Congress Exploits Fear of China in Seeking More Power Over Big Tech
Timestamps:
Intro (0:00)
Congress Grills Social Media CEOs (7:41)
Ending (1:14:13)
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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...
The U.S.
Congress, as it so often does, summoned executives of leading social media platforms to be interrogated, grilled publicly, about the content they allow to be posted on their platforms.
This time it was the Senate Judiciary Committee's turn, and among other lowlights in the hearing, Senator Tom Cotton, the Republican from Arkansas, repeatedly demanded to know whether TikTok CEO Zhou Zichu was a member of the Chinese Communist Party.
Seemingly without realizing that Zhou, whose wife and children are American citizens, is and always has been a citizen of only one country, Singapore, which is actually a separate country from China and not only separate but is a close U.S.
military and financial partner of the United States.
Then there was the attempt by members of both parties to demand that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg accept responsibility for harm that was allegedly caused by content that Facebook allowed to be posted, including having Josh Hawley, the Republican from Missouri, demand that Zuckerberg stand in the middle of the hearing, turn around and look at the families of various people who have died and apologize to them, which Zuckerberg obediently proceeded to do.
Now I know that many people, including many in our audience, view China the way that Democrats view Russia.
As a grave threat that we must constantly combat as they try to undermine and subvert our precious democracy.
But even if you think that, and I know many of you do, it is vital, and we'll attempt to demonstrate this, that it is precisely this fear of China That both the Biden White House and both parties in Congress are attempting to exploit with the real goal not of fighting China, but of gaining more power to control what can and cannot be said on social media all under the guise of fighting the evil influence of TikTok.
Now I know that the Biden White House and Republican Senators and most media outlets have in fact convinced many Americans that TikTok is a sinister tool of the Chinese Communist Party that censors at their behest and that is here to corrupt our nation's youth.
So much of what is claimed about TikTok, as we'll show you, is demonstrably untrue.
But even if you're not convinced of that, whenever state officials start trying to increase the fear That the population has about some threat, foreign or domestic, it's always in the way of insisting that they need more power to protect you from that threat that they've gotten you to fear.
And that is precisely when skepticism should be at its highest point, since that's always the tactic that states use to gain more authoritarian power.
Putting the population in fear of some threat and then telling them that only greater powers on the part of the state can protect you from that threat.
That is precisely what is happening here.
With TikTok performing the role of Iraqi WMDs or Kremlin disinformation or Trump's insurrection.
And so no matter your views on China, the same skepticism we've all come to realize we should have applied to those other fear-mongering campaigns are needed here as well.
Then with the U.S.
Congress all but refusing to approve Joe Biden's requested aid package of $60 billion more for Ukraine, the EU is attempting to do something they so rarely do, step up and actually pay themselves for the things and the wars that they claim are important rather than letting the U.S.
and American taxpayers pay for it.
For months Hungary under its president Viktor Orban has been blocking new EU aid packages to Ukraine.
He simply does not believe that Ukraine has a chance to win that war nor does he believe that Russia poses an actual threat to Europe more broadly.
Over the last several weeks the EU elites in Brussels have been explicitly threatening to sabotage Hungary's economy Unless Orban relents and agrees to this package.
And yesterday, Hungary did precisely that, which means that $50 billion in EU funding is now on its way to Kiev.
Who knows where that's going, but the ostensible goal is to keep this war flowing and fueled for at least a while longer.
We'll examine the implications of all of this.
And then finally, three American soldiers were killed last week when a drone attacked an American military base in Jordan.
On Tuesday we examined what happened and again we asked, why do we have so many military bases throughout the Middle East still?
And how much harm and cost and attack is the United States willing to incur as a price for paying for, arming, and supporting Israel's destruction of Gaza?
That's exactly what these attacks are in retaliation against the U.S.
funding and support for Israel and its attack on Gaza.
It is a cost of that policy.
Earlier today, President Biden called the family members of one of the troops who lost her life, and it was a very bizarre conversation in many ways, and we will show you exactly how and why.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
One of the things I sometimes think about when I hear people claiming that my journalism has changed, that my ideology and my politics have changed, that my sensibilities have changed, and I've pretty much been hearing this not just in the last few years, but almost since the start of my journalism career. but almost since the start of my journalism career.
The first time was when I was very critical of the Bush-Kinney war on terror policies.
People immediately placed me on the left as a result, assumed that I was some sort of supporter of the Democratic Party.
I did never understood why defending concepts like due process and basic processes necessary before you can put people in cages or things like warrants That should be needed before Americans can be spied on, wherever left-wing doctrines, but that's how our politics works.
If you're criticizing one government, you get put on the lap, but then as soon as Obama got into office, and instead of uprooting those policies as he vowed to do during the campaign, instead continued and even extended them, and I began criticizing Obama exactly the same way as I was criticizing George Bush and Dick Cheney.
When he was doing it, I started hearing, oh, I've now changed, because instead of criticizing Bush and Cheney, I was now criticizing
The Obama administration, obviously I've heard this many times throughout my career, and one of the things that I've come to realize is that there are several clear through lines that I think have defined my journalism, which has largely been devoted, if I had to pick one kind of concept that my work has been devoted to, has been the opposition to the consolidation and the acquisition of authoritarian power on the part of the state.
That was what motivated me to write about politics in the first place was my perception that basic civil liberties in the United States were being assaulted by the U.S.
government in the name of the war on terror.
And so when I started deconstructing that, what I saw was that the way that that was working was that the threat of Islamic terrorism, which obviously was real, was nonetheless being wildly exaggerated, constantly drummed into people's heads.
that every day you're in danger of an attack, a terrorist attack by Islamic radicals.
And that put the country into fear.
And when you're you have a population in fear, that is when you can persuade them that pretty much anything you want to do, they should acquiesce to as long as it's being done in the name of combating that fear.
And so one of the things that you have to do is convince people that that threat and that fear is being exaggerated.
And if you look at the way that I've done journalism, I think one clear, consistent component has been whenever the government starts trying to make people afraid of threats, whether external threats like the threat posed by the Iraqi government, or the threat posed by the Taliban, or the threat posed by Gaddafi in Libya, or Assad in Syria, or Putin in Russia,
One of the things I try and do is bring a lot of skepticism to those claims and to ask whether these threats are being exaggerated to put people in fear so that they accept more authoritarian power or whether the threat is being accurately described.
And obviously when it came to the Trump era, things like Russiagate trying to convince Americans that Russia was subverting our democracy through disinformation, or the threat of the Trump campaign itself that this was a criminal insurrectionary movement, all of which was about demanding more power over the internet or law enforcement investigations as a way of protecting people from that threat.
One of the things I did was try and say the threat posed by Russia, the threat posed by Trump's movement was being wildly exaggerated.
In fact, often fabricated as a way of gaining more power.
That has been the consistent focus of my journalism from the very start.
Obviously, the NSA surveillance programs that we exposed, the mass surveillance on American citizens, that too was justified in the name of all sorts of fears.
Oh, we have to do this to keep people safe from terrorism, to keep them safe from pedophilia.
Every threat was hauled out.
And so one of the things we had to do in that reporting was demonstrate that the NSA's strategy, as demonstrated by the documents we're revealing, was to constantly try and keep that fear heightened in the minds of Americans that they would succumb to the powers of the NSA.
So when I look at things like what happened yesterday, and excuse me if I'm coughing a couple of times, I'm still not fully over this flu that I had last week that caused the cancellation of shows, but I'm getting there.
I feel much better, but there's occasional coughing.
When I look at things like what happened last week, or rather yesterday, in the Senate Judiciary Committee, and it's actually been happening for quite a long time, what I see is a repetition of that pattern.
Namely that the Biden White House and both parties in Congress have been united, as they so often are, in arguing that TikTok should be banned from the United States, the social media app that more Americans choose to use as their means of communicating with one another and expressing themselves than any other single social media app, especially young Americans.
They use it by the tens of millions.
Nobody forces them to use it.
It's where they choose to go.
It's where they find community.
It's where they listen to other people.
It's where they go to communicate.
And I can tell you that it's not only United States.
For my kids, the internet means YouTube and TikTok.
In Brazil, and everyone I know from the age of 25 and under who lives in the United States, TikTok is where they get their source of information and they're going there voluntarily.
And so, of course, when people in Washington and in centers of power see that there's this platform, this tool that has become incredibly, incredibly influential and powerful in shaping how people think, The thing they're gonna wanna do is grab control of it, is to figure out how they can run it, how they can determine what is and is not allowed on that platform, how they can essentially gain power over it.
That's what establishments do in every instance.
That's what they did with the internet.
The idea of the internet was it was supposed to be this free and open place, unmediated by corporate and state power, and as the internet grew and people realized its power, The government immediately sought ways to try and control it.
We showed you the debates before in the 1990s led by the Clinton administration where they argued that they needed a backdoor to be able to spy on everyone on the internet through encryption and their argument at the time was That there was this scary domestic right-wing terrorist threat as evidenced by the attack on the courthouse in Oklahoma City in 1995.
Clinton went around saying, remember all those people who died in Oklahoma City?
We have to make sure that doesn't happen again.
And to do so, you need to give us the power to be able to spy on the internet.
That was the same throughout the war on terror.
That was the same throughout Russiagate.
And now the same thing is being done with regard to TikTok in China.
The U.S.
government says, the Biden administration, both parties in Congress say what they want is to ban TikTok.
There's no way they can ban TikTok.
They are not going to ban TikTok because too many Americans use it every day.
And the anger and rage that people would feel, what do you mean you're taking away our social media tool that we use to communicate, would be too great for the government to do.
What they're actually trying to do, is to gin up enough fear about TikTok that it's a Chinese tool that it's not American citizens who are deciding what to say.
They're somehow being manipulated by this foreign government in order to be able to do what they did to Facebook and Google and Twitter before Elon Musk.
Which is to be able to tell those platforms what they can and cannot permit.
It's an attempt to tell TikTok we're on the verge of banning you.
The only way that you can stay in the United States, your most lucrative market, and we know what you are a capitalist and you want to stay in the U.S.
market, is if you censor the way we tell you to.
If you start removing content That makes us uncomfortable.
The way they did when the Bin Laden letter started to become popular and young Americans started reading it for the first time and realizing that there was an argument about 9-11 they had never heard before, namely that the reason we were attacked wasn't because people hated us for our freedoms, but because people hated us for our interference and embalming of and sanctions on that region.
The U.S.
government went ballistic and TikTok obeyed orders issued by the U.S.
government and banned the Bin Laden letter.
Obviously, China has no interest in censoring the Bin Laden letter.
They would love for the Bin Laden letter to be read by as many people as possible.
TikTok did not ban the Bin Laden letter because the Chinese Communist Party told them to.
They banned the Bin Laden letter because the U.S.
government told them to.
And we've repeatedly reported on how this is what they've been doing.
There, just as a reminder from Reuters, November 16, 2023, TikTok to prohibit any videos that promote Bin Laden's letter to America.
And we covered it at the time it had become something young Americans were debating and reading and talking about the first time they had discovered this important historical document.
And people were very scared of what that meant.
And so the U.S. government said, we don't want people on your platform talking about it.
And so TikTok said, we're going to ban all videos that even mention it.
You couldn't search for it.
The hashtag was rendered inoperable.
They've done the same thing with Europe here.
Here from Euronews in October 2023, TikTok removed 4 million videos considered illegal or harmful in the EU in September.
TikTok published a report regarding its moderation policy, a requirement imposed by the new European legislation on digital services, the Digital Services Act.
So what you see is that For a while, TikTok was the one big tech platform that the U.S.
government, the U.S.
security state couldn't control.
The Twitter files revealed how much the U.S.
government had gained control of the ability to force these companies to censor content they disliked on all those other platforms.
TikTok was the one they couldn't.
They started ginning up fear over TikTok, saying it was an arm of the Chinese government to corrupt our youth.
Talked about China and TikTok the way Democrats talked about Russia and RT, and that gave them the leverage to tell TikTok, we're threatening to ban you, but the way you can stay is if you censor on our command.
And now the U.S.
government, the U.S.
security state, has won the ability to censor TikTok.
We covered this many times, including when our own videos were first censored, and then when our account was actually permanently banned.
It has now been reinstated.
But the videos that got banned when we published them, the reports that we were doing, were not reports that would have angered China, but reports that would have angered the U.S.
government.
Critical reports of the war on Ukraine, a very viral video we did on what the CIA did to interfere and involve itself in the Brazilian election in 2022.
Those were the videos taken down, one that are contrary to the U.S.
government and its foreign policy, not to the CCP's.
So yesterday there was a hearing where they summoned the leaders of social media companies, including the CEO TikTok, and the idea was to tell them and to show the public these are the villains.
Not because of what they really do that's harmful, which is politically censor at the command of the United States, but instead to claim they're allowing too much material, including harmful material, To be permitted, because what they want is these companies, under threat of being banned or punished, to agree that they will give the government more control over what they will remove.
That's everything that's going on here.
And just like Democrats know a lot of their followers fear most Russia, and so what they do is they say, look at how much these platforms are allowing Russian disinformation.
We need to be able to censor.
The Republican Party knows that what most stimulates the fear of their voters is China.
And so they set out to prove that TikTok is a weapon of the Chinese Communist Party, as are the executives running TikTok.
And one of the most embarrassing exchange happened yesterday at that hearing in pursuit of that false narrative, which was the work of Senator Tom Cotton.
And here he is questioning the CEO of TikTok, Mr. Chu.
Mr. Chu, and here is that exchange. - I think they then had a lawsuit and it was overturned.
I can't remember.
No, no.
It was the Biden administration that reversed those sanctions, just like, by the way, they reversed the terrorist designation on the Houthis in Yemen.
How's that working out for them?
But it was sanctioned as a Chinese communist military company.
So you said today, as you often say, that you live in Singapore.
Of what nation are you a citizen?
Singapore.
Are you a citizen of any other nation?
No, Senator.
Have you ever applied for Chinese citizenship?
Senator, I served my nation in Singapore.
No, I did not.
Do you have a Singaporean passport?
Yes, and I served my military for two and a half years in Singapore.
Do you have any other passports from any other nation?
No, Senator.
Your wife is an American citizen.
Your children are American citizens.
That's correct.
Have you ever applied for American citizenship?
No, not yet.
Have you ever been a member of the Chinese Communist Party?
Senator, I'm Singaporean.
No.
Have you ever been associated or affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party?
No, Senator.
Again, I'm Singaporean.
Let me ask you some... Now, let's just stop there for a second.
Every time the CEOs appear before the Senate or Congress, they try very hard to be extremely respectful.
The CEO of TikTok tries hardest because he knows he's in a more vulnerable position, at least Facebook and Google.
And Twitter are American companies, largely, though not entirely run by American citizens.
And so they're harder to villainize and demonize.
But as you just heard, the CEO of TikTok is not an American citizen, his wife and children are.
But he is a citizen of Singapore, the only country where he's ever been a citizen.
And that's why when Tom Cotton is saying, are you a member of the Chinese Communist Party?
He can't believe he's being asked that.
He's trying to say, I'm Singaporean.
In fact, I served in the military of my country.
And the reason he's reacting that way is because Singapore is a country that is militarily aligned, not with Beijing, but with Washington.
Singapore Has no interest in being some kind of a subservient country to China.
People who grew up in Singapore are taught the importance of Singaporean independence and Singapore is aligned far more with the United States and with the West than they are with China.
Now, does anyone actually believe, just look into your Deepest brain, the part of your brain that is the most honest, and just ask this question, if the CEO of TikTok had been an American and looked American in the expectation of what an American looks like, or had been European and looked European in the expectation of what people like Tom Cotton think Europeans are supposed to look like,
Do you think there's any slight chance that Tom Cotton would have asked them, are you a member of the Chinese Communist Party?
Now, let's leave aside the issue that that question was the worst expression of the biggest abuse of the Cold War, which was the McCarthy era.
And I know some people have kind of revised their view of McCarthy.
Some people have, I have not.
Because the worst part of McCarthyism was that it was completely lacking in due process.
It accused people of terrible things.
Crimes.
And Joe McCarthy never presented any evidence.
He always claimed he had a list in his briefcase.
He had the evidence in his briefcase.
And huge numbers of people were falsely accused of being Members of the Russian Communist Party, the Soviet Communist Party, are loyal to the Soviet Union, are controlled by the Kremlin, who never were.
That's one of the reasons why it was so sickened by Russiagate.
Because it so obviously resonated and was redolent of that, from a civil libertarian perspective, one of the worst moments in the Cold War when people's lives and reputations were destroyed.
They were driven to suicide by entirely baseless claims about being disloyal to their country based on nothing other than their political opinions, similar to the case we covered last night of that black socialist leftist anti-war group being accused of being Russian similar to the case we covered last night of that black socialist leftist anti-war group being accused of It's sinister to accuse people of having divided loyalties or being disloyal because of their criticism of their own government.
Being critical of your own government is one of the core constitutional rights that you have.
And so the line that everybody remembers from the worst moments of McCarthyism was, are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?
It was an interrogation of American citizens brought before Congress to be grilled about their views.
And it led to witch hunts, even if you think there was an actual problem with communism in the United States.
So for Tom Cotton, wittingly or unwittingly, to model his questioning based almost verbatim on the notorious symbol of McCarthyism should be very disturbing to you no matter what your views are on China.
But the fact that he's obviously exploiting, and anyone who watches my show knows I don't make claims like this easily, is that there's no avoiding it here.
He looks at the CEO of TikTok and sees someone who is Asian, and either out of ignorance or malice, knows that he can more easily link them persuasively to China, as if every person who's Asian is loyal to China.
Tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people in Asia hate China.
People who live in Taiwan Look very similar, much more so than Singaporeans do to the Chinese because they are ethnically Chinese.
And nobody would accuse them of, because of their appearance, being members of the Chinese Communist Party.
So this was a shoddy or worse line of questioning by Tom Cotton.
It was embarrassing.
It reeked of ignorance.
I don't think Tom Cotton knew that Singapore was a different country than China.
And if he did know that, He was deliberately exploiting the ignorance of his constituents and the people who trust him, which on some level is even worse.
And it was all done to manufacture this storyline that just take a look at the CEO of TikTok and you will see the proof that this must be a person taking orders from Beijing.
Now we're gonna show you with the facts of what TikTok is and what the parent company is, why and what TikTok has actually been doing when censoring.
We showed you some of it, why this is a false narrative.
It's being done so that people like Tom Cotton can get control and tell TikTok, look at what we're doing to you.
Look at the public raid we're stimulating against you.
Look at the threat we're making to ban your company from TikTok.
From the United States, you better start listening to us.
In us telling you what you can and cannot allow.
I mean, if you look at his life, the CEO of TikTok, I mean, it's not easy.
It's not hard, rather, to see what he is.
He was raised in a capitalist society.
He went to the London School of Economics.
After that, he went to go and work at Goldman Sachs.
While in Goldman Sachs, he met his American wife.
They had American children.
They stayed in the United States.
He founded or was part of the founding of TikTok.
He now runs it as CEO.
He's become very wealthy as a result.
He's a pure capitalist.
His goal, his driving force, is capitalism, is profit.
And that's the reason why he doesn't care if he has to turn over censorship decisions to the United States government.
He doesn't care who dictates censorship.
He didn't create TikTok to spread an ideology.
He created TikTok to make money, and he's very good at it.
It's been working well.
And he doesn't want to jeopardize the loss of the most lucrative market that he has, which is the United States.
And all you have to do is look at his life and listen to him.
And it's obvious that that's what motivates him.
Let's listen to the rest.
Hopefully simple questions.
You said earlier, in response to your question, that what happened at Tiananmen Square in June of 1989 was a massive protest.
Anything else happen in Tiananmen Square?
Yes, I think it's well documented.
There was a massacre.
There was an indiscriminate slaughter of hundreds or thousands of Chinese citizens.
Do you agree?
Do you see what just happened there?
He tried to say that somehow, when referring to Tiananmen Square, He didn't use language harsh enough as though he was protecting the Chinese government or was afraid to criticize the Chinese government.
And then when he asked him again, what else happened at Tiananmen Square, without blinking, without the slightest bit of hesitation, he said, yeah, there was a massacre by the government against protesters.
And then Tom Cotton barely heard that and said, yeah, huge numbers of people were killed.
And he was like, yeah, exactly.
I just said that.
So the whole idea of even dragging business executives before Congress and start interrogating them on what their views are on historical and political events to have to state their ideology on controversial questions is completely inappropriate.
Why does it matter what his ideology is?
Why does it matter what his views are on other countries?
Generally, CEOs of global companies don't like to take sides in geopolitics for the exact reason that they're motivated by profit.
They don't want to alienate the American government.
They don't want to alienate the Chinese government.
They want access to these valuable lucrative markets.
But Tom Cotton, having just been embarrassed and trying to prove that this Singaporean capitalist who served in the military of Singapore on the side of the United States was somehow a member of the Communist Party, is now trying to resort to demonstrating that he won't criticize China, even though he just did, without the slightest hesitation.
Here's the rest.
The Trump administration and the Biden administration that the Chinese government is committing genocide against the Uyghur people.
Senator, I've said this before.
I think it's really important that anyone who cares about this topic or any topic can freely express themselves on TikTok.
It's a very simple question that unites both parties in our country and governments around the world.
Is the Chinese government committing genocide against the Uyghur people?
Senator, anyone, including, you know, you can come and talk about this topic.
You are a worldly, cosmopolitan, well-educated man who's expressed many opinions on many topics.
Is the Chinese government committing genocide against the Uyghur people?
Actually, Senator, I talk mainly about my company and I'm here to talk about what TikTok does.
I mean, first of all, As we know from what's happening in Israel and Gaza and the proceedings brought by South Africa and the International Court of Justice, the word genocide is a very complex term.
It's a widely debated term and the idea that the CEO of TikTok is supposed to have a whole set of opinions ready that please the United States government but alienate a lot of other governments where his company wants access to by pronouncing something that contrary to what Tom Cotton is saying is very much in dispute in the entire world.
There's been no International Court of Justice ruling that China has engaged in genocide against the Uyghurs.
There are people all over the world who vehemently dispute that characterization.
The CEO of TikTok doesn't have the competence to make that judgment, nor does he have the desire to precisely because he's not there as a political actor.
He's there as a businessman.
And what he's saying is, what's important is not my view.
What's important is that everybody have the right to debate these issues freely using free speech.
That's what we offer at TikTok.
Isn't that what you would want?
Mark Zuckerberg to say, if he were asked about, say, his view of abortion, don't you think Mark Zuckerberg would be reluctant to say whether he's pro-choice or pro-life?
It was always the Michael Jordan view that, I'm not going to take sides in politics.
And reporters would say, why aren't you going to take sides in politics, Michael?
And he would say, because Republicans buy sneakers too.
He was a businessman, Michael Jordan.
He didn't want to be a political activist.
He wanted to sell as many sneakers as he could.
And he did.
I'm not saying that's noble.
That's not how I approach life.
But a lot of people do.
That's why I'm not a businessman.
But if you were a business person, a person leading a company, of course the shareholders would want you to avoid political controversy and just stay in the middle.
Go ask Mark Zuckerberg or the head of Shell or Exxon what their views are on any of these inflammatory issues.
You think they're going to want to get involved in that?
They do only when they perceive it's very much in their interest, like Disney, citing on the side of LGBT equality because so many of their employees are LGBT, because so many people who come from Europe and the United States support that cause.
But in general, corporations want to stay out of political conflicts.
So there's nothing suspicious about him not wanting to weigh in on this very complex and contested question, just to prove somehow that he's ideologically aligned with Tom Cotton.
That's not what any business person should have to do.
Is the Chinese government committing genocide against the Uyghur people?
Actually, Senator, I talk amazingly about my company, and I'm here to talk about what TikTok does.
Yes or no, you're here to give testimony that's truthful and honest and complete.
Let me ask you this.
Joe Biden last year said that Xi Jinping was a dictator.
Do you agree with Joe Biden?
Is Xi Jinping a dictator?
Senator, I'm not going to comment on any world leaders.
What?
Okay, so first of all...
You got a little glimpse there of, again, how identical or very similar the Democratic and Republican parties are when it comes to foreign dictators.
A lot of people on the right like to pretend that Joe Biden is weak on Russia, whatever that means.
In fact, under Joe Biden, the U.S.
military has militarily encircled China with bases, new bases and old bases, in Japan and the Philippines and South Korea.
Various islands near China, a new nuclear deal with Australia, a new alliance against China with the UK and Australia.
He, Joe Biden, was the first president in decades to come out and say that he would be willing to fight a war and in fact would fight a war against China if it invaded Taiwan.
Never has a president been willing to say that before.
They've always said, maintain what's called strategic ambiguity.
And Joe Biden called Xi last year a dictator, just as Tom Cotton said.
They have constant agreement.
On Ukraine, on Russia, on Israel and Gaza, on Yemen, on the Middle East, on China.
But there's no reason why these CEOs of these social media companies should be duty bound to go and state their political opinions before the Congress.
Now, here was the other low light that I mentioned, which is Josh Hawley demanding that Mark Zuckerberg take responsibility for families that claim they lost loved ones because of content on social media.
One of the examples actually had nothing to do with Facebook.
It was a 15-year-old girl who used Snapchat to meet a older guy, I think in his 20s, and she lied to her mother and said she was going to meet her friends and instead she left the house and went to meet this guy and she went to have sex with him and they used drugs and unbeknownst to her, part of the drug that he gave her was laced with fentanyl and she died.
Is that actually something that Mark Zuckerberg is supposed to apologize for?
Is that the responsibility of social media companies?
Do we actually want social media companies monitoring our communication and censoring more?
Obviously, this is the premise of Josh Hawley's demand that Mark Zuckerberg take responsibility.
We used to have this idea in the 80s when there was a right-wing, moralistic-based censorship drive to blame all sorts of things on video games and music, rock music.
This kind of moralizing to demand greater state censorship is decades old.
I thought we were at the point where the American right didn't want the state interfering in or dictating to social media companies what kind of content they can allow.
Obviously you don't want any social media company enabling teenage girls to meet adults and go and meet with them and have sex and use drugs.
That's obviously tragic if somebody dies.
It's very hard to understand though.
What social media companies, let alone the government, can do to stop that other than just cracking down completely on who's allowed to use social media and whether they have any privacy in how they speak.
I'm not really sure what Josh Hawley thinks Mark Zuckerberg should have done here, but Mark Zuckerberg obviously was intimidated by the moment and watch what happened.
Let me ask you this.
Let me ask you this.
There's families of victims here today.
Have you apologized to the victims?
Would you like to do so now?
They're here.
You're on national television.
Would you like now to apologize to the victims who have been harmed by your product?
Show them the pictures.
Would you like to apologize for what you've done to these good people?
I'm sorry for everything that you've all gone through.
It's terrible.
No one should have to go through the things that your families have suffered.
And this is why we invest so much.
To make sure that no one has to go through the types of things that your families have had to suffer.
You know, why, Mr. Zuckerberg, why should your company not be sued for this?
Why is it that you can claim, you hide behind a liability shield, you can't be held accountable?
Shouldn't you be held accountable personally?
Will you take personal responsibility?
Senator, I think I've already answered this.
I mean, this is... Well, try this again.
Will you take personal responsibility?
Senator, I view my job and the job of our company as building the best tools that we can to keep our community safe.
Well, you're failing at that.
Well, Senator, we're doing an industry-leading effort.
Oh, nonsense.
Your product is killing people.
Will you personally commit to compensating the victims?
You're a billionaire.
Will you commit to compensating the victims?
Will you set up a compensation fund?
Senator, I think these are... Someone tell me the purpose of this.
In order to lure young people to go and have sex or to have drugs, people use the telephone all the time as well.
Do we want AT&T actively monitoring people's conversations to ensure that there's nothing harmful that's being done with their product?
With freedom does come cost all the time.
If you tell a citizenry that they are free not to have the police invade their house without a search warrant, it means that you're going to allow some criminals to get away who otherwise would be caught.
If you allow people free speech, you're going to have some people saying false and dangerous things, ideas, spreading dangerous ideas that will incite other people to violence.
If you give citizens the right against self-incrimination, it makes it much harder to obtain convictions against actual criminals.
There's all kinds of costs to every right.
So this is just grandstanding, but it's not purposeless grandstanding.
It's designed to convince Americans that they need to be fearful of these platforms and to have controls imposed on them from above, meaning by the state.
Now, as far as TikTok is concerned, we showed you and demonstrated to you, and we've done it many times before, you can look at more comprehensive reports we've done on TikTok, that so often TikTok censors in alignment with the interests of the U.S.
government, not with the Chinese government or any other foreign government.
They will, in whatever country they're in, do what every company does, which is try and keep the government happy so they can stay and sell their products.
So when they're in Europe, they'll censor in accordance with the Europeans.
When they're in America, they will now censor in accordance with the U.S.
security state.
The U.S.
security state has worked very hard to leverage that threat against TikTok.
In order to gain control of their content moderation decisions, knowing that they now have the power to determine what tens of millions of American youth in particular hear or do not hear.
I thought we were all against this.
I thought that was the point of the Twitter files, that we don't want the government having this power.
And so sometimes what I hear is, well, TikTok is different because it's a weapon of the Chinese government.
This is not true.
The company that is often cited as the owner of TikTok that supposedly is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, here is their board of directors.
It's ByteDance.
ByteDance's board of directors is composed of five individuals, none of whom is a part of any government or state entity.
Three of the five are Americans.
So let me just, it's a, Five member board of directors.
The board of directors obviously is the entity that directs the corporation.
There are five individuals that compose this board.
None of them is part of any government or state entity.
And three of the five, meaning a majority, are American citizens, not Chinese citizens.
Here is, and again, I just want to give you the facts.
If you're, Desperate or insistent that TikTok really somehow is a spying tool, which we'll get to, or a propaganda tool of the Chinese government.
You're obviously free to believe that.
I'm just asking to listen to the case, to the facts, that the real threat here is not the Chinese government, but the control the United States wants over TikTok.
The board includes, and there you see it, the chairman who is Singapore-based, Then you have the three U.S.
citizens who are U.S.-based, and then someone who is based in Hong Kong, and they're basically members of investment funds, which is exactly what you would expect a board of directors of a large social media platform like TikTok to be composed of.
That's what Facebook has, too.
They have its early investors.
Peter Thiel was on the board for a long time.
Now again, the issue of Singapore, the reason why Tom Cotton embarrassed himself, is because there are countries that are somewhat...
Captive to or more leaning in the direction of Beijing.
Singapore is most definitely not one of them.
Here's the U.S.
State Department in April of 2023 announcing its latest security cooperation with Singapore.
Quote, Singapore is one of the United States' strongest bilateral partners in Southeast Asia and plays an indispensable role in supporting the region's security and economic framework.
The United States cooperates with Singapore on the full range of security issues to include border security, maritime security, military preparedness, counter-proliferation, cyber security and counter-terrorism.
Singapore has operated advanced fighter jet detachments in the continental United States for the past 27 years.
That was why he was so mystified.
When Tom Cotton was trying to link him to China, he kept saying, what?
I'm Singaporean.
I was actually, I served in the Singaporean military, you know, your military partner.
Why would you imply I have some loyalty to the Chinese government?
Here is the Ministry of Defense of Singapore in September of last year, so just a few months ago.
Singapore and U.S.
Armies conclude exercise Lightning Strike.
Quote, the Singapore and U.S.
Armies interact extensively through exercises, professional exchanges, and the cross-attendance of courses.
These interactions have enhanced the professionalism So, that I think sheds even worse light on what Tom Cotton tried to do.
between both armed forces as well as reaffirm the excellent and longstanding defense relations between Singapore and the United States." So that, I think, sheds even worse light on what Tom Trotten tried to do.
Now this idea that I'm advancing that will Congress and the Biden administration, both Biden wants to ban TikTok as well and has threatened to do so.
What this is really about is an attempt to gain much broader powers.
Using TikTok in China as the fear-mongering target is not something you have to speculate on.
It has already happened.
The Senate had hearings last March on TikTok.
And a bunch of Democrats, and especially people on the American right, went ballistic and said, let's ban TikTok.
The Biden White House came out and said, our position is TikTok should probably be banned.
And when there was a bill that was introduced in the name of banning TikTok, trying to capitalize on this fear that they had ginned up, turns out It did much, much more than give the power to the government to ban TikTok from Politico in March of 2023.
Congress goes wobbly on TikTok.
Quote, a bipartisan Senate bill that would reign in the Chinese-owned app is facing its first real headwinds.
Only days after TikTok's CEO endured a bipartisan flogging on Capitol Hill, a Senate bill meant to reign in the company, released with much bipartisan fanfare and a bevy of endorsements earlier this month, is starting to look shakier.
The bill, known as the Restrict Act, would give the Commerce Department and the White House sweeping new powers.
To ban or restrict a wide range of communications and technology products coming from China.
The bill would deprive TikTok of a crucial legal defense that it used to defeat the Trump administration's attempted ban in 2020, and is considered key to any meaningful effort by the Biden administration to ban the Chinese-owned app.
Some of you may remember Lindsey Graham, a sponsor of this bill, went on Jesse Waters that night.
And Jesse Watters, to his credit, confronted Lindsey Graham and said, you told us this bill was a banned TikTok bill, but what it actually does is give the Biden administration the power to ban any social media app, as long as it has foreign ownership, if it just declares that it is enough of a threat to our national security.
I mean, it was a sweeping, radical escalation of state power over social media under the guise of scaring people about TikTok.
That is what the government will always do if you successfully allow it to elevate your fear beyond what's warranted.
Here from CBS News in December of 2022, they were reporting on how the effort to depict TikTok as dangerous is being conducted.
Quote, TikTok pushes potentially harmful content to users as often as every 39 seconds, study says.
You might remember Nikki Haley cited recently what she claimed was a study that proved that every time you watch 17 minutes of TikTok, you become 8% more anti-Semitic.
This is the kind of framework that the neoliberals in the West Have been using to try and justify censorship over the internet, accusing these social media platforms of allowing content that is dangerous and harmful.
And then they're saying, therefore, we need to be able to control it.
Disinformation, hate speech, these things have harmful effects.
TikTok, Facebook, Google doesn't censor enough, so we need to force them to censor more.
That was the whole basis for the Twitter files behavior that a court ruled, an appellate court, and a district court ruled violated the First Amendment.
Here is the group that was responsible for this report claiming TikTok allows dangerous information.
Quote, the new report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate underscores why it is way past time for TikTok to take steps to address the platform's dangerous algorithmic amplification.
said James P. Steyer, founder and CEO of Common Sense Media, which is unaffiliated with the study.
Quote, TikTok's algorithm has bombarding teens with harmful content that promotes suicide, eating disorders, and body image issues that is fueling the teen's mental health crisis.
Now, that think tank, the Center for Countering Digital Hate, was the same one that issued a report claiming that X and Elon Musk also does the same thing as TikTok, allows too much hateful and harmful information, and Elon Musk threatened to sue them, and I believe allows too much hateful and harmful information, and Elon Musk threatened to sue them,
If you're endorsing this framework that TikTok needs to be more controlled or banned because they're allowing too much hateful content or too much dangerous content, that is the framework that The entire censorship regime that we've been reporting on for years has been based in.
Here, I'll just give you a sense for the kind of rationale that emanates from this group that's currently being used to justify and demand more controls on TikTok, but has also been used to justify censorship of every social media platform.
My name is Imran Ahmed.
I'm the chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate.
We're a US 501c3 that studies, but more importantly disrupts,
The production and distribution of the online hate and lies that we know underpin so many tragedies around the world, including the one that started my journey into this work seven years ago in the United Kingdom during the EU referendum when my colleague Joe Cox MP was murdered by a far-right terrorist who believed in a version of the Great Replacement Theory.
And that's the connective tissue, isn't it, Laura?
between you and me and the grief that started us on both of our journeys.
You to set up Eradicate Hate, me to set up the Center for Countering Digital Hate some years earlier.
And of course it did as well with Christchurch, the same conspiracy theory created, promulgated, weaponized, operationalized, turned into real world violence starting on those platforms.
Alright, I didn't get the point there.
This is the foundation of the censorship regime.
And if you're somebody who's saying TikTok is harming American children because it allows too much opinion or promotes too much harmful ideas, you are endorsing the same rationale that the censorship regime has relied on.
And they've also directed it at TikTok.
They want to control all platforms.
Now, we see in the chat that a lot of you are talking about the TikTok server, and we're going to show you in just a minute the steps that TikTok has taken and has continued to promise to take, to basically take their entire server as it regards the United States and put it under U.S.
control.
Keep it on U.S.
soil, give it to Oracle, put it under the control of U.S.
government contractors, including ones they've used in the past to content moderate at Facebook.
In fact, One of the things TikTok has been doing is going on a hiring spree, hiring away content moderators from Facebook and Google, which as we demonstrated before, typically come from the U.S.
security state.
the people making censorship decisions at Facebook and Google, often have long careers with the CIA or the FBI to ensure that what is being censored aligns with U.S. government foreign policy.
Those are the same people that TikTok is now hiring to prove to the U.S. government that they're willing to play that same game.
And the same is true of their server, which they are willing to put along with their algorithm under the control of the United States.
Now, I really want you to listen to this video because this was from March of 19, March of 2023, when the hysteria over TikTok and the Biden administration demand that TikTok be banned really kind of emerged.
It was after that hearing where they beat up on TikTok executives, including the CEO.
And there was a lot of steam, a lot of momentum, one-bonged both parties to say, yeah, we got to really ban TikTok.
And there was a user on TikTok named Luke David Johnson.
I don't know who he is.
I have not heard of him before.
But he did a two and a half minute video responding to when Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about this to defend the White House's position that TikTok should be banned.
And with great clarity, and I think a lot of insight, laid out the reason why the prevailing view about what the government is trying to do with TikTok is completely misguided.
And why it is so important to be highly skeptical of what the government is doing when trying to control TikTok as a way in for more control on social media.
Listen to the argument he made.
Question on TikTok.
Over 100 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.
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.
He wasn't sure if the U.S. should ban TikTok when he was asked about this.
Now the administration seems to be hardening its stance.
You're backing this legislation, as you mentioned.
We've learned 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.
So let me just interrupt that point to put that in context.
Six months ago or so, we did a major report on a document that emerged from the Department of Homeland Security and the Director of National Intelligence.
that discussed the fact that various U.S. security state agencies, including the CIA and Homeland Security, were purchasing on the open market enormous amounts of private invasive data about American citizens that was so invasive were purchasing on the open market enormous amounts of private invasive data about American citizens that was so invasive in terms of creating dossiers on citizens that the security state itself admitted that if they tried to collect
it on their own, meaning using through surveillance or other means of monitoring American citizens, A search warrant would have been needed.
And they decided and said that they would circumvent the requirement of a search warrant because every social media company, Facebook and Google, every one collects data on their users.
And then there are companies that aggregate this data and sell it on the open market.
And what he's addressing here is the preposterous claim that China needed to create TikTok in order to spy on American citizens.
As he says, why would anyone go through the enormous burden of trying to build a huge social media platform when all you have to do, the same information that you get by harvesting is completely available for any purchaser on the open market.
Just this week, it was revealed that it's not just Homeland Security and the CIA, but also the NSA That is buying this information about millions of American citizens on the open market they admit they could not get without a search warrant.
What do you think China is getting from TikTok that they couldn't just buy with all these bundlers of massive data that's collected about you on Facebook or YouTube or Instagram or Twitter or any other app that you've been using?
There is nothing.
That is a fabricated, fear-mongering claim that somehow China is uniquely able to spy on American citizens.
Do you know how much information there is about your browsing history, about your activity on the internet, that's linked to who you are, that's sold?
Usually be able to have you monetized and commercial advertisers be able to target you better, but for all kinds of reasons, they don't limit who can sell.
They want to sell that to as many people as they can.
Let's hear the rest of this tape video.
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 the 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.
I mean, what he's saying there is unassailable and so rarely heard.
A hundred million Americans use TikTok 90 minutes a day as one of their primary means, if not main means of communicating with one another, of forming their political opinions, of participating in political debates.
And as we know, and what he said, is that the U.S.
government has control over every other significant platform.
That's what the Twitter files demonstrated, was they were dictating to Facebook and Google and YouTube and Instagram and Twitter, take this down, don't allow this.
And the courts found that they were doing it coercively.
And we also know they have control over corporate media.
As I've said many times before, the bias of corporate media is not that they're left-wing or right-wing, or they're Democrats or Republican, it is that their loyalty is to the U.S. security state, to the U.S. government.
That's whose interests they serve.
Now, it just so happens that most of the U.S. government and the U.S. security state fears Trump more than anything, and so they become, the corporate media has been, more aligned with the Democratic Party and left-wing culture war issues.
But their primary allegiance, and that's why the New York Times led the way in selling Bush and Cheney's war in the Iraq War, security state.
So the U.S.
corporate media is under control.
The big tech platforms are under control.
At least Twitter was until Elon Musk took it over, and that was why there's been such a massive backlash on the part of the establishment The minute Elon Musk came in and said, I'm not giving in to your censorship demands anymore.
The party is over on Twitter.
I'm going to allow a bunch of people that you told the prior regime to censor and who did to come back to the platform.
I'm not saying he's been a perfect avatar of free speech.
We pointed out the times when he hasn't been, but he's making his own decisions for the most part about who is heard and who isn't.
And that's why There has been an attempt to basically destroy Elon Musk.
There's been New York Times articles implying he supported apartheid, multiple criminal investigations from the SEC, all sorts of attacks on Elon Musk, because as this TikTok user correctly observed, the one thing they can't tolerate is a major source of information they can't control.
That's what the attacks on Rumble are as well, and as Rumble grows, they're gonna intensify And what he was saying is that TikTok was the one place where you had a hundred million Americans freely able to communicate with one another.
Remember the Twitter files and the subsequent evidence, including in the court cases, showed the extent to which they could control Facebook and Google and Twitter.
There was very little about that in TikTok.
So just take what you know about the US government and think about when they look at TikTok and they see a hundred million Americans, a third of the population, And a huge percentage of young Americans going to a platform that they're not able to control.
What do you think they're going to do?
They're going to do everything possible to gain control of the information flow on that platform.
That is so basic and obvious.
And how do they do that?
They need leverage on TikTok.
So they wanted to be able to tell TikTok, we can credibly threaten to ban you from our country and we'll tell Americans that you're a threat to them, that you're basically a weapon of the Chinese Communist Party.
Even though we know that you're run by Americans and Singaporeans who went to London School of Economics in Goldman Sachs and you're just here to make money, we'll tell them that you're actually ideologues and agents of this foreign power that a lot of Americans hate and fear.
Unless you play ball with us and start giving us more control over the content, which is exactly what has been happening.
Here from Reuters in December of 2022, exclusive, TikTok steps up efforts to clinch a U.S.
security deal, meaning that The FBI, the CIA had been taking the position that they want to ban TikTok.
TikTok went to the government, the US government, and said, let's negotiate on what you want and need for us to stay, for you to feel comfortable with our presence here.
We're not here to spread anti-U.S.
propaganda.
In fact, we'll censor on your command.
Quote, TikTok has already unveiled several measures aimed at appeasing the U.S.
government, including an agreement for the Oracle Corp.
to store the data on the app's users in the United States, and a United States Data Security Division to oversee data protection and content moderation decisions.
Look at what they've said they will have.
The Oracle Corp will store the data and the data protection and content moderation decisions will be made not by TikTok, but by the United States Data Security Division, a division of the U.S.
government.
One controlled by the government with all kinds of former spooks on it.
Because TikTok does not care.
Their goal is not to propagandize Americans.
Their goal is to make money.
And if that means they have to play ball with the United States government and the U.S.
security state and appease them that they're going to control the United States government will, the content on TikTok, they're more than happy to do that.
That's why they censored our reports criticizing the U.S.
government on Ukraine and Brazil.
That's why they immediately banned the Bin Laden letter as soon as it became controversial because they are showing that they're more than happy to censor in accordance with the U.S.
government.
And so many people have been jumping on this train.
Oh, TikTok is a great threat.
We're so enraged by TikTok.
We want TikTok banned from our country.
Those are the people giving the United States that leverage to ensure that TikTok will not be any kind of a refuge of free speech or a place where people can go after they're driven off Twitter or Facebook or YouTube or Instagram.
Here is TikTok's plan that they have.
Let me just finish that Reuters article.
TikTok has spent $1.5 billion on hiring and reorganizing costs to build up that unit, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Here's TikTok's own document about what they call Project Texas, which is to place control Over the data and the content moderation decisions under American control.
Quote, put simply, Project Texas is an unprecedented initiative dedicating to making every American on TikTok feel safe with confidence that their data is secure and the platform is free from outside influence.
We spent the last two years developing a framework through discussions with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, and we spent roughly up to $1.5 billion to date on implementation.
Our content moderation systems, which means censorship, and processes, both machine and human, will also be subject to outside review to ensure that moderation is taking place only in accordance with our published Community Guidelines.
The USDS will implement these rules.
And as I said, we started off this segment by showing you that the censorship decisions that they're making are fully aligned with what the U.S.
there are no unexpected changes to our system.
All promotion decisions will be transparent and audible to the third-party monitors and our U.S. Content Advisory Council.
And as I said, we started off this segment by showing you that the censorship decisions that they're making are fully aligned with what the U.S. government and the EU government want.
If you really want to cling to this idea that TikTok is just a weapon of the CCP to convince your kids to hate America, show me where they're censoring material that is a criticism of the show me where they're censoring material that is a criticism of the U.S. government or where they are trying to propagandize the American public to turn against their
The Bin Laden letter would have been one great way to do that.
And they immediately intervened after a day of controversy as it grew.
And they said, look, we are going to prevent Americans from reading this letter.
We're not going to encourage it.
We are going to prevent them from doing so.
I think it's just so vital that even if you are still skeptical of what TikTok is, That you be conscious of the framework that I began by discussing.
That this is a case where the U.S.
government is trying to play on people's fears of China.
That's what Tom Cotton's questioning, preposterous, inane questioning, was about.
Trying to say, I know there are a lot of Americans who are going to look at this guy, and even though he's not Chinese, they're going to see someone who's Chinese.
He looks in the Chinese family.
He's Asian.
And there are going to be a lot of people who are going to just believe, yeah, that guy's probably part of, like, the Chinese Communist Party.
Even though he's part of, like, right-wing Singaporean anti-China capitalist culture.
I don't know if Compton doesn't know that.
I don't know if he knows that and assumes most of you don't, or most of his constituents don't.
That's how fear-mongering works.
And this fear mongering, as I said, has a purpose.
You just saw it in March when they pretended they were going to ban TikTok and instead tried to pass a bill that would have given the government much more sweeping powers than they were even admitting they were trying to obtain.
So how much more reporting do we need on how much the government is spying on us?
How much TikTok, how much Facebook and Google are?
How much of that information is readily available to understand that China wouldn't have needed to build TikTok as a spying mechanism?
China likes to make money.
Businessmen in Asia like to make money.
Americans who partner with them like to make money.
TikTok is making a ton of money.
One major reason is because they're in the United States.
And they have repeatedly demonstrated they are more than willing to allow the U.S.
government to dictate the censorship decisions on TikTok as much as done by Facebook and Google.
That is what is really going on here.
An attempt to control a platform where a hundred million Americans choose to go to express themselves and debate.
So even for those of you who are convinced that China is kind of what Democrats think Russia is and that TikTok is somehow an arm of that.
I know there are a lot of people who have been claiming that.
I know that That is something that you're hearing from all different sources.
I hope you will at least look at these facts, look at these arguments, look at this rationale, look at what Twitter is actually doing with the U.S.
government and what the U.S.
government is actually doing with Twitter, and at least be on guard every time people in government are trying to get you to be more and more scared of something where the solution is to give them the power to protect you from it.
That is always where authoritarianism lies.
That is the formulation, the formula for how authoritarianism is implemented.
You put the population in fear.
They're more submissive and acquiescent.
And then they're more willing to give you power.
That was the history of the Cold War.
It was most definitely the history of 9-11, post-9-11 and the war on terror.
It's been the history of Trump and Russiagate.
And now this as well.
So we had planned, as we said at the start, to do a report on both the approval of another $50 billion by the EU to send to the war in Ukraine after kind of bullying Hungary to withdraw their objections.
And there's now $50 billion going there, as well as the phone call that Joe Biden made.
But because I wanted to take the time to really delve into this segment, For reasons that that TikTok user said about why it's so important and the kind of actual dynamics here.
And I know I'm cutting against what a lot of people believe.
And when you do that, you kind of have to take the time to try and go to the first principles and examine whether or not those first view, those kind of foundational implicit views that a lot of people are affirming are not true.
We went about an hour and 20 minutes, and we're going to have to have our after show now for our members of our local community.
So we're going to go ahead and Postpone those other two reports that aren't really quite urgent but are ones that I actually do want to cover for tomorrow night or maybe Monday or Tuesday of next week.
And as a result, we're going to go ahead and conclude our show here.
All right.
So that concludes our show for this evening.
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