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March 24, 2023 - System Update - Glenn Greenwald
01:23:50
Ban Imminent? TikTok CEO Torn Apart by Bipartisan Congress. Plus: Marianne Williamson on Challenging Biden & the Dem Establishment

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- Good evening, it's Thursday, March 23rd.
Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Tonight, an extremely heated An extremely bipartisan hearing was held by the House Energy and Commerce Committee today.
For more than six hours, members of both political parties took terms heaping all forms of vitriol, invective, and accusatory rage upon the head of the CEO of TikTok, Shoozie Cho.
They accused him of everything from murdering American children, to indoctrinating America's youth with communist propaganda, to purposely silencing black and brown voices and content creators and discriminating against the Black Lives Matter hashtag, to glorifying mental health as part of a campaign of psychological warfare against America's youth, to serving as a spying system masquerading as a social media app to serve the interests of the Chinese Communist Party.
So complete was the lockstep unity of the two parties that one Republican member sardonically told Chu, quote, welcome to the most bipartisan committee in Congress, and that it was.
The reason for this unified antipathy toward TikTok seems clear.
Both parties are generally in agreement, at least now, that China is a great threat to the United States.
Both parties believe that social media in general, and TikTok in particular, are harmful to the mental health of Americans, particularly children and teenagers.
And it's much easier to heap scorn on a China-adjacent company and its Singaporean chief executive than upon Silicon Valley companies that donate huge amounts of money to the establishment wings of both parties, even though, at least with regard to every accusation other than the one that they're working at the behest of China, Those complaints apply at least as much to these other companies as they do to TikTok.
Now, the easiest thing for us to do tonight would be to ride on the wave of indignation and consensus rage and demand that TikTok be either immediately banned or forced to sell itself to an American company as the Biden administration is currently advocating TikTok do.
But doing that while easy and likely would induce widespread applause among our viewers would, I think, provide a little of value.
Instead, I want to try and put all of this in the context of the vital fact that governments are never more powerful or dangerous Then when they succeed in uniting the citizenry in antipathy to a foreign threat and then demand authorities and powers in the name of that common external enemy.
And whatever your views are, outright banning a social media platform that 150 million Americans voluntarily use is extraordinary by every metric.
The dangers inherent in this kind of unity and the government's ability to exploit that unity for its own ends is, in my view, the primary lesson that should have been learned after 9-11.
And so, rather than just jumping onto the easiest path, I'd like to just take a moment Ask everyone to listen with an open mind and take the opportunity first to report on what happened today to show you what happened at the hearing, but then raise questions that I think are at least worth contemplating about the direction in which the Biden administration, with the support of most politicians and multiple political parties, seems to be headed with regard to TikTok.
Then there is only one National Democrat of any stature who is voicing unflinching and full-throated critiques of Joe Biden, his administration, and the Democratic Party.
That person is not, of course, Bernie Sanders or AOC.
Instead, it's Marianne Williamson, who has announced her candidacy for what would be the first notable primary challenge to an incumbent Democratic president since 1980.
When Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy won several primaries in his ultimately unsuccessful bid to challenge incumbent President Jimmy Carter from the left.
That's 43 years ago.
We'll speak to Williamson about a wide range of topics, including the issues raised by today's House hearings.
As we do every Tuesday and Thursday, as soon as we're done with our one-hour live show here on Rumble, we'll move to Locals for our interactive after show to take your questions and comment on your feedback to obtain access.
Simply join our Locals community by clicking the red button that says join right below the video player here on the Rumble page.
For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee spent the full day grilling the CEO of TikTok, America's most popular social media app for teenagers, with roughly 150 million Americans choosing to use that platform.
For more than six hours at Capitol Hill today, lawmakers in both parties lambasted Xu Zixu in what the Washington Post called, and we would agree, having watched it all, quote, an unusually hostile and unified coalition of lawmakers.
Contrary to common perception, TikTok's 40-year-old CEO is not Chinese.
He instead is Singaporean, born and raised in Singapore, to working-class parents.
While still a teenager, he left Singapore and spent the next 15 years in the West, first moving to England, where he received an economics degree, and then worked for Goldman Sachs in London, and then he moved to the US to obtain a degree from Harvard Business School, and then interned at what was then a US startup called Facebook.
He then spent a decade working in a venture capital firm in Hong Kong and is married to a Taiwanese-American woman.
But he is not, as many believe, a citizen of China, nor has he ever been.
Instead, the concern that has prompted the Biden administration to demand that TikTok either sell itself to an American company or be banned from operating in the United States It's not so much about the CEO personally.
Instead, it's fears that TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, is clandestinely controlled by the Chinese government.
Which, according to this line of reasoning, allows the Chinese government to weaponize TikTok to disseminate disinformation and propaganda to Americans, as well as to collect ample data about the 150 million Americans choosing to use the platform.
In other words, an opportunity to spy upon American citizen on behalf of China.
That's the concern.
The dual concern about TikTok is they're feeding harmful content to American citizens as well as serving to spy on Americans on behalf of the CCP.
The main response of TikTok is articulated by its CEO is that it has already offered and is currently offering to provide more transparency about its source code and its internal operations than any other big tech company to date has thus far agreed.
The CEO touted in particular what the company calls Project Texas.
A way to ensure that all of the relevant data and source code that is collected by TikTok will be stored not in Singapore or in China, where TikTok says it has no operations, but instead in the United States, specifically at the Austin, Texas headquarters of Oracle, the American company that has a stake in TikTok.
In other words, they're saying, We will open our source code to an American company to outside sources.
We will let you see everything that we're doing so you know that China has no opportunity to invade the data privacy of our users, namely American citizens.
To illustrate how bipartisan The cynicism and anger was that assurance, which he offered in his five-minute open statement, prompted Congressman Frank Pallone, Jr., a Democrat of New Jersey, the ranking member of this committee, to respond, quote, I don't believe you.
I still believe that the Beijing communist government will still control and influence what you do.
Now, there's all kinds of, I think, important considerations to contemplate here, because again, whatever else is true, however much antipathy you feel toward China, however much distrust you have of TikTok, to have the United States simply ban, prohibit a social media app That tens of millions of Americans are using to communicate with one another and with the world is an extraordinary power for the United States to claim.
The Biden administration says it wants to do it, although it's saying it doesn't believe it has the ability to do so unilaterally, likely because it doesn't want to alienate Millions and millions of young Americans and teenagers who forever will blame the Democratic Party for banning their favorite social media app and therefore saying an act of Congress is needed in order to get Republican buy-ins and that both parties are to blame.
One of the major aspects of how the Chinese-U.S.
relationship needs to be considered is that ordinarily when the United States has an enemy, it wants to isolate or demonize or destabilize or go to war with, whether it be Cuba or Venezuela or Iran or Russia, it's able easily to unite
all relevant centers of power to convince them they have no real economic stake in any of these countries and therefore can succeed and thrive even though sanctions will be imposed on those countries and those countries will be isolated.
There's generally unity when foreign policy, among all American centers of power, that is absolutely the opposite of the truth when it comes to China.
You have the U.S.
security state that increasingly regards China as a grave threat to American interests, and yet Wall Street is so in bed with China that it's impossible to imagine almost how they could ever be extricated.
And so when, for example, the Biden administration is threatening to ban TikTok or to force TikTok to sell itself to an American company, Beijing already today said, if you do that, essentially, we will do the same to you.
Imagine, for example, if China tells the numerous American companies operating in China, Apple or Nike or Tesla that you are no longer allowed to operate on our soil And in fact because of this precedent that was just set we demand if you want to stay here that you first sell yourself to Chinese business interests
So that's always a problem when it comes to the United States is the leverage it has over China is extremely limited because of the interdependency the two countries have economically and in particular the need for Wall Street and major corporate America to use China for cheap labor and for its factories and for in general it's dependent on the Chinese supply chain.
In other words it has widespread repercussions far beyond what normally would be the case when the United States wants to take action against a new enemy.
Now there are a couple things to note here.
One is the irony that for a long time the United States' current view of TikTok is how China viewed American tech platforms.
Namely that we don't trust Google and Facebook to operate in China.
We believe they're going to disseminate disinformation or destabilize our country if we allow them to simply freely operate within our country.
And for many years, China as well as Iran and Russia and others placed severe limits On what companies like Google and Facebook or Twitter could do within their countries, citing the same kinds of national security concerns the Biden administration is currently citing as reasons to limit or ban TikTok.
And in fact, the West's view was that that proved the despotism of China, that China was afraid to allow U.S.
social media platforms to operate further within it.
So here we have, for example, the Council on Foreign Relations and its February 17, 2017 report.
There you see the title, China's central government has cracked down on press freedom as the country expands its international influence.
But in the internet age, many of its citizens hunger for a free flow of information.
And the report reads, listen to this to see the parallels, quote, U.S.
technology in China in more recent years.
China has made it exceedingly difficult for foreign technology firms to compete within the country.
The websites of U.S.
social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram are blocked.
Google, after a protracted battle with Chinese authorities over the banning of search terms, quietly gave up its fight in early 2013 by turning off a notification that alerted Chinese users of potential censorship.
In late 2014, China banned Google's email service, Gmail, A move that triggered a concerned response from the U.S.
State Department.
In January 2015, China issued new cybersecurity regulations that would force technology firms to submit source code, undergo rigorous inspections, and adopt Chinese encryption algorithms.
The move triggered an outcry from European and U.S.
companies who lobbied governmental authorities for urgent aid in reversing the implementation of new regulations.
CFR Senior Fellow Adam Siegel writes that quote the fact that the regulations come from the central leading group and that they seem to reflect an ideologically driven effort to control cyberspace at all levels makes it less likely that Beijing will back down.
Now, again, maybe you're somebody who believes that you want TikTok out of the United States.
You don't think any firms, even adjacent to the Chinese, and again, the argument of TikTok is we are not a Chinese company.
We are based in Singapore and the United States.
Our board of directors has a majority of Americans on it.
The prior CEO was American.
We have Americans all up and down the leadership structure.
And even with regards to this parent company, there's dispute, they dispute, I don't think that credibly, that there's a close relationship to China.
It is worth noting that China, Iran, Russia, and other countries have had similar concerns about American social media companies operating in their countries.
They're feeding our youth disinformation.
They're destabilizing our country with the kind of content that they're feeding.
And yet those countries' desires to ban or control or limit American tech companies was viewed as despotic, an effort to stifle the free flow of information within those countries.
So it's worth asking whether or not there are similar concerns that are raised by the Biden administration's desire To ban what is arguably the one major social media company not fully under control of the U.S.
security state.
Remember, the whole point of the Twitter files was that the FBI, the CIA, Homeland Security have designs on controlling big tech.
They want to ensure that decisions about what content you can and can't see, about what viewpoints you can and cannot voice, are subject to the control of the United States government.
And that's why it's so important to them to maintain the monopoly power of Facebook and Google because U.S.
security officials have said that monopoly power that big tech wields is important to our national security objectives because we control the content of those monopolies.
And we want them to remain powerful because they do our bidding.
TikTok is arguably the one company that Americans can use not subject to those controls.
And so I think it's worth questioning, at least, whether the motive of the Biden administration and the establishment wings of both parties in wanting to ban TikTok is really this grave concern over data privacy and the like.
Problems that are shared by every other big tech firm that nobody wants to ban.
Facebook, Google, Instagram and the like.
Or whether it's a concern that they simply can't control what happens on TikTok the way they can with these other big tech companies and whether as Americans we ought to be worried about the desire to preserve somewhere on the internet of major significance that we can go that our government can't control.
It's one of the reasons why I'm here on Rumble, because I believe they're devoted to resisting that, but they're nowhere near the size yet of TikTok.
Now, there's a user on TikTok who raised these questions, I think in a very rational way that's worth listening to, And I'm going to show you this video because I think he raises a bunch of questions really worth pondering.
Let me just credit him first.
His name is Luke David Johnson.
He's an American user of TikTok, a content creator on TikTok.
And he is responding to a reporter's question to the White House press secretary about the Biden administration's announcement that it intends to ban TikTok.
let's listen to what he says a question on tick tock over a hundred million people now use this app what is your message to them about why you're so concerned the way she casually thumbs through her notebook without even looking at the pages knowing there's nothing in there that's going to help her with probably the most important question anyone has asked her in weeks and As she tries to act like it's just some run-of-the-mill question.
Oh, by the way, TikTok.
You're the press secretary.
You're all things media.
You're obsessed with the media.
TikTok has a hundred million users that use it for 90 minutes a day.
You know this is huge.
She tries to play it down like it's practically nothing.
And you wasn't sure if the U.S.
should ban TikTok when you was asked about this.
Now the administration seems to be hardening its stance.
You're backing this legislation, as you mentioned.
You know, we've learned, you know, now warning that a possible ban could be at risk here.
The key part of that, like it usually is, what changed?
I'll tell you what changed.
TikTok didn't start collecting any kind of data that it wasn't already collecting before.
It's also not collecting data that a million other companies don't harvest and sell in nice, tight, neat little packages to all kinds of people around the world, which are freely available.
I don't think that China went out of its way to create an app in order to track and monitor stuff that's widely available on the market already.
It would have been a lot more cost effective for them to just go buy it.
Note he's not saying that China is too good to want to spy on Americans.
Of course the Chinese are spying on Americans, just like the Americans spy on the Chinese, the Russians, the Iranians, and every country spying on every other.
That's not his argument.
He's not saying Chinese government's too noble to do this.
He's saying all of this data that the Biden administration and members of all parties are saying they're so worried TikTok is collecting on Users is all data that Facebook and Google and Instagram and every other company sell.
Everything about your browsing preferences and your interests so that companies can directly market to you.
These are all It's an argument worth considering.
available on the market, if that was China's interest, they would be able to obtain it a lot more easily than by going through this whole trouble of creating multiple companies and having what is clearly a Western-oriented Singaporean entrepreneur interested in profit, running this company and building it into they would be able to obtain it a lot more easily than by going through It's an argument worth considering.
Let's hear the rest. - But what they did do was give Americans the ability to communicate with each other.
And what has been happening, as she mentioned, there's 100 million users now, 90 minutes a day.
Using this platform to communicate with each other.
That is a huge threat.
And not to the Americans.
Not to the individuals who are communicating their ideas to one another.
But to the administration in power.
And that's why this is a bipartisan bill that she's so proud to keep pointing out.
It's bipartisan.
Because both parties in power agree that it's dangerous for the American people to communicate their ideas to one another without See, it's fine when it's the mainstream media that they have control over.
It's fine when it's Twitter and Facebook and other companies that they have control over.
But it's not fine when it's a company they don't have control over.
Twitter was okay before, now Twitter's a problem.
Because it's no longer controlled by the U.S.
government.
See how this works?
This is probably the biggest question she's ever been asked in her career.
And she has to know it.
She's a press secretary of the United States of America.
TikTok is a really big deal.
It's way bigger than any conversation that I've ever had from that podium about anything.
Now, I understand a lot of people have a lot of concern and antipathy and fear about China and its expanding influence.
It's absolutely an expanding power.
While the United States was obsessed And is obsessed with fighting a war, but who controls and governs various provinces in eastern Ukraine.
The Chinese marched into one of the most geostrategically important regions in the world and forged a peace deal without any US involvement between the two major powers in that region, Iran and Saudi Arabia, as a display of Chinese influence.
Their influence is growing rapidly in South America, In Africa, all over the world.
So that is a legitimate issue.
But I just want to remind everybody that just because we're united in antipathy toward another country or agree that another country poses a threat, not everything done in the name of stopping that foreign threat is wise or safe or justified.
I thought that was the lesson we all learned from 9-11 just 20 years ago.
I lived in Manhattan on 9-11.
I had the same rage to Al Qaeda as everybody else had, watching those two beautiful buildings fall on top of 3,000 of our fellow citizens in a plane flown into the Pentagon.
It was a savage and barbaric crime, and the rage that I felt was enduring and intense like everybody else's.
And many, many people got convinced to support things because we were so unified in that rage that polls show many of us have come to regret and regard as massive overreach and not even an actual response to that threat, but instead powers the government has long craved for other reasons, but was able to obtain by exploiting the rage they knew we all felt for this foreign threat.
And therefore, The time when it's most urgent to take a breath and pause and be critical in our thinking is when there is this bipartisan unity against a foreign country we've all been convinced is a threat.
And then the government starts demanding extraordinary powers in the name of stopping it.
That more than anything is when reason and critical thinking and some skepticism is warranted even if it doesn't make you popular to raise it, even if it's much easier and more popular to just jump on board this rage, this wave of indignation and say, get this Chinese app out of my country.
Remember, the people who stood up after 9-11 and said, wait, hold on, maybe some of these things are a bridge too far, were vehemently maligned as lovers of Al Qaeda or on the side of terrorists, when in fact, they were patriotic Americans trying to ask the right questions about whether our government was seizing powers it ought not to have, even under those circumstances.
And those are important lessons to raise, especially because if you look at the things that are being said about TikTok in order to justify...
Banning it, you will see that they're coming from the same people and they're the same kind of arguments that justify censorship on the internet generally.
Here, for example, is CNN warning that TikTok search engines repeatedly delivers misinformation to its majority young user base.
And the article talks about misinformation about COVID and about voting and about Trump and the like.
This is the kind of articles that are being the source of This move here from AP, TikTok search results riddled with information.
So I just want to present these concerns that a ban on TikTok or a forced sale of it, aside from having major consequences because we're dealing with a country that has a lot of economic leverage and influence over the United States and our economy,
Also is handing the government an unprecedented power it never previously had, which is to just ban, make disappear an app that according to that TikTok user, and I think validly so, is one that the U.S.
government has greater controlling, greater trouble controlling in terms of its content than almost every other big tech platform.
And it's worth wondering, at least in part if that's a reason, Why many of these politicians are so eager to ban it.
If you listen to a lot of the Democrats today, you heard them complaining about the same kind of things they complain when demanding greater control over Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and when you heard Republicans complaining Many of those same concerns were emanating.
Now, we have Marianne Williamson here, and I'm eager to go interview her.
I want to respect her time.
We told her we would start at 8.30, at 7.30 rather, which is now, so we're going to go and do that.
And then when we're done, I want to return to this topic because there's a couple other points I want to raise and some things I want to show you about what happened at the hearing today that I think are food for thought.
We'll also be able to ask Marianne about the issue of China and TikTok as well as a wide range of other issues.
So we have our interview segment right now.
I'm sure she really needs no introduction to most of you, but Marianne has become a national figure as a result of many things, including Oprah Winfrey having helped introduce her to the country as somebody who has written about a wide array of spiritual issues at a time when the country is suffering all kinds of spiritual pathologies.
She ran for president in the last election cycle as a Democrat and made a big impact on a lot of people.
And she is currently the only Democrat of national stature to very forcefully and openly criticize the direction the Democratic Party has been taking and isn't willing to just sit on the sidelines and do that, but has declared her candidacy as a primary challenger to the To the sitting president of the United States, Joe Biden, which is obviously a difficult thing to do, which I'm sure she knows.
And you only do that if you feel that there are views that aren't being voiced, that need to be voiced, and need to be heard within the party to make an effort to correct not only it, but the direction of the country in general.
And as a result, we are very much looking forward to talking to her about a whole array of issues that we're going to do right now.
Marion, good evening.
Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us.
I'm delighted to speak with you.
Well, thank you.
Thank you for having me on, Glenn.
It's nice to see you, too.
Absolutely.
So, primary challenges of a sitting president are one of the most difficult things to do in politics, as I'm sure you know.
Interestingly, it's also one of the rarest.
The last time it happened in any notable way within the Democratic Party was Ted Kennedy's challenge to Jimmy Carter in 1980, 43 years ago.
And generally it's only been done when someone believes the party is fundamentally off course or the administration is fundamentally off course and therefore needs a primary challenger to point that out.
Is that something you believe about the Biden administration and the Democratic Party?
And if so, what are those fundamental differences you have with them?
Well, first of all, when I was growing up, Glenn, and Eugene McCarthy primaried Lyndon Johnson, Bobby Kennedy primaried Lyndon Johnson, nobody thought it was, like, the wrong thing to do.
Everybody just thought, well, this is democracy, and people run, and there are elections, and then the primary voters decide who the person is that would be the best opponent in the actual general election.
So I think the idea that people find it odd is odd.
We're not living at a time where a bunch of men smoking cigars should be deciding who the candidate is.
I think of myself as a kind of FDR Democrat.
And so yes, the Democratic Party has swerved from its unequivocal advocacy for the working people of the United States.
And I'm reminded of a line from Eleanor Roosevelt when she said, we need to do more than alleviate stress.
We need fundamental economic reform.
So in that sense, yes, I think the Democratic Party needs to go back to its traditional values, which has to do with that unequivocal and unabashed support, as opposed to the split allegiance.
I think of the Democratic Party as, or I think of the corporate Democrats anyway, as recognizing to some extent that it's an unjust system.
They're not stupid.
They get that over the last 48 years, there's been this $50 trillion transfer of power into the hands of 1%.
hard time.
So they want to, you know, on the peripheral here, on the periphery there, make it easier for people to survive this unjust system.
But they are unwilling to challenge the underlying corporate forces that make the return of that pain and suffering always inevitable.
So I believe that that split allegiance is absolutely not what the Democratic Party should We need more than the alleviation of stress and incremental change.
No American in the richest country in the world, which we are, should be having such a hard time surviving.
We have 80% of Americans for whom life is on some level a daily economic struggle.
And this kind of economic anxiety, number one, should not happen in this country.
And I believe that people are waking up to the fact that the things which we are denied are the things which are considered moderate positions in every other advanced democracy, whether it has to do with universal health care, it has to do with free tuition, which we had in this country until the 1960s, whether it has to do with paid which we had in this country until the 1960s, whether it has to do with paid family leave, sick
And these are the things that the Democratic Party not only should be standing up for just in order to be true to what are supposedly our principles, But I don't think anything less than that economic U-turn is going to be enough to either defeat the Republicans in 2024 or begin this country onto a path of real repair.
So you mentioned 1968, which is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating and in some sense tragic years in American history.
And it is interesting because it wasn't just that there was a primary, it actually forced Lyndon Johnson to announce he wouldn't seek re-election in part because the success of Eugene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy until he was murdered made it clear he was likely to face a lot of headwind Largely over the Vietnam War.
And that same year, Martin Luther King gave what was one of his last and greatest speeches where he kind of said, for a long time, I focused all my attention on domestic issues and racial issues.
And I now realize those issues are inextricably linked to questions of foreign policy.
What the United States does overseas in its various wars is a big reason why we have so much inequality here at home and they cannot be extricated.
I don't want to suggest there's an equivalency between the war in Vietnam and the war in Ukraine.
Obviously there's enormous differences.
At the same time, Joe Biden himself says because of the war in Ukraine, We're closer now to nuclear Armageddon than at any time since 1962, because we're facing a proxy war with the nuclear-armed power.
The last time people were asked to vote on that was in May, when the Biden administration requested $40 billion on top of the $15 billion that had already been authorized.
Every Democrat, every single one of them in unity, voted yes.
It was six or seven dozen Republicans who voted no.
Most Republicans voted yes as well.
How would you have voted on that Authorization for $40 billion on top of the $15 billion back in May to fuel the proxy war in Ukraine.
I think if you're going to be an anti-imperialist, you have to be an anti-imperialist whether it's an American or a Russian.
And even though I don't think that the United States has had clean hands here regarding our relationship to NATO, regarding the Aegis missiles in Poland, I don't think any of that was a justification for this brutal dictator to make the invasion that he did.
So I have felt that any withdrawal of support until Until very recently, would be simply to say that it's okay for there to be no more Ukraine.
And that would be intolerable to me.
But we have known, General Milley has said it, the Rand Corporation has said it, this is going to be a negotiated settlement.
And I think we have a moment here where something might be happening.
Xi talking to Putin, presenting some principles of possibility for a negotiated settlement.
We'll see what Zelensky does and what Zelensky says about that.
And I think the United States should do everything possible So the posture of the United States government, as expressed by John Kirby, the former Pentagon spokesman who now works in the White House, and other U.S.
officials, when asked about the potential for a ceasefire and diplomatic relations or diplomatic attempts to resolve the war, has been, we're totally opposed to any ceasefire.
We think that it would allow the Russians time to rebuild.
Do you agree with that?
Do you think that the United States and other NATO countries should continue to oppose a ceasefire and fuel the war?
Or would you be in favor of kind of a Chinese attempt, along with the Russians and Ukrainians, to forge a ceasefire in the hope of getting a resolution to the war?
It shouldn't be John Kirby's decision.
It shouldn't be the U.S.
State Department's decision.
I think we need to hear what Zelensky himself has to say.
Zelensky has said that he is open, that he's interested, he wants to hear what the Chinese have to say.
We know that Xi talked to Putin, but there hasn't been any report that he's talked yet, even virtually, to Zelensky.
So, no, the United States should not be making that decision.
The United States should be doing everything to support any possibility that's occurring here of a negotiated settlement in Ukraine.
So, just to be clear on that, so many of Zelensky's statements, especially over the last four or five months, have become almost, I would say, more kind of maximalist, that he has no interest in ending that war until not only is Russia expelled from every inch of Ukrainian territory, but Crimea is wrenched out of the hands of the Russians as well, and he is willing to fight for not only months, but years.
If necessary, in order to accomplish those war goals.
So if the position of Zelensky is we don't want to stop this war until every one of our objectives is achieved, including expelling Russia from Crimea, would that mean you would continue to just open the treasury of the United States and continue to pour unlimited sums of money for as long as Zelensky demands it?
Well, first of all, Zelensky's comments the other day are different than the ones that you just described.
So, first of all, let's hear what Zelensky has to say now.
And number two, no, you don't just open up the Treasury.
I would never support any kind of like a blank check for this.
We should be taking whatever actions will help a negotiated settlement, and I'd like it to be a negotiated settlement that does allow Ukraine to exist as a country.
And there have been times when such a suggestion would not have.
No, I get that, but what are the limits that you would impose on the U.S.' 's support for Ukraine?
So I think that we should be open to any moment when there might be the possibility of a negotiated settlement that would allow for the existence of Ukraine.
And like I said, we might be on the verge of such a moment.
That's why what's happening now with China is interesting.
We live in a multipolar world now.
This is not about the United States just dictating what we want all the time.
There are other powers.
And it's like when Macron tried to make some kind of a negotiation happen, tried to broker some kind of a deal.
And I'm not naive about the Chinese Communist Party, but if they have some ideas on the table here that could maybe bring a negotiated settlement closer between Zelensky and Putin, then I think the United States should say, hey, let's hear what it is and let's do what we can to support that.
So speaking of China and the Chinese Communist Party, there was a big hearing held today in the House of Representatives.
I don't know if you had a chance to see it, but it was about the Biden administration's announcement that it is essentially ready to demand that TikTok either sell itself to an American company or to business interests that the United States government trusts more than its current ownership, or just be banned outright in the United States.
Is that a proposal that you support?
You know, I take surveillance seriously.
I take surveillance seriously, stealing data seriously, whether it's Facebook or the Chinese.
I do think it's a serious issue, the idea that your data is going right into the data system of the Chinese Communist Party.
That's not like nothing.
But at the same time, it's also, I wish that we saw that same kind of interest in what's going on with Facebook and every other country here in the United States, which should be regulated.
So the fact that the conversation is on the table is not illegitimate, but let's see where it goes and what happens.
I'm not, I see both sides of that argument to some extent, but no, I don't think we should get rid of TikTok.
I myself, as a candidate, I mean, TikTok is, I thought TikTok had its value before, and I certainly see its value now.
And I think to some people, particularly the younger generation, We don't have to rush to an answer on every single issue the moment something occurs.
It's okay to process something.
And the larger question about surveillance and data mining is not something that we should avoid.
What about the U.S.-Chinese relationship just more generally?
Do you see the Chinese as a kind of competitor of American hegemony?
Do you see them as something greater than that, say like an adversary?
Or do you see them as an enemy of the United States?
I want to stay away from any language like enemy of the United States.
I want to stay away from anything even like adversary.
We are a competitor and we have a lot of economic interrelationship right now and we should continue to be competitors and we should be looking down the road and hoping for the day when cooperation and collaboration on such things as climate change will be the normalized position.
In the meantime, we have some real differences with the Chinese Communist Party, and we should not pretend that those don't exist either.
But we don't need a Cold War with China.
We don't need saber-rattling.
That's not where we should be.
We should be careful.
We should try to remain competitors, yes, in a healthy way, hopefully for that day, where it is healthy competition.
And in the meantime, we're not naive either about the Chinese Communist Party.
So one of the tactics of the TikTok CEO when testifying for six hours in the face of very hostile bipartisan questioning was to try and claim, I think often validly, that many of the concerns that were raised about TikTok, and you suggested this yourself in a prior answer, were also true of Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and Google for short, namely questions of how we're being tracked and how that data is being weaponized and how it's being sold.
Another big concern about Big Tech recently from the Twitter files, but also other reporting, has been the attempts by the United States government through agencies like the CIA, the FBI, Homeland Security, to influence content moderation or censorship decisions by Big Tech.
There's two sides of that argument.
One is those agencies have no role whatsoever to play in how those private companies make those decisions.
The other is, no, actually a lot of the content on big tech is a threat to the United States and we want those agencies that are designed to protect us.
Telling these companies what they regard as potentially dangerous, potentially harmful to American citizens.
What is your view on sort of the Twitter files and the revelations of them and the proper role between the U.S.
security state on the one hand and big tech on the other?
Well, I don't want the Chinese Communist Party messing with me, but I don't want the CIA messing with me either.
So, the idea that the CIA is going to protect me by anything it's doing at Facebook does not necessarily make me feel safer or happier.
At the same time, if there is any regulation to be had regarding protection of privacy, it's much easier for the U.S.
if it's an American company.
So, I don't want anyone collecting my data, but I don't see the CIA as the great protector of all things private.
Right, but based on things you've seen, do you think that that is a real concern, namely that the FBI, the CIA, Homeland Security sees the internet as a tool not for necessarily propagandizing other countries, which arguably is within the scope Homeland Security sees the internet as a tool not for necessarily propagandizing other countries, which arguably is within the scope of its mission, but propagandizing Americans as well and interfering in our politics, do you Do you believe that's something they've been doing?
I think it is legitimate to suggest it.
I think that it is part of good citizenship to be constantly holding to a reasonable and appropriate skepticism about overreach by anybody.
Not only by the corporations, but also by the government.
It's both.
Neither one of them should be getting in our business in places where they should need to stay the hell out.
And that applies to Facebook and it applies to the CIA.
All right, let me ask you one more question about foreign policy before we just kind of shift right into domestic policy, which is, for a long time, on the kind of progressive wing of the Democratic Party, one of the major foreign policy debates was the question of the relationship between the Israeli and the Palestinians.
The issue has taken on a little bit more attention in light of the foreign aid that the United States gives to Israel.
Obama signed a record-setting deal with Netanyahu for billions of dollars a year that the United States transfers to Israel every year.
The Israeli government is undergoing a lot of changes in terms of its ideological makeup.
There are people inside the government who just explicitly say, we do not believe in a two-state solution, we believe all of the West Bank belongs to Israel.
Would you, as an American president, continue to unconditionally provide that aid to Israel?
Or would you demand changes in Israeli behavior before getting that aid?
And if so, what changes would you require?
Well, first of all, that $3.8 billion through 2008 is already codified into law.
But we can use the fact that that is codified into law to exert leverage.
There is behavior on the part of the Israeli government, particularly now, particularly with this extreme right-wing swing that they're taking.
The United States absolutely has the right to say, if you're going to take any money, which as I said is codified into law through 2028, this money absolutely cannot be used in any way.
That transgresses against the democratic values upon which we purport to stand.
We don't always do that perfectly here.
I don't think any conscious person thinks that we do.
But it must be our ideal.
And it must be our ideal not only in the way we behave here, but in behavior that we support, particularly with our money and our financial leverage in other countries.
The United States absolutely has the right to make certain demands about how that money is used.
Absolutely.
Yeah, so for a long time the argument of supporters of Israel in the West was, we're trying to facilitate a two-state solution, that the Palestinians should have their own sovereign state side by side with the Israeli state.
If you ask almost anybody in that region at this point, People regard that as a virtual impossibility largely due to just how many incursions there have been into the West Bank by what the UN and the international community regard as illegal settlements that would almost require a civil war with Israel to actually remove.
Do you still consider the two-state solution a viable solution?
And if not, what do you see as what the United States should be pushing for there?
Unfortunately, I have come to realize that it's more dead than I had hoped.
I had felt that the two-state solution was dead, but I believe in resurrection, you know?
We are living at a time, though, when it is becoming less and less reasonable to even bring it to the table.
I believe that the United States should be giving robust and equal support to both security and the human rights of both the Israelis and the Palestinians.
And as you were talking about, the possibility of something as horrifying as civil war there.
You know, 250,000 people were protesting on the streets of Tel Aviv recently.
The efforts of the Netanyahu government to basically get rid of their Supreme Court.
So the Israelis, I think, have come to a point where some changes are going to have to be made.
So decisions are going to have to be made.
I think not only the Palestinians, obviously, not only other Arab nations, not only many people within the left, within Israel, not only those of us in the United States who are concerned, not only people elsewhere in the world.
Israel is going to have to address the basic fundamental moral flaw that is present.
I want Israel to exist, but we are coming to a point where it's becoming very clear.
It's coming to a head in a way more than it has ever before in the history of that country.
And the United States has to stand on the side of human rights for all people.
We must.
So shifting our attention to United States politics, given that that's what you're about to immerse yourself in.
Obviously, when someone stands up like you're doing and saying, I'm going to run as a challenger representing the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, the model that comes to mind for a of people as Bernie Sanders, even though you're two different candidates and two different people.
It seems like, you know, I think it's fair to say you're more or less in the same lane, occupying the same kind of political faction within the Democratic Party.
Bernie in 2016 and then again in 2020, according to a lot of his supporters, had his candidacy sabotaged in various ways.
In 2016, even Donna Brazile and Elizabeth Warren said they thought the DNC rigged the election in favor of Hillary and against Bernie.
And then in 2020, maybe it wasn't as dramatic, but clearly there was an establishment effort to get Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar out of the race at the critical time.
Beto O'Rourke, all of them kind of unified.
Elizabeth Warren stayed in longer than it seemed Rational for her to do so, siphoning the votes and then refused to endorse Bernie Sanders.
So there are a lot of people who say, even if you're able to galvanize people the way that Bernie did, bring a big movement behind you, the Democratic Party is such a corrupted party and institution that they will never let you win.
They will even, in fact, cheat if they have to, to prevent you from winning the way that they did to Bernie.
Do you think that is what happened in 2016 and/or 2020?
And if so, what is the hope that you can provide people that you have a chance to win within the Democratic Party?
It's clearly what happened in 2016, and it's clearly what happened in 2020.
And remember, I was there, too.
So I have my own visceral experience of what they'll do if they feel that you're any kind of an inconvenience.
And to be honest, I've only been running for nine days, and I already see what they're doing to me now.
So yeah, you're right.
But I also heard Cenk Uygur say something the other day, and I think it was true.
He pointed out that Bernie came within striking distance, and he said, somebody is going to break through.
Somebody, Glenn, is going to break through.
Now, whether that will be me or not, even if I don't break through, if I'm pushing that much more, we have to, anytime we see it, it could be the labor movement, it could be somebody running as a progressive, it could be an NGO, it could be independent media.
We all just have to support the pushing through, the pushing through.
And at some point, somebody is going to.
But I feel that if you're not running as a Democrat, you don't have quite the capacity to call the system on its own tendency to rig.
I mean, the fact that I'm experiencing what I'm experiencing and then I can say, because I'm running as a Democrat, Joe Biden should Should debate me.
That I can say because I'm running as a Democrat, it should be the Democratic voters who decide what is the agenda and who is the best person to take on the Republican candidate in 2024.
I can say that.
I can be that inconvenience to them because I'm running as a Democrat.
Now, I understand the blowback I'm getting.
God knows I'm getting it.
But I hope that people will understand the importance of supporting the person who's going out and saying that, because, you know, the only factor that can override this is we the people.
And so, you know, when I got out of the race in 2020, I said to my supporters that I would do everything I could going forward to inconvenience those who I feel need to be inconvenienced.
You know, this whole thing with political parties.
They're not mentioned in the Constitution.
George Washington warned us against them, said they would form factions of men more concerned with their party than with their country.
John Adams said they were a threat to democracy.
A third party voices have been extremely important in our history.
At the same time, however, now Democrats and Republicans have sort of formed this unholy alliance to make it very difficult to run as an independent or as a third party person.
So we just have to be in there wherever our heart leads us to.
And I think being in there as a Democratic candidate saying this is not 100 years ago, A bunch of men sitting around a table smoking cigars should not be just deciding.
Biden is the one.
You know, that's what has happened to the Democratic Party.
We should be independent thinkers.
What's this codependent relationship with the DNC?
I think it should be the voters who should decide.
And I appreciate any support anyone gives me in having the opportunity to say to the primary voters, I don't believe that anything short of a fundamental economic U-turn is what the American people deserve, what will beat the Republicans in 2024, and even more importantly, will repair this country.
This is not a time when we should be offering just a little.
We should be offering a lot, because the people deserve it.
Right, and that was Bernie's argument in 2016 for sure, right?
Was we need a political revolution, not tinkering on the margins.
And one of the reasons why Bernie succeeded so much more than anyone expected he would against the incredibly formidable and sometimes seemingly invulnerable Clinton political machine within the Democratic Party was because he was able to attract a huge number of voters, people forget in 2016, who are not Kind of traditional Democratic voters.
Lots of people who don't identify necessarily with the Democratic Party, who feel disaffected from the two-party system you were just describing.
No, I can hear you now.
Okay, yeah, so I was kind of saying that one of the reasons why Bernie did so well in 2016 is he attracted a lot of non-traditional Democratic voters, people who don't necessarily identify as Democrats, who feel disaffected from the political system and from both parties.
Is that part of your strategy to be able to speak to people who don't wake up every day and say, I'm part of the Democratic Party?
And if so, what is your strategy for trying to reach those people?
Well, first of all, the word strategy.
You know, Donald Trump didn't have a strategy.
He hit a nerve.
My only strategy is the truth as I understand it.
I know that there are a lot of young people who, you know, they don't even have an institutional memory of a time when either party did much more than thwart their dreams.
So I know that there are young people who hear this message.
A lot of the sort of normie, blue check democrat types think that I don't even have a right to be there.
It drives me crazy a little bit.
The founders, James Madison, gave me the right to be there with a little help from Susan B. Anthony.
Other people don't have a right.
It's like sometimes I feel like the Democratic Party is intent on shrinking itself, on shrinking its own base.
So I am saying, you know, when I first started my career as a writer, there was, I assume he's still around, a writer named Arnold Patton.
And I read something he said.
He said, if you genuinely have something you need to say, there is someone out there who genuinely needs to hear it.
That is what has always guided my career.
I think there are some things that need to be said in this country.
We need to say that the economic system is rigged, that only 20% of Americans have an easy time in this country, and that if you're living in that 20% where the economy is pretty good for you, you are surrounded by 80% of Americans who are living in a vast sea of economic despair.
Where 1 in 4 Americans live with medical debt.
Where 68,000 Americans die every year from lack of health care.
Where 18 million Americans cannot fill the prescriptions that their doctors give to them.
Where half of our seniors live on $25,000 and less a year.
where one-third of American workers are living on less than $15 an hour and cannot find a place to live.
Someone needs to say that.
Someone needs to name the corruption of the economic system that keeps that in place.
Someone needs to name the legalized bribery that is the essence of the political system at this time.
And somebody needs to say to the American people, vote for me, and we can change that.
So just on the last topic, you mentioned Donald Trump, and you said, look, he didn't have a strategy.
He struck a nerve.
And I know you're very critical of Donald Trump.
Anyone who's in the Democratic Party is going to be.
But let me ask you about not Trump, but Trump's movement or Trump's voters.
And let's stipulate that like every faction, there are some people in that movement who Let's call them, you know, Hillary Clinton called them deplorables, but let's use a different word, one not quite as inflammatory, and just say, like, well, every political movement has its kind of people who are attracted to malicious ideas.
But the Trump movement itself was a gigantic movement.
I mean, that's how he defeated the Republican establishment in 2016 and then went on to become elected President of the United States.
When you say he struck a nerve What nerve is it that you think he struck and how is it that you see the majority of people who voted for Donald Trump?
The reason that they voted for him as opposed to the establishment candidates the Republican Party was trying to get them to support?
The system is rigged against the average American.
It is economically rigged.
And in 2016, two candidates looked at the American people and said, your rage is legitimate.
Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.
The difference between them, in my opinion, is that Bernie actually wanted to do something about it.
Trump was saying that mainly because he knew it's the art of the deal.
Jerry Kushner said that he had said to his father-in-law, there are a lot of angry people out there and we could harness that and make you president.
So I think a lot of people voted, you know, a lot of people supported Bernie, who then when Bernie was no longer the candidate, then went and supported Trump.
So I think a lot of the rage that has driven people to vote for any candidate has been because of very legitimate feelings, very valid sense that we now have a system that makes it easier for the rich to get richer and harder and harder for the average American, hard-working average American by the way, to even survive in this economy.
Well Marianne, we're out of time.
I'd love to have you come back on and let me just say that for me personally, I think American democracy is always stronger when politicians are not permitted to run unopposed.
I think Joe Biden absolutely should debate you.
And whether people debate whether you'd be better off in the Democratic Party or a third party or whatever, I think the fact that you're running and offering an alternative to the Democratic leader is a positive for not just the Democratic Party, but for American society generally.
So congratulations on being willing to do that, notwithstanding all the attacks you're already getting and will continue to get.
And I hope you'll come back on and we can keep talking.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I appreciate it so much.
You take care.
All right.
All right.
So as I promised, I wanted to just return to the hearings today to make a few last points, especially since we didn't have the opportunity yet to show what I thought were some of the really important moments from today's hearing that kind of give you a sense of where this rage was coming from and to kind of hope again that you'll question whether this rage, even if you believe it's valid, justifies the measures that are being invoked in its name.
And before I do that, I just wanted to remind you as well that there have been serious attempts by TikTok to appease the parts of the US government that are most adamant about banning TikTok, which happen to be the CIA, the FBI, and Homeland Security.
And I hope you'll wonder why that is.
Why is it, we just discussed with Marianne Williamson, And I've repeatedly discussed on this show the fact that it is a top priority of the U.S.
security state to ensure they can control the content that flows over the internet.
That is absolutely one of the main goals of the U.S.
security state because that is the goal of any tyrannical government, to control the flow of information which the population can receive.
That's why China's attempt to ban U.S.
companies from their Why is the U.S.
Google, Facebook, and the like, or Iran or Russia's were regarded as despotic for exactly that same reason.
That a despotic government, by definition, wants to control the flow of information the citizenry gets and not allow them to speak freely to one another.
Why is the U.S. security state so aggressively defensive of Facebook and Google to the point that whenever antitrusted legislation is presented by either party to break up the power of big tech, the first people who stand up and oppose it are,
Are former operatives of the CIA and Homeland Security on the grounds that, no, we need these companies to remain powerful because they're important to our national security?
I would suggest the reason for that is, is that although technically the power of those platforms lies with the private companies, this government knows, the US government does, that those companies will do its bidding.
And that was why, for example, at the start of the COVID pandemic, when the US government wanted Americans to believe that the virus was naturally occurring, came from a bat or a pangolin and species jumped, even though they had no evidence to support it,
And wanted to claim that the alternative theory that a lot of Americans suspected, which is that it leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where it just so happens, research is conducted into coronaviruses, including manipulating them to make them more transmittable, Big Tech banned The theory that the U.S.
government wanted excluded and instead served the U.S.
government's interests by only allowing information the U.S.
government sanctioned, namely that it came from a species-leaping, naturally-occurring event, to be heard.
The same exact thing happened when Russia invaded Ukraine, and the view of the U.S.
security state is, we are on the side of Ukraine, we will do everything we possibly can to weaken Russia and support Ukraine, and people were being banned left and right for questioning the narrative the U.S.
government had presented about how that war started, who started it.
Just the other night, we went through this series of events from 2013 and 2014 and showed you American officials boasting of the very active and aggressive role they played in facilitating the change of government that toppled the democratically elected president of Ukraine before his constitutional term was up in 2015 because he was becoming too friendly to Moscow in the eyes of the West and instead replaced him with a person chosen by Victoria Nuland to be a pro-Western stooge.
Anyone who wanted to talk about that was not allowed to on the primary big tech platforms because, again, they exist.
They are willing to serve the agenda of the US security state.
And so TikTok knows the real reason That the FBI and Homeland Security and the CIA are opposed to it.
The pretext is that, oh, they're Chinese.
We hate the Chinese.
You're afraid of China.
Anything Chinese, get them out of our country.
The Democrats spent a lot of years, five, six years, doing that with Russia.
Anyone Russian, you don't talk to them, anything Russian-related is called into question.
Anyone who questions our policies about Russia should be accused of being a Kremlin agent or a spy.
I saw some politicians today questioning, in the most stupid way possible, whether we should ban TikTok, trying to raise some of these concerns, and they were instantly deluged with accusations that they were on the payroll of the CCP.
The US security state is very adept at exploiting this unified rage.
As I said, that's what happened after September 11th.
That's how we got the Patriot Act and unlimited, warrantless spying on Americans.
By exploiting the anger that we all felt watching what was done to our country on September 11th.
And so one of the things that happened, and I wrote about this in late 2022, is that TikTok has actually started to farm out to American companies, but also to the American security state, content moderation decisions.
And one of the things that happened was we created a social media account on every major big tech platform, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter for this new show, System Update.
And I had done a monologue on the war in Ukraine, and specifically one that was very critical of Ukrainian President Zelensky, and TikTok removed that report and sent us a warning saying that you're skating on thin ice, essentially, and if you have another transgression like this, we will ban your account.
And that's not because the Chinese government wants to ban criticisms of Zelensky.
That's not aligned with Chinese foreign policy.
That's aligned with U.S.
foreign policy.
And I used a lot of research at the time and public reports to demonstrate that TikTok was saying to the CIA and Homeland Security that we're going to open up the same kind of red phone that you have with Twitter and you have with Facebook and you have with Google to let us know when we have content that offends you.
And we will take it down.
Whatever offends you, let us know and we will remove it.
That is what TikTok is trying to do.
And I would suggest that's a major reason why the US government is so concerned about TikTok because it wants to make sure it maintains the same level of control over TikTok that it has over the other big tech companies, which is what that TikTok user was saying.
Now, let's look at a couple of the key excerpts from today's hearing.
First, look at the arguments that the CEO of TikTok was offering, the assurances he was trying to give to say, look, we're willing to keep all of our data on U.S. soil at Oracle in Texas.
We're willing to open up our source code and give you more transparency about our algorithms than any other big tech company does to assure you that your concern that we're somehow controlled by the Chinese government is unwarranted.
I would also like to talk about national security concerns that you have raised, that we take very, very seriously.
Let me start by addressing a few misconceptions about bite dance, of which we are a subsidiary.
ByteDance is not owned or controlled by the Chinese government.
It's a private company.
60% of the company is owned by global institutional investors, 20% is owned by the founder, and 20% owned by employees around the world.
ByteDance has five board members, three of them are American.
Now, TikTok itself is not available in mainland China.
We're headquartered in Los Angeles and in Singapore, and we have 7,000 employees in the U.S.
today.
Still, we have heard important concerns about the potential for unwanted foreign access to U.S.
data and potential manipulation of the TikTok U.S.
ecosystem.
Our approach has never been to dismiss or trivialize any of these concerns.
We have addressed them with real action.
Now that's what we've been doing for the last two years, building what amounts to a firewall that seals off protected U.S.
user data from unauthorized foreign access.
The bottom line is this, American data stored on American soil by an American company, overseen by American personnel.
We call this initiative Project Texas.
That's where Oracle is headquartered.
Today, U.S.
TikTok data is stored by default in Oracle's servers.
Only vetted personnel operating in a new company called TikTok U.S.
Data Security can control access to this data.
Now, additionally, we have plans for this company to report to an independent American board with strong security credentials.
Now, there's still some work to do.
We have legacy U.S.
data sitting in our servers in Virginia and in Singapore.
We're deleting those and we expect that to be complete this year.
When that is done, all protected U.S.
data will be under the protection of U.S.
law and under the control of the U.S.-led security team.
This eliminates the concern that some of you have shared with me that TikTok user data can be subject to Chinese law.
Now, that deserves a lot of skepticism.
I don't think you should listen to that and just say, wow, that was convincing.
I believe that.
Now I'm not concerned anymore.
The point, though, is that if the concerns that are being cited to justify the banning of TikTok are in fact the real concerns, number one, you should see a lot of reform being supported by all of the members of this committee and members of all political parties for data security laws applied to every company.
Except for the concern that they're being controlled by China, every single concern about TikTok that was voiced at this hearing is at least equally applicable to every other American company, including Google, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
But beyond that, there are real reforms that could be done, including having the U.S.
security state, having the U.S.
government exercise serious oversight and reform to make sure that this data about American citizens is protected, that there's no back doors that can be accessed.
I think, again, those same kind of security reviews ought to be applied to any company that collects the data on American citizens.
That has been a long-time concern of mine as somebody who did the reporting almost a decade ago that showed that the big tech firms were turning over data about American citizens en masse to the US government.
But there are reforms that could be made if that were really what's going on here.
I want to show you one of the reasons Democrats joined with Republicans in demanding that TikTok be banned or heavily regulated or looked upon as a malice force.
It's because the Democratic Party As I've reported many times, has as one of their main goals, the seizure of control over the internet by being able to either coerce and force big tech to censor in accordance with their political agenda, or to enact laws or regulatory reprisals or legal punishments in the event they refuse to do so.
And if you don't believe me, let's listen to Yvette Clark, who is every bit as angry About, at TikTok, as every Republican on this committee is, she's a Democrat from New York, and listen to what she's angry at TikTok for.
If TikTok employs algorithms that disproportionately misremove content from Black creators, it disproportionately silences and excludes Black creators from compensation opportunities.
And this problem happens in parallel to the lack of adequate recognition, attribution, and compensation to Black creatives for their content.
The exploitation, cultural misappropriation, the erasure of Black creatives' ownership of their fashion, art, and media is nothing new.
We need transparency, accountability, and bold action to mitigate against misinformation, bias, and exclusion of certain communities from the opportunities present on platforms like TikTok.
So let me just say this.
I'm concerned about transparency.
I am concerned about algorithmic accountability, and I'm not clear that your organization holds those values.
So I want to ask that you take a look at this, because this is all part and parcel of what we're concerned about.
Now, I think you ought to be asking yourself the following question.
In order for a ban of TikTok to happen, it has to come from the Biden administration and the support of the Democratic Party.
Otherwise, it can't happen.
The Biden administration is the entity leading the way in demanding the banning of TikTok or its sale to a more hospitable set of companies.
Why is that?
What is the reason for that?
Has the Biden administration suddenly become a devotee of the idea that China is a great threat to the United States and needs to be confronted in a new Cold War and everything Chinese needs to be banished from our country?
Or do they have other objectives that we've seen so many times that they've made clear that they have when it comes to control over the internet and the attempt to control the flow of information that you as an American citizen can transmit to your fellow American citizens?
You hear the concerns Democrats are expressing.
It has nothing to do with the Chinese Party, Communist Party.
Some of them talked about that, but the concerns instead are the same ones they always Voice whenever they have big tech before them which is we believe that you're not promoting the content that we like and instead are and are also failing to censor the content that we dislike.
Now what was very notable to me today was that Republicans joined in What I have heard Democrats do for three years, every time big tech CEOs are in front of them, which is complain about the fact that certain posts that I think everyone agrees probably should be taken down, they contain violent threats, or they have doxxing, or they're twisted in some way, that they were left up.
And the reason that big tech always gives as to why that happened is because they say, when you have millions and millions and millions of users, you cannot find instantly every post That needs to be taken down.
But Democrats use that.
They exploit it.
They say, you left this post up encouraging this, or you left this post up with this word in it.
And that proves you need more oversight and regulation because you're not censoring properly enough.
And usually, Republicans are opposed to that.
But in this case, they joined in and used those same exact tactics of saying, you left this post up that shouldn't have been left up, and that's proof.
That you're an irresponsible company.
Here is Congresswoman Kat Kamek, a Republican from Florida, doing that with a post that everyone will agree is a post that is reprehensible and advocates violence.
But the idea that just because you catch a company of this size, not catching every post that ought to be taken down means they now need aggressive government oversight or banishment.
Will only lead to one place, which is full government control over every big tech company, which is what the Democratic Party and the Biden administration want.
And I would submit that there is a danger that the antipathy that people have toward the Chinese government is being exploited and misdirected and displaced in pursuit of that objective.
Mr. Sho, I'd like to direct your attention to the screen for a short video if you don't mind. - I'd like to direct your attention to the screen for a short video if you don't mind. -
So that video was posted 41 days ago.
As you can see, it is captioned me as F at the House Energy and Commerce Committee on March 23rd of this year.
This video was posted before this hearing was publicly noticed.
I think that's a very interesting point to raise.
But more concerning is the fact that it names this chairwoman by name.
Your own community guidelines state That you have a firm stance against enabling violence on or off TikTok.
We do not allow people to use our platform to threaten or incite violence or to promote violent extremist organizations, individuals, or acts.
When there is a threat to public safety or an account is used to promote or glorify off-platform violence, we ban the account.
This video has been up for 41 days.
It is a direct threat to the chairwoman of this committee, the people in this room, and yet it still remains on the platform.
And you expect us to believe that you are capable of maintaining the data security, privacy, and security of 150 million Americans, where you can't even protect the people in this room?
I think that is a blatant display of how vulnerable people who use TikTok are.
You couldn't take action after 41 days when a clear threat, a very violent threat, to the chairwoman of this committee and the members of this committee was posted on your platform.
You damn well know that you cannot protect the data and security of this committee or the 150 million users of your platform.
because it is an extension of the CCP.
And with that, I yield back.
Again, that's an emotional argument.
That is a disturbing post.
I would submit you can find a post like that on every single platform.
I've seen posts like that on every single platform.
And if the idea is that big tech companies are not perfect at immediately detecting every inappropriate post or every dangerous idea and immediately removing them, it proves they're irresponsible and dangerous, too dangerous to permit to exist, then again, I think the outcome is that you will have U.S.
government control, official and overt, Not the clandestine form they have now, but official and overt control over the operations of every big tech platform, and you will have full US government control over the flow of information just like China, Iran, and Russia have engineered using exactly these same arguments.
And I think there's a lot of thinking to do about what the U.S.' 's relationship with China should be, how we should think about them.
Do we want another 50-year Cold War of the kind we had with the Soviet Union that led to the explosion of the U.S.
security state in the first place?
The ballooning without end of the financing of these agencies of every conceivable power being vested in the government in the name of combating it?
Or do we want to sometimes try and be a little bit restrained and sober?
About whether or not our anger toward China, our view of China, is being manipulated to get us to support things that actually don't have anything to do with the stated cause, the way that has happened over and over and over and over again.
And having spent the day watching this hearing, I can tell you two things.
Number one, it looked like every other hearing to me that I've seen where Democrats, when they had control of the House, Hauled CEOs of big tech companies before them and did exactly these sort of same things.
Here's a post inciting violence against Nancy Pelosi and you left it up for a month.
And here's a post giving the wrong voting information about how to vote for Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden.
And then accusing those big tech companies of being too dangerous to be allowed to exist without government control.
This looked exactly like that to me.
And to the extent the concern is that the Chinese government has some kind of connection to TikTok, and I will tell you that the CEO of TikTok seems to me to be an extremely westernized entrepreneur who went to the London School of Economics at Harvard Business School and interned at Facebook and then worked in these companies in Hong Kong because he wanted to become a billionaire.
Not because he wants to advance the cause of communism, but be that as it may, you may have a different view.
There are lots of ways to control that.
And I don't think it should be written off as a coincidence, at least not very quickly, that the one platform that the US government feels it cannot yet fully control In terms of the information, the flow of information on it is the one they want to banish.
That's at least worth thinking about before we empower the Biden administration with the obviously extraordinary step of just abolishing and wiping out The app that 150 million Americans are voluntarily choosing to use despite their knowledge of all of these things and harms that the members of Congress spent the day complaining about.
Again, it would have been much easier for me to come on and say, look at all the horrible things TikTok does.
I know that's the popular view, but I don't want the show to be about that.
If that's what you want to hear, you can go watch eight hours of every member of this committee, Republican and Democrat, doing that.
I wanted instead to raise some questions in the hope that at least given the magnitude of this proposed policy, if this is something we're going to do, we're going to do it with reasoned discourse and not by having our emotions manipulated, but by having our rational faculties engaged.
So that concludes the show for this evening.
I thought the interview with Marianne Williamson was Worthwhile to do, not necessarily because I agreed with all of her answers or found each of them persuasive, far from the truth, but because I think it's worth promoting anybody who wants to be part of the political process to be part of the effort to hold political leaders accountable.
We hope to have her and lots of other candidates on our show in the future as well across the political spectrum and to continue to raise questions like these.
I consider that to be the purpose of this show above everything else.
Thank you so much for continuing to watch because it's Thursday night.
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Thank you so much as usual for watching.
We hope to see you back here tomorrow night at 7 p.m.
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