Tag Archives: politics

But It’ll Help

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Jason Riley says banning TikTok won’t solve data security problems.

TikTok is hardly the only social-media platform that offers heaping platefuls of misinformation and political propaganda. It isn’t even the only app owned by a Chinese company that gathers extensive data on American users. WeChat, the messaging app developed by the Chinese tech firm Tencent, is another. ….
Another problem with banning TikTok might be that it will do little if anything to address data-security concerns. Foreign and domestic tech companies capture mountains of user information, which enable them to target advertising. TikTok is far from the worst offender. A 2022 Consumer Reports study noted that Google and Meta collect much more data than TikTok.

Congratulations to Riley: he’s successfully identified how widespread and hoary in age that failure is.

Riley also is too narrowly focused. No one move will, by itself, solve data security problems. That, though, does not at all mean that no one move should be made; it just puts a premium on taking additional steps, ideally in concert with each other, but at least take them.

In the end, too, our government wouldn’t be banning TikTok: the PRC government, through TikTok‘s owner ByteDance, would be the one banning TikTok in the US. The PRC’s choice is clear: allow TikTok to continue operating in the US by selling it to a non-PRC-domiciled business or, by refusing, ban the app.

Nor are there any real free-speech concerns with a ban of TikTok. There are a plethora of other messaging and marketing venues. No one’s speech would be limited in any way; only a single tool, well used by an enemy nation for espionage against us, would be limited.

Riley concluded with this:

The reality is that nothing TikTok does is unique to TikTok, and China doesn’t need the app to access our data. If Congress wants to do something about digital privacy, it will have to do better than this.

Absolutely. But doing better requires, of necessity, first starting to do something.

A Singularly Bad Idea

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Texas Senator Ted Cruz (R) has introduced a resolution that would propose a Constitutional Amendment that would apply term limits to Congressmen. Congressman Ralph Norman (R, SC) has introduced a companion resolution in the House.

The amendment would limit US senators to two six-year terms and US House members to three two-year terms. The two-page resolution states that after the amendment is passed by Congress and ratified by the states, the amendment would go into effect “within seven years after the date of its submission by the Congress.”
The resolution proposes that after a member of the US House has served three terms, they aren’t eligible to be reelected to the House. After a US senator has served two terms, they are no longer eligible to be elected or appointed to the US Senate.

This is a bad idea. It’s not suboptimal, it’s bad. There is no legitimate reason for our government to dictate to its sovereign—us citizens—who we will choose to represent us in our government, not even via Constitutional Amendment. Beyond that, there is no legitimate reason for a current generation of citizens to limit who future generations might choose to represent them in future governments, not even via Constitutional Amendment.

The concern about longevity, built-up seniority, and the perks and power of incumbency is very legitimate and amply justified by the abuses of so many current and immediately past Congressmen.

However, our Articles of Confederation, which got many things wrong—it was, after all, a first draft of a self-governing, non-monarchist, form of government—did get the matter of term limits and the power of incumbency and seniority absolutely correct. Here’s what Article V of those Articles had to say on this matter:

[N]o person shall be capable of being a delegate for more than three years in any term of six years[]

Congress under the Articles was unicameral, and a Congressional session and a delegate’s term of office were for one year only. Thus, a delegate could serve in Congress for no more than three years of a six-year period.

That is easily adaptable to our current bicameral Congress with its Congressional sessions lasting two years (so a Senator’s term spans three sessions). One adaptation would be to limit a Representative to three terms of any six and a Senator to two terms of any four, with a Senator wishing to stand for the House being limited just one term in the House until six Congressional sessions had transpired, and a Representative wishing to stand for the Senate being ineligible to do so also until those six Congressional sessions had transpired. I’d also bar the Congressmen of either house from serving in any other Federal government capacity or work for any lobbyist, whether for pay or pro bono, except that such alternative work bars the six sessions from counting until he’s left those positions.

That Amendment, based on the Articles’ limits, would satisfy the problem of incumbency and seniority without presuming to dictate our choices of whom to select to represent us.

So What?

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Fred Krupp, President of the Environmental Defense Fund, is worried that if the incoming Trump administration cuts off subsidies for battery cars, we’ll be ceding battery car leadership to the People’s Republic of China.

Leave aside the fact that our battery car component supply chain (as with so many other of our industry production) remains dependent on the PRC. Pushing battery cars on Americans will increase our dependence on that enemy nation.

Be that as it may, Americans don’t want battery cars. This is demonstrated by the continued need for government subsidies—the tax monies us average Americans remit to our Federal government—in an ongoing effort to con us into buying them anyway, along with outgoing Biden administration efforts to dragoon us into buying these white elephants by raising fuel and emission “standards” to usurious levels intended to ban ICE vehicles.

More than that, satisfying the so-called need for battery cars, the blandishments of left-wing climate Know Betters like the EDF notwithstanding, will not have any material effect whatsoever on slowing the non-existent existential climate crisis that the climatistas are on about.

The subsidies are a waste of our tax money and badly want elimination.

Let the PRC be saddled with—dare I say hobbled by—that transportation dead end and its enormous costs.

“Mistake”

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The Pentagon has finally got around to recognizing the dual nature of businesses domiciled in the People’s Republic of China, and it has listed a number of companies as being dual military and commercial companies. Among them are Cosco Shipping; CATL (Contemporary Amperex Technology), which is trying to ram a new CATL battery factory down the throats of a Michigan community whose residents adamantly don’t want it; and WeChat owner Tencent Holdings. I think WeChat ought to be on that list, too, but that’s for another time.

CATL and Tencent in particular are bellyaching about their listing.

Tencent said its inclusion “is clearly a mistake. We are not a military company or supplier. Unlike sanctions or export controls, this listing has no impact on our business. We will nonetheless work with the Department of Defense to address any misunderstanding.”

And

CATL has never engaged in any military-related business or activities….

CATL also says it’ll sue if they can’t have its way.

The claims are…silly…given the already dual nature of all businesses domiciled in the PRC as intelligence gathering and commercial operations under the PRC’s 2017 National Intelligence Law. The whole point of that law is to put PRC companies at the behest of the nation’s intelligence community for espionage and, by extension, at the behest of the nation’s People’s Liberation Army for use of their products and development of related products as guided by that espionage.

Woke-ism

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A Wall Street Journal article centered on Canada’s Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau resigning (being updated, as this article was published very shortly afterward) closed with this:

Liberal lawmaker Wayne Long said the Liberal Party under Trudeau has swung too much to the left on the political spectrum, much like the Democrats in the US.
“I don’t want to use the word wokeism, but we’ve doubled down on things where we’ve come out as a moral authority,” said Long, who isn’t seeking re-election this year. “People are tired of it. It doesn’t mean that they’re right and we’re wrong, but reality bites, and reality sometimes sucks.”

The Liberals still are unable to recognize that their policies are plain wrong and destructive. They’re only willing to say they were unable to sell their stuff to the public. Much like the Progressive-Democratic Party at home.