Tag Archives: foreign policy

Further Reasons to Ban TikTok

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And not just force its sale by ByteDance. ByteDance is domiciled in the People’s Republic of China, and as such it’s subject to PRC laws, including the PRC’s national security law requiring PRC companies to answer queries from that nation’s intelligence community, queries which can range from “what do you know about this subject in that country” to “go find out, conduct the espionage.” That’s reason enough to ban the company (that subordination of PRC-domiciled companies to that nation’s intelligence apparatus is reason enough to ban all PRC-domiciled companies from the US, but that’s a different story).

Another reason to ban TikTok stems from this claim made by the company in response to the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s unanimous vote (that’s 50 (of 52 Committee members; 2 weren’t present to vote) Representatives of both parties agreeing on something) to advance legislation that would require TikTok to be sold by ByteDance to a non-PRC affiliated company or be barred from operating in the US. That claim by an anonymous spokesman for TikTok:

This legislation has a predetermined outcome: a total ban of TikTok in the United States. The government is attempting to strip 170 million Americans of their Constitutional right to free expression.

That’s a lie on two fronts, explicitly intended to create hysteria. The first front is the business about “total ban.” It is no such thing, and TikTok managers—and their ByteDance owners—know full well: that claim cynically ignores the primary option the legislation offers, the sale of TikTok to an acceptable, non-PRC affiliated buyer.

The second front is that business about stripping TikTok users of their Constitutional right to free expression. Of course, it’s no such thing, as those TikTok and ByteDance persons also know full well. Were ByteDance to refuse to sell and TikTok barred, no one’s free speech would be stripped away, only a single pipeline would be stripped away. All of TikTok’s users, every single one of them, would have access to any and all of a plethora of other pipelines through which to speak, pipelines like Facebook YouTube, Gab, Truth Social, CloutHub, GETTR, MeWe, LinkedIn, Parler, X, and on and on. Further, were TikTok to be sold, that question would never even arise since the TikTok pipeline would be free to continue operating.

Additionally, the ability of this PRC company to mobilize all of its members to manipulate an American internal political matter demonstrates the influence the PRC is able to exert on American domestic politics.

As lawmakers prepared to consider the legislation on Thursday, users of the app…saw notifications urging them to complain to their House representative about the bill. Then the app let people call their representative with a few presses of buttons, fueling congressional concerns about TikTok.
TikTok’s campaign quickly overwhelmed the phone lines of some congressional offices…illustrated how TikTok could mobilize an army of people and gather data to push user behavior, which some lawmakers say is the exact reason they don’t want the company to have ties back to [the PRC].

That PRC manipulation by itself is yet another to ban TikTok altogether.

Biden Wants a Port on the Gaza Strip

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He said so in his Thursday State of the Union speech. He said he’s ordering the US military to set up and establish a port on the coast of the Gaza Strip. He’ll do it, though, with no US boots on the ground. US personnel will be on offshore military vessels, but they will not install the port onshore.

He was careful not to say, though, who would distribute the humanitarian aid that would be coming ashore. The only distribution personnel ashore, though, are UN, Hamas terrorists, and the IDF.

With the UN actively supporting the Hamas terrorists through its UNWRA arm and those same terrorists so busily and successfully intercepting and stealing aid coming in through the Strip’s border with Egypt, this only means that Biden will be supporting Hamas terrorists with more humanitarian aid more directly.

Lastly, with US personnel not being the ones to install the temporary port, our Navy is losing the only thing of value to the effort: practice in rapidly installing a temporary port under unfriendly, if not outright hostile, conditions.

On other thing, beyond lastly: for how long after Hamas’ war on Israel is over will this temporary port remain in place and who will pay for it? Biden won’t say.

Not even Jimmy Carter was this foolish. He, at least, was willing to take a direct shot at freeing American hostages, even if that effort blew up in his face, from bad weather among other problems. Biden is too timid even to try to get our hostages away from the Hamas terrorists. He’d rather supply them and push Israel to stop short of destroying the terrorists in his naked attempt to pay ransom to Evil.

The PRC Wants Us Out Of There

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The People’s Republic of China wants our technology and hardware out of that nation in its drive for self-sufficiency.

The 2022 Chinese government directive expands a drive that is muscling US technology out of the country—an effort some refer to as “Delete A,” for Delete America.
Document 79 was so sensitive that high-ranking officials and executives were only shown the order and weren’t allowed to make copies, people familiar with the matter said. It requires state-owned companies in finance, energy and other sectors to replace foreign software in their IT systems by 2027.

This is something we should be doing regarding PRC products in the US. Their surveillance cameras on US military bases, which our Pentagon procurement agents actively bought demonstrates the danger here, as does PRC espionage equipment on the ship-to-shore cranes in our ports are demonstrating today.

I agree with the PRC’s move. We should be out of the PRC, and that includes us no longer using PRC facilities to build stuff or the components for stuff. We need to relocate all of our PRC usages to other, non-enemy nations.

Beyond that, we need to stop importing PRC products altogether.

Biden and the Iranian Mullahs

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The Iranian nuclear weapons program is nearing breakout.

The [International Atomic Energy Agency] has lost continuity of knowledge in relation to [Iran’s] production and inventory of centrifuges, rotors and bellows, heavy water, and uranium ore concentrate.

And

The Institute for Science and International Security, which has followed Iran’s program for years, says Iran can enrich enough uranium for 13 nuclear weapons, seven in the first month of a breakout.

Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s response:

Let us be clear: we continue to have serious concerns related to the stockpile of highly enriched uranium that Iran continues to maintain.

And

Iran’s level of cooperation with the Agency remains unacceptable, and far short of the expectations outlined by the Director General and the Board.  As we will make clear under the safeguards item, the Board [IAEA Board of Governors] must be prepared to take further action should Iran’s cooperation not improve dramatically.

In other words, all Biden is willing to do is shake his finger very firmly at the mullahs and to yap. They have him cowed into doing nothing serious.

This is what is running for reelection as our President on the Progressive-Democratic Party ticket. Remember this in November.

The Next Step

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It’s becoming necessary. I wrote yesterday about the need for tariffs on a variety of tech-oriented goods that the People’s Republic of China is heavily subsidizing for production and export.

It’s rapidly becoming necessary—if it hasn’t been for some time already—to take the next step vis-à-vis trade with the PRC.

Trade routes snaking through former Soviet republics Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are among the many paths into Russia for so-called dual-use goods—singled out by the US and its allies because they can be used on the battlefield.
Despite their efforts, Central Asia is a growing pipeline for Russia, made possible by thousands of miles of open borders, opaque trade practices and opportunistic middlemen. The goods often originate in China, where they are manufactured in some cases by major US companies, which say the items are being imported by Russia without their permission.

Such goods include war-relevant items like computer chips, routers, and ball bearings used in tanks. These items are important for, if not critical to, the barbarian’s war machine and his war against Ukraine. A lot of these items are US products produced in the PRC for delivery to Western and other Asian customers. The PRC is redirecting much of that output to its “friend forever,” Russia.

It’s become time to take the next step: bar American companies that produce such dual-capable goods from producing them in the PRC or exporting them from other sources into the PRC market. The transition away to other production sources and supply chain pathways will be expensive, but not nearly so expensive as the barbarian overrunning and enslaving Ukraine, with sights on targets further west, and the PRC’s subsequent invasion of the Republic of China and closing off the East China Sea commerce lanes to Korea, Japan, and the US.