Daily Archives: 7 July 2023

Misguided

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A Federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction (meaning the matter must still go through the courts before anything becomes final) barring the Federal government from communicating with social-media companies with a view to influencing what those companies post or allow to be posted on their sites.

Some on the Left are objecting.

Some legal scholars have been skeptical that…courts could intervene without chilling legitimate government speech about controversial matters of public interest.

“Some legal scholars” are cynically distorting the situation. There is nothing in the judge’s ruling that bars government speech about controversial matters of public interest. The “government”—i.e., the men and women in government—remains entirely free to speak on any matters it wishes, and in any venue it wishes. The “government,” however, may not seek to tell—or even to try to influence—private enterprises what they might post or not post, or allow or not allow to be posted, on their sites.

The government has a plethora of outlets of its own: the White House, for instance, the Senate, and the House all have their own Web sites, as do each of the several Federal Departments and agencies, and every Congressman in the Congress. And many of those Congressmen hold aperiodic town halls to talk directly with their constituents—all of them should, and those meetings should occur more frequently—but that’s the Congressmen’s choice. Nothing bars any Congressman from doing any of those direct-to-constituents conversations as often as a Congressman might wish.

Furthermore, the judge noted in his injunction that

The Court finds…that a preliminary injunction here would not prohibit government speech.

And

A government entity has the right to speak for itself and is entitled to say what it wishes and express the views it wishes to express. The Free Speech Clause restricts government regulation of private speech; it does not regulate government speech.

At bottom, and especially in light of that last—and the plethora of legitimate government outlets for its own speech—the answer to speech with which government disagrees is not to bar the speech (outside of deliberate and overt incitement to riot), but to answer it with their own speech.

The judge’s preliminary injunction ruling can be read here.

Useful, but Insufficient

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The Biden administration is looking to restrict—but not block—Peoples Republic of China companies from accessing American cloud-computing services.

That’s a useful move, to the extent it actually comes to fruition and to any meaningful extent, but it’s not enough by itself, or even against the backdrop of existing restrictions on technology exports to the PRC.

Some are concerned, though, that this could further strain relations between the world’s economic superpowers.

[The Peoples Republic of China] set export restrictions on two minerals the US says are critical to the production of semiconductors, missile systems and solar cells….
The minerals—gallium and germanium—and more than three dozen related metals and other materials will be subject to unspecified export controls starting August 1, Beijing’s Ministry of Commerce said Monday.

The particular PRC response just shows the importance of us moving our supply chains completely out of the PRC, and it emphasizes the shamefulness of American company managers for their slowness in making the necessary adjustments in their businesses.

Beyond that, we need to stop this foolish call and response method of restrictions on technology exports to the PRC. We need to apply the restrictions faster and deeper than they can respond. Simply doing tit-for-tat moves lets the PRC adapt and respond, especially to respond with more pain inflicted on us than would be the case if we stayed solidly inside their Do Loop.

The PRC’s response looks more like escalation than tit-for-tat. They’re already moving to get inside our Do Loop while the Biden administration tiptoes around.

Those concerned need to identify the war—and the PRC is inflicting war on us, even if it’s not, yet, kinetic—in which one side suffers no consequences during the war. Of course friendly-side damage needs to be minimized, but wars are won by inflicting more pain on the other side than that other side is willing to suffer than that other side can inflict on the one compared to the one’s pain tolerance.

Nor is it enough simply to restrict our technology exports/transfers to the PRC to tech that’s our second tier/prior generation technology. Our exports/transfers—to the extent we make any at all—needs to limited to what would constitute the PRC’s second tier/prior generation technology. If our own such tech is ahead of the PRC’s, those exports still would enable the PRC’s catchup and gaining superiority.