thing.

That's gone pretty quiet now. So obviously the war in Ukraine has meant that the focus is there. The war in Gaza has taken the focus there too. And what I see from Donald Trump is a willingness to do deals that might not be

that allow him to get a deal without necessarily getting the best outcome for the side that he might have been seen to be supporting. Let's put it that way, right? You know, you look at Israel talking about the ceasefire, which I think a lot of people feel is... I mean, you're getting the hostages back, but you're doing exactly the same thing that caused October 7th and the first place.

which is you're releasing terrorists from jails, you're sending them back to Hamas who are celebrating. On Ukraine, clearly he's going to try and do a deal as quickly as possible without necessarily regard for the long-term consequences. What do you make of his China approach now in that context?

It's a very good question. So my cards on the table, when I first did your show, it was 2019, right? So almost towards the end of Trump's term, I appeared very Trump sympathetic. And that's because, you know, 2016, I was actually quite upset that he, and shocked that he won against Hillary. I was an Obama stand. I used to watch Daily Show with John Stuart all the time. And so that was my factory settings going into, you know, the Trump term.

upset. But midway through, I noticed that Donald Trump had single-handedly reversed what was the consensus that drove US foreign policy for decades since Nixon went to China from

something that was pro-engagement or some sort of like tacit acceptance of China's rise in the world to a offensive position. He knocked Beijing off balance. He started trade wars. He essentially changed our posture.

And I really liked that he did that. And when I went on in 2019, you could probably hear I was quite sympathetic to Trump. I didn't hate Trump in the way that a lot of at the time was quite fashionable to do.

A few months later, COVID was gonna upen all our lives, and I think that then shifted everybody to realize exactly the mass slipped basically during COVID. Everybody realized, okay, actually China's a threat.

They are not an ally and was obvious in the way they conducted themselves. You know how they retaliated against countries that wanted The investigation into COVID origins by economic pressure and and you know this whole thing about China extending its censorship tentacles to even companies beyond China American companies couldn't you know say what they wanted to say You couldn't tweet what you wanted to tweet in support of Hong Kong if you were a basketball coach so all of this

made people realize like, okay, this was not the sleeping dragon that we thought it was. And so fast forward to today, I thought Donald Trump was going to be able to build upon that legacy, which to Biden's credit, he continued. He extended a lot of Trump's tariffs on China and even in some ways actually doubled down on America first.

You know, the chips act and a lot of things that he had passed. And so I thought, okay, wow, it's like a permanent change in the entire foreign policy establishment. And so what's shocking is that that's why this reversal is taking me by surprise.

Because, you know, this is Trump's last term. He doesn't have to get reelected. He doesn't actually have to do anything that's popular. He can actually just be a total jackass and make America great again, like just pursue all the unpopular things. He doesn't have to seek for anyone's approval. And so it's a bit shocking to me that he has taken this posture. And I think, you know, there seems to be this uneasy balance right now.

MAGA 2.01 because it was such a broad tent. It was like a weird band of people that kind of came together to deliver the White House for Trump. And big part of it was the Tech Right, which was non-existent the first time. And the Tech Right and the original MAGA Right

They don't agree on a lot of things except that they just hate woke people. They just hate what the Democrats have done. And rightly so, right, to America. The first fisher of this was obvious over Christmas when there was this huge more about H-1B visas. And this debate about, you know, how many H-1B visas. And the tech bros are very pro H-1Bs because they hire a lot of them to staff their companies in Silicon Valley.

The Magarite was just like, no, why do we want to turn America into India? Right? That was their argument.

Not only do they not agree on these issues about immigration, they also don't agree on, say, lifestyle. The tech bros are burning men going hedonists who want to play transhumanism to its logical conclusion. The MAGA 1.0 are social conservatives that want to return to tradition or they tend to be more Christian. And so on lifestyle, they are also very different.

And then on the China issue, that's the other issue where in tech, generally, there is this more because they're all business people have been a lot more pro engagement, a lot more willing to work with China and to try a different tact. I think that is quite natural when you are just doing business in general.

There's always a deal to be made, right? That's the world of business. There's always a deal to be made. Exactly. And even if you're a venture capital company, it's hard to not want to be tempted by certain startups in China that are making huge advances in robotics, to AI. So you want to look at those deals as well. So there's a natural predilection for wanting to see China in that older, pre-Trump way.

then compared to the MAGA folks like, so if you've heard Steve Bannon talk recently, he thinks Elon is a demon. Like he said things like that. And if you see both of these individuals as figureheads for their respective sides in this broader Trump, you know, 2.0 tent, it's, I don't know how this is going to play out because

To be fair to the tech right, I would say that even within the tech right, there are the China Hawks and there's a non-China Hawks. So Peter Thiel is a huge China Hawk. Yeah, we've had him on the show talking about that. If you have seen that episode. So it's not monolithic even on that side of the tent. But one of the things I think we need to remember, though, is that they need each other.

I think, you know, in the same way that a healthy society needs conservatives and liberals, I think MAGA 2.0, they need the tech right and they need the MAGA right because the tech right is what drags them into the future. Think about getting to Mars. Think about being future oriented innovation. You need to have high trade openness for that. And then MAGA right is like, okay, don't go too far guys. Like, you know, the thing you want to implant in your head or the

artificial wounds that is way too far. So it's kind of like the gas pedal and the brakes within that movement. But given all the personalities and there are a lot of egos there, I don't know how that will last.

Yeah, and that's the key point, I think, is the ego element of it, in that all of these people involved in this movement, particularly at the figurehead, they've all got huge egos. And how able are they going to be to step back and let something that they profoundly disagree with or challenges their worldview get implemented at party level? Yeah, no, I agree.

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The obvious question is, what happens the first time Elon Musk disagrees with Donald Trump? On an issue they both care about. What happens the first time RFK Jr. and Donald Trump, who don't agree on a lot of things, are forced to recognize and deal with that. What happens on all those things, right? And the question is, have all those people

Do they have the ability for four years to set? There you go inside and say, this is the guy that got elected. We're going to do whatever he says. Right. Is that going to happen? Well, I guess we'll find out.

There should be a poly market to bet, you know, like when we think the coalition falls, like on these all these pairwise relationships, because I know I agree with you. I mean, the one thing Trump seems very different this time around is that he seems very much more willing to credit a team. He has actually kind of dialed back his

central need for being front and center. He's given, you know, he steps aside. He gives Elon a lot of credit. He's like, oh, JD, come over here. Even when he had his acceptance speech on November, on the night he won the election, he credit his chief of staff. You know, he said this woman that came out, I can remember my name was Susan something. If it was a man, you'd remember.

Well, to be fair, she didn't want the credit. She was that kind of woman who was like, you know, you actually look up to a lot of people, if I only knew her name. Even if you can't remember her name. No, no, no, no. Exactly. Well, what she looks like. Yeah. Well, it's a fascinating time. And I guess what has surprised me is how just quite a few positions that Donald Trump has expressed in the past don't seem to be nearly as strong in his mind at the moment and the way he's communicating them.

Like what else do you think? Well, I think China is one of them. I think the, like I said, I think the Israel deal, I found quite surprising, to be honest, because it's a good deal for the parents of the hostages. I don't think it's a good deal for Israel.

not even remotely. It feels like to me, although I understand that Netanyahu is under a lot of pressure internally. So that may have been the main factor there. And I just guess it remains to be seen. I suppose I said this the day on what I did this thing with Stephen Bartle on Irish, he always got Galloway and Daniel Priestley, which is I think ultimately the presidency is a reactive position.

like Donald Trump was on course to be reelected in 2020 and then COVID happens and it ruins everything, right? So the war in Ukraine is another example. There are lots of these things that will, October 7th is another example. There are lots of these things that happen that change the course of history and the present, all they can do is react to that. And that's what's going to be interesting to see because as you say, there are internal dividing lines within the MAGA coalition.

And when those events happen, that's when there's the propensity for that to start breaking apart, because people are going to take different positions. I mean, one of the things about illegal immigration, are they actually going to be able to get rid of all the people that they promised to get rid of? Is the birthright citizenship?

executive order going to stand up and call almost certainly not. Yeah, there will be legal challenges. It's going to get challenged and caught. And by my understanding of the American legal structure, birthright citizenship is part of America. So what happens on that? What happens on all the other things? It's going to be a very, very interesting four years, very interesting. But America right now is filled with a sense of optimism and possibility, which is a great thing to see. That's fantastic for any country to have that.

The question is what's going to happen when these hard moments come? Yeah. Particularly if, and there's been a lot of people talking about this, the future of Taiwan. What happens if China, you know, they've made the odd noise, you know, they've done the odd cheeky manoeuvre, but what happens if they actually, in the next couple of years, decide to make a real play for Taiwan? And do you think that will happen, Melissa?

So, yes, the question is just when. That's the big question because US military estimates by 2027, China will make a move on Taiwan.

Why would you put out such a hard and fast threshold on this? Has any war in history ever been preemptively predicted like that? No, these things happen on the timeline of the perpetrator. Whenever actually China decides to move is when China decides to move,

But it is intrinsically baked into Chinese... The Chinese state has for the longest time said that reunification is almost like manifest destiny. So it is going to happen. The question is when and how, right? The other question is how?

Is Taiwan going to be taken militarily? Are we going to have paratroopers come in and storm the island, amphibious vehicles landing, or is it just going to be something more like a soft coercion over time, where you almost give Taiwan no choice, whether it's in the form of a naval blockade? If you can move ships and choke off certain points in the sea surrounding Taiwan,

and prevent oil, prevent food from coming in and out. Well, you've kind of choked Taiwan out and given it no choice. The worry about Trump specifically is that, you know, he is his campaign on being an anti-war president. And that's very much baked into his expectations as well.

So, what does Trump think of Taiwan? He said a lot of things, and one of the things that unlike President Biden, who was very clear on Taiwan, we will intervene if Taiwan is taken, which is, you know, actually Biden kind of defied US, what was the standard for US foreign policy back then, which is

strategic ambiguities like we will never say we will but you know the understanding is kind of like don't ask don't tell before foreign policy and then after Joe Biden says this his national security people then come out and say oh no no no he doesn't mean that we still respect the one China policy we're not going to intervene

or, you know, it should be ambiguous. And so it's like a weird thing with, for the last four years, we've had a situation where the official posturing of the United States towards the Taiwan issue was strategic ambiguity about strategic ambiguity because of this like seesaw thing going on at the executive level.

Trump comes in and he's been asked a lot of questions about, what do you think about Taiwan? How should we deal with that? And he essentially says that, oh, it's very important to Taiwan producers a lot about chips. But he insinuated that if we're able to deal with that problem, the chips problem,

basically China can have it. So he's kind of insinuated that. That sounds like exactly what I would think Trump would say, which is, well, we need the chips, so let's do a deal. Who cares about this piece of land?

Right. And we don't know what that's a thing about also. I think one of the worst legacies of the whole 20 years of war on terror is just the American appetite for any kind of intervention is essentially zero. That's also precisely why we saw recently when you had this whole debate about the TikTok ban being that

Well, Congress unanimously upheld it, SCOTUS unanimously uphold it. There's a certain kind of person for whom that kind of action, where everyone, including the media, agrees with something. Oh, we must now take the other side. And it's because of the hangover, I think, from the WMD fiasco leading up to the Iraq invasion. So how we are going to deal with this remains to be seen, because

Trump also is one of those figures where what he says and what he does, you have to, you know, have a lot of room for that. And that's why I'm, you know, not necessarily going to think it's the end of the world. Even right now when he's playing these games,

He often does this where he'll say, he'll talk very sweetly to people like Kim Jong Un and the press has a freak out over stuff like that. But then if you look at what he does, he would praise see, but then he

you know, slap massive tariffs on China and, like, becomes very assertive on trade issues. So it's like Trump, that's just always been his style. So when he says things like, oh yeah, you know, anti-war, we should minimize the chances of war.

I don't know what that really means in terms. We're back in a way if you really know how to read Trump to strategic ambiguity and his unpredictability in this day and age with the chaos of the global world orders. Actually, I think it's a huge pro in our favor.

can agree with you more. Well, Melissa, it's been wonderful to have you back on the show. Thank you for that. We're going to head on over to Substack, where our audience are going to ask you their questions in a second. But before we do, we always end with the same question, which is what's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be? Before Melissa answers a final question, at the end of the episode, make sure to head over to our Substack. The link is in the description where you'll be able to see this. What is Xi Jinping like as a person?

What are his basic personality traits? China has a vision for where they want to be in a hundred years. How can we encourage more long-term thinking in the West? How do you think China's China's looming demographic crisis will change things? Are you recording this? Excellent. This is great bonus content. We should be banning OnlyFans also.

This is where, you know, since we're talking about banning TikTok, I think OnlyFans is the other one. What about the free speech element? There is no free speech to show your, yeah, there shouldn't be. Buy and OnlyFans.

Yeah, I do think OnlyFans is particularly toxic to society and in ways that stripping or escorting or prostitution isn't. And that's because it

lowers the costs of participating in these professions. Well, they are real professions, obviously, but people get paid for it and a lot of people make money from that.

The problem is especially serious with only fans because I think it just rewires dynamics between men and women. Because the costs are so low, I don't have to put myself at risk. I don't have to actually physically touch, you know, a man if I don't physically give him a lap dance or sleep with him as an escort. Now I'm not only fans, it's just a parasocial relationship. I'm, you know, showing my body to my fans for money. But the men on the other side are also

thinking that they are in a real relationship with these women. And so they get hood, they don't then seek out actual real relationships. Their entire relationship to sex and love is is massively transformed in ways that they just, you know, we look at the dating crisis, which leads to the marriage crisis, which leads to the childbirth crisis. It is all related. And I think something like OnlyFans, which one of the reports I saw was that the total amount

generated on OnlyFans is now exceeded the entire combined salaries of all NBA players. Okay, this is so disturbing. So disturbing. Because now these women who are like, you know, oh, I'm just going to strip to get myself through college. Now you can just do it forever on OnlyFans. Why would you ever have a get a real job again? Although maybe that's moot because AI is just going to end up taking all our jobs. So anyway, I will say that if you are a parent,

You literally have one job. Don't let your girl get only fans and don't let your boy pay for only fans. That's it. That's the bar now. It's like this low. Well, the takeaway from this episode is we need to get on only. That's how we're going to make the real money. All right. Follow us over to Substack where we ask Melissa your questions.

As a Singaporean, how do you view the low trust cynical and toxic relationship we have between the lecturer and the state compared to Singapore?