The Wire - April 24, 2024

//The Wire//2100Z April 24, 2024////ROUTINE////BLUF: TIKTOK PUSHES BACK AGAINST DIVESTMENT MANDATE.// -----BEGIN TEARLINE------International Events-Red Sea/HOA: Overnight the UKMTO center reported an explosion in the vicinity of a commercial vessel in the Gulf of Aden. AC: Very few details have been made public regarding this incident. -HomeFront-USA: TikTok leadership has reiterated a more hardline stance regarding facing a potential ban in the United States. Following Biden’s signing of the divestment mandate, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew released a statement indicating that TikTok will not be divesting to an American company.-----END TEARLINE-----Analyst Comments: As a reminder, the legalities of the TikTok scandal are vastly more complicated than one might imagine. Technically, TikTok is not owned by China, or Chinese state media organizations. However, the contention arises when examining TikTok’s parent company ByteDance, which is undoubtedly run by a conglomeration of Chinese business interests, and is heavily embedded within the CCP bureaucracy. While the majority of shareholders of ByteDance are Chinese, on paper the technicalities of TikTok’s ownership are vastly more complicated. For instance, the founders of TikTok are from Singapore, and the various business dealings and registrations of TikTok have all taken place outside of China. In fact, in the early days of TikTok, it was actually registered as a business in Los Angeles. The TikTok app itself is also banned in China, with a separate app (called Douyin, also developed by ByteDance) being the way that Chinese citizens interact with a TikTok-like ecosystem. This means that per the definitions and legalese of the law that was passed, TikTok may already fall under the category of being an American company anyway. While the CCP influence (and undoubted surveillance) is palpable on the TikTok platform, it’s unlikely that China would seek to invest such overwhelming surveillance infrastructure in a system that can be easily banned with the stroke of a pen. Consequently, it’s unlikely that any legal or Congressional action on the matter will have any impact on American’s use of TikTok at all. In fact, the banning of technology that is already easy to circumvent will probably have the opposite intended effect. The use of VPNs to access banned content in the United States is already quite popular. Likewise, the side-loading of apps banned by mainstream app stores is also fairly common. Normalizing the use of clandestine tactics to bypass government restrictions may result in the zero-sum game of political power suffering in the long run as ancient mentalities in Congress are unable to comprehend the basics of internet use.Analyst: S2A1//END REPORT//