 We start with TikTok, TikTok, TikTok. I don't know what TikTok is. Anybody know what TikTok is? It's some kind of social networking thing, video thing, fun, short videos. People go crazy. They are TikTok stars. They are TikTok with people with huge, massive followings. It's the hot social media platform right now. And it's the hot video platform there is right now. It's very similar to what Instagram was for a while. And then there was, there'd been like five different adoration of different companies that, there was Vine. There was Vine, that's right, Vine. And there were others like that that all the kids get excited about they do funny videos and everybody downloads and everybody watches and it lasts so I don't know you or two. And then everybody switch to something else. I don't think it's soft porn. I don't think there's any porn on it. What? So DDV shows there's no soft porn. It's called the internet? No, no, no. Internet's pretty hard porn. What do you, where's the soft part in the internet? I have no idea. I mean, even the news on the internet, maybe the news on the internet is soft porn and the porn on the internet is hard. There's a cross snap chat, which is owned by the company called Snap. And you've got multiple competitors to this. Anyway, the Trump administration has decided that TikTok is a national security threat to the United States. Secretary Pompeo a few days ago said that they were looking at ways in which to shut TikTok down. And today, no, yesterday, yesterday, yesterday, maybe it was yesterday. I can't keep track. Yesterday I think Donald Trump said that he would sign an executive order today, Saturday, that would ban TikTok. He was personally going to eliminate TikTok as he said in his little statement to the press. He has the power. He has the power to shut down this company. Now, why is this company so offensive to the Trump administration? Primarily because it's owned by the Chinese and we'll talk about why that is important in a minute, but it's owned by a Chinese company. Whoops, what did I just do? It's owned by a Chinese company. And of course we know that anything Chinese these days is bad, evil, wrong, nasty. And that the federal government needs to protect us from those evil Chinese and what they might do to this country. Of course, why is it a national security threat? Well, because it is owned by a Chinese company. Now, as it turns out, TikTok is a US subsidiary of this Chinese company. It is a complete, all the videos, all the content on the US subsidiary, on the US TikTok versus the Chinese TikTok, is all content, especially all American content, that's content that's produced and created and done here. Chinese TikTok is very different than American TikTok. I don't think the Chinese consumers have access to the American TikTok and American consumers don't have access to the Chinese TikTok, the separate entities, separate subsidiary. But this is the fear. The fear is that TikTok collects massive amounts of user data, as all social media does. It collects data, I guess you have to sign in and then they get to see what you watch and what you don't watch. And they aggregate all this data and this data is held in on servers. And the Trump administration is claiming that, as a consequence, that data can fall into the hands of the Chinese authorities. That is that we know the Chinese companies often fall under the thumb of the Chinese government and therefore the Chinese government can force them. To provide the data usage of Americans on TikTok USA. Now, granted, that would be a violation of privacy rights of American consumers and that would be a bad thing. There is no evidence that any of that has happened. There's no suggestion of that. There's no criminal prosecution, there's no civil car prosecution against TikTok. There is nothing that indicates that the Chinese government has had, so far, any access to this data. There are stories about the kind of data that it collects and it collects data like any other app. It is delivered to your phone through Apple and through the Apple App Store and Apple, I guess, monitors what those apps collect and through the Google Play App Store on Google. It is obviously incredibly popular. Tens of millions of US subscribers and in Europe. It is for whatever reason. I don't understand these things. I mean, every one of these video apps to me look the same, but there's something unique about it. There's something special, there's something entertaining that people really like. And obviously this data is collected and this data is substantial in terms of what videos you watch and maybe some personal data associated with when you sign in. Anyway, this is deemed a national security threat, a national security threat. Now as a first step, the Trump administration has taken and has asked military and government employees and sensitive positions to delete the app. The other idea is that maybe the app provides some kind of entry point into your iPhone and steals all the information from your iPhone. I'm dubious about that given Apple's very, very strict oversight of what goes in the app store, but this is the Chinese. They are capable of anything. And as somebody says, why take a chance? It's dangerous. This is particularly relevant when American social media companies are being accused of selling private data. This is not accusation that Chinese company will, but that the Chinese company is going to give it to their government, not sell it to private companies as some Americans have. Now, I am dubious about the whole line of reasoning. If there is evidence, sure, prosecute. There is a court of law. There are ways and ways to prosecute companies abusing the data that they have. We have intelligence services. We have law enforcement, exactly for this purpose, to detect violation of individual rights of Americans. And if individual rights are violated, yes, then the government should step in and do something about it. But we're talking about a stupid video app. There have been two other cases where the Trump administration has done this with Chinese companies. And I can't pronounce these companies, so those of you who know a little bit of Chinese or maybe know something about how to pronounce these Chinese company names, I apologize in advance. One is ZTE, so that's pretty easy. But the other one is Hawaii, H-U-A-W-E-I, Hawaii. Now, both of those companies make electronic equipment. For example, Hawaii makes equipment for 5G, right? That's how we all get the coronavirus as to Hawaii's 5G equipment. I don't know if you heard. I think I've talked about it in the previous show about the conspiracy theory that it's 5G networks that are produced by the Chinese that actually activate the coronavirus. Anyway, they create this hardware and the danger there is that they will actually have, the Chinese government could have, therefore, implanted in this equipment back doors that provide it access. Not just the videos you've watched, but to everything, to all your phone calls, to all your financial information, to really everything. Once they can get in to the infrastructure of the web, they can control, they theoretically can accumulate vast amounts of information. I assume that also American intelligence has some reason to think that Hawaii and ZTE, that the government, which is involved with them, there's some real legitimate reason to believe that these things can be used for espionage. And therefore, they've been banned. And the way the government did this with Hawaii and ZTE is they basically banned them from government contracts and from participating in much of the infrastructure that is being built around 5G and other things. But primarily, they've done it through banning them from the government dealing with them at all. Again, TikTok is a video thing. This is not an app from the Chinese government, this is an app from a Chinese company. And I know that you guys have a hard time differentiating the two. I know that, but it's not the same thing. It just isn't. And indeed, much of what you consume, much of what you have in your pocket, including the iPhone and including not an iPhone, if you have other kinds of products, like Samsung products or whatever, are products that are built, constructed, parts, features that come from China. No, it is not the same thing. I've said many times that the Chinese government is not communist. The Chinese government is much more fascist than it is communist. And it says TikTok also shown to grab the iPhone global copy area where passwords and other sensitive information is placed. I'm skeptical, allow me to be skeptical because I don't think Apple would tolerate that of them doing that. And if it's being shown, you would think that Apple would have shut them down. So I'm skeptical about that. But look, this is all part of a bank passwords, things like that. Maybe, I mean if it was, then why isn't a criminal lawsuit against the company? Why is Apple still having them on the platform? Is this because Apple has sold out the American people to a Chinese company? I'm skeptical, I'm skeptical. It seems much more likely that this is, this is a winning issue for Trump. That's I think what this is all about. The one issue that Trump has going for him, oh, he's got a number of issues. Well, one of the issues Trump has going for him, going into this election, is the fact that the American public are unbelievably skeptical and negative about the Chinese government and to the logic set for the right reasons. Oh, I don't know if they're the right reasons. There's good reasons for them to be. I don't think it's for the right reasons. Just like I don't think that Trump's skepticism and negativity about the Chinese government is for the right reasons. That it's nothing to do with the fascist nature of the government. It has nothing to do with what they're doing in Hong Kong. It has nothing to do with what they're doing with the Muslims in Western China. It has everything to do with politics. Everything to do with politics. And with his perspective on trade. His perspective on trade. So he is batting that in spite of the fact that young voters love TikTok, he doesn't have the young vote anyway, that he is gonna go for China powerful incentive to vote. And, but it's all about China as the villain. I don't believe it has anything to do with the reality. Again, we are consumers of hundreds, if not thousands, on a daily basis of Chinese products. Most companies, most of the companies that we buy from in China are private companies. They extend that they, you know, they're allowed to be private in China. But they are, they make their own decisions. They build their own products. They keep the profits. They pay lower taxes than American companies. But we know, and this is the difference between China and America. In China, companies could be taken over by the government at the whim of the government. Companies can be forced to be part of the government at the whim of the government. Companies can have to take a knee in front of the government at the first opportunity. In America, on the other hand, it can't just be at the whim of the government, although sometimes it is. There has to be some process. But the government can bring companies to their knees just as well. For example, this TikTok company is an American subsidiary. Yes, of a Chinese company, but it's in America. Employees are Americans. Employees are 1,000 Americans. The servers where all this information is stored is in the United States of America. And this is what I think is truly revealing. TikTok USA has been in discussions with Microsoft to sell TikTok to Microsoft. And it has been in discussions for weeks now because it would like to, right? Would like to. The highest amount Super Chat permits is $99 since when? That's interesting. Because it used to allow much larger contributions. That's interesting. Anyway, TikTok has been in negotiations with Microsoft to sell because TikTok realized that they were gonna be shut down by the Trump administration. So they figured that they might as well cash out, that they might as well cash out. And those negotiations seem like they're fruitful and Microsoft was on the verge of buying TikTok. And that's a way for, again, the Chinese companies to capitalize to get the money for its investment. And now Microsoft would be responsible for the data. So if it has not been shown that TikTok is stealing sensitive information, it has not been shown that if it was shown that there would be a lawsuit by the government. So again, there's tons of misinformation out there, but there was no actually concrete evidence. Otherwise, if there was any kind of evidence, the Justice Department order filed a lawsuit. Instead of Trump threatening to shut it down through executive order, which is dubious because it's not clear he has the authority to do it. And it's not clear how he would do it. Why not just take them to court and shut them down that way? And the reason is, cause they don't have evidence. I mean, if there's evidence, you take it to court. You use executive orders and you use threats when there's no evidence. And again, the indication of why this is that this is something different is the fact that Trump said that he would not accept TikTok selling to Microsoft. Why? Why wouldn't he accept that? Why isn't it okay if the problem really is that TikTok's collecting this information and might be passed on to Chinese government. Why is selling to Microsoft not a solution? It seems like the logical thing. It's a very popular app in Americans. There's this risk that the data would go to China, sell the thing, put Microsoft in charge, put it in data centers controlled by Microsoft and you solve the problem. I mean, if Trump said no. And why? Why? Well, because that would take a win away from him. Trump wants a win. Trump wants ability to say, I shut down a Chinese company. Trump wants to be able to say, I protected you from the evils of a Chinese company. And by Microsoft buying it, the market will have solved the problem. And there was no interest. There was no interest in the market for this administration and seeing markets solve problems. This is an administration interested in central planners solving problems. Now, I did find it interesting that there is no, I try to read up on how Trump would shut it down. We don't have in the United States a mechanism to shut down an app. I mean, the Chinese do. In China, if you piss off the government, if you put this off the equivalent of their leaders, then they can put a barrier between the server and they can just shut them down. The United States, we don't have that. We don't have control like that over the internet. They could, the Communist Department could tell Apple and Google they can't sell the app on the app store. But they'd have to have a reason. And they'd be a lawsuit. And it's not clear how you would do that. Again, we as compared to China and some of you probably think this is a big disadvantage, we are a country of laws. The president can't just say, I don't want this app to be on the platform and get rid of it. There's a process, there are lawsuits. This will be contested. I mean, it's just no simple mechanism by which we can or our government can shut down somebody like TikTok and good because imagine if they could shut down any app, any social media, any business they didn't like. So yeah, it's, I don't know where this is gonna go. Saturday has pretty much passed. And as far as I can tell from following the news, Trump has not yet signed that executive order. TikTok is still working. TikTok is owned by a Chinese company. I have the name of the Chinese company here somewhere. But I can't find it right now. Anyway, it's owned by a Chinese company. But Microsoft, which was going to buy the company, was, has stopped the negotiations until Donald Trump, our commander, well, central plan chief, actually decides whether he'll let Microsoft buy them. Yes, a bit, bit dance, bit dance is the name of the Chinese company that owns TikTok. So instead of just letting the market solve the problem, which is what it was going to do with Microsoft buying TikTok, Microsoft now is stepping away to see what the government wants to do. Because now we are all beholden, a little bit like the Chinese in China, we all beholden to the government to get approval for what we do, to get permission for what we do. And this is, remind you of a Republican administration for whatever that's worth. I think the volume was way high then, nobody told me. All right, if the volume's too low now, let me know, but I think it was too high there before. Okay, let's see. Do we have any super check questions on TikTok? The main thing distinguishing TikTok from other apps is its ownership. Unlike the other parts of the world, China experts say the Communist Party could easily pressure TikTok into hand over data. True, true. But there's no evidence that's happened. And you could prosecute if it did, because it's a legal entity in the United States to subsidiary. And the data is not exactly national security data. And they were going to sell to Microsoft. So why not just let them sell to Microsoft? And then the ownership problem is solved. But at least yesterday, now he could have changed his mind. At least yesterday, Donald Trump said no to selling to Microsoft. Again, the fact that we even asked the president whether a company can sell to another company is amazing to me. Derek says, ask what do you think of the song TikTok by Keisha? I think you'll be shocked to discover. I'm shocked, shocked that I don't know what he's talking about. Who is Keisha? And given that I don't know who Keisha is, I certainly don't know a song by TikTok. So for commentary on popular culture or popular music, you will have to go elsewhere. What we need today, what I called a new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to sing. Meaning, any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, whims or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist broad. All right, before we go on, reminder, please like the show. We've got 163 live listeners right now, 30 likes, that should be at least 100. I figure at least 100 of you actually like the show. Maybe they're like 60 of the Matthews out there who hate it, but at least the people who are liking it, you know, I wanna see a thumbs up. There you go, start liking it. I wanna see that go to 100. All it takes is a click of a thing whether you're looking at this. And you know the likes matter. It's not an issue of my ego. It's an issue of the algorithm. The more you like something, the more the algorithm likes it. 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