 All right, TikTok. TikTok was big in the news yesterday. The CEO of TikTok testified in front of Congress. You know, I've said many times on the Iran Book Show, on many occasions, I've said that it really gets scary and I really get skeptical and wary when the Democrats and Republicans agree. And it seems like the one issue right now that unites Democrats and Republicans, not just unites them at the board of it, but where both Democrats and Republicans get super excited, super passionate, super engaged, and super in agreement with one another, is the issue of TikTok. I mean, everybody and everybody wants to ban TikTok. Everybody wants to get rid of it. Why? Because supposedly TikTok, or the risk of TikTok, and more broader than that, I would say everybody now, left and right, everybody is united around the fact that we need to be super tough on China all across the board with no real strategy and no real discrimination and no real thinking going on. And again, this is scary because my senses that both left and right believe that we need an enemy, that having an enemy is good for us is real excitement. I find both in the Democratic Party and the Republican Party about having another cold war. And I think they have different reasons for doing it, but it really is not. China deserves to have, the United States really have a coherent, thoughtful strategy about limiting its influence and limiting its power because it is a national security threat. But what you're seeing now has nothing to do with national security. What you're seeing now is a frantic effort to grandstand and to get votes and to pretend that you're tough and to demonize China and to bring about, I think, a new cold war. We need an enemy. Again, there is this strong ideology that holds that the way to unite America is to create an enemy. We were most united. We were most loved by neighbor during the Cold War because we knew the evil Soviet Union was just there around the corner. And what we need is a new Soviet Union. We need something to unite the country, and I think that's real. Nobody's saying it, nobody says it out loud, but I think that's a real motivation. Anyway, TikTok was just lambasted yesterday. It doesn't matter what TikTok presents, what it offers, what it suggests, it really doesn't matter, right? This was an opportunity for congressmen to yell at a CEO. In this case, they don't have an opportunity often to yell at a foreign CEO. The last time a foreign CEO testified in front of congress was in 2010, so this is the first time in 12 years. Usually they just yell at American CEOs, but they can yell even louder and more bipartisan at a foreign CEO because both of their base voters love it. They think this is wonderful. Now think about TikTok. TikTok has showed videos, most of them cat videos and all kinds of other stuff. The argument is that the company is giving this data to the Chinese government. Let's assume that's true, I have no idea. But by the way, there are ways to make sure they don't do that and that's what people should be pursuing. So what? What is the data the Chinese government is gonna learn? The kind of videos teenagers like to watch, the kind of stupid videos that I never watched TikTok, but maybe some of you watch on TikTok. I watch short videos on, sometimes on Facebook and sometimes on YouTube, like one minute videos, like TikTok videos. And the videos I tend to watch are videos where people are jumping off of cliffs and doing crazy stuff like that just because I have a bit of a fear of heights and I find it, I don't know, calming in some sense to watch people do this stuff. So what is the Chinese government gonna do with that? Are they gonna, when I visit China and they kidnap me, they're gonna show me, I don't know, they know I have fewer fights now and they're gonna use that to touch, I don't know, I don't know what leverage that gives it as a national security issue. So what could you do? You could, for example, and TikTok is offering this, put the servers that hold all the information in Texas, allow American, and they say or whoever, to verify that the information is not being sent to China. TikTok supposedly has offered this, has offered all kinds of collaborative, they're not interested, they don't care, they don't give one iota about it. What else are the complaints about TikTok? They might be sending over propaganda, sure. But are we really gonna worry about propaganda? I mean, people are free, well, people should be able to be exposed to all ideas. Once we start censoring our propaganda, whether it's from Russia or from China or from any way, then why not censor propaganda from the United States and why not define what the other political party does as propaganda and censor it? You can't start saying Chinese are gonna flood TikTok with subliminal messages. Once you accept that bullshit, then you accept the mindlessness of people and you accept the idea that the government is there to protect our minds from information and therefore you accept the fact of what is going on. Let's see, what else? Oh, the other thing TikTok is being accused of is it's addictive to teenagers and it's supportive of them, I don't know, committing suicide, it's supportive of them worrying about their looks and worrying about others. This is a real problem. But this is not a problem of TikTok. This is a problem of parenting. This is a problem of parenting to give kids an unlimited access to TikTok. TikTok has put in means by which parents can regulate their children's use of TikTok. This is a problem of self-esteem among young Americans. It's not like Facebook doesn't do the same thing and Instagram doesn't do the same thing and YouTube doesn't do the same thing. They all do the same thing. And what are we going to do now? The government is going to regulate how many, I don't know, diet videos or exercise videos or women looking really fit. So guys with big muscles are loud on video. Is that the next step in order to protect our teenagers from having bad body image and therefore committing suicide over it? So I find this whole TikTok thing nutty. There is a China problem. We should focus on the China problem. We should really think about the China problem. We should think about how we can secure a sensitive information from China. And what is sensitive information? It's not TikTok. It's how to build microchips. It's how to build sophisticated weapons. It's how to advance real technology. We should think about where China can use technology for military purposes and is using technology to military purposes and really try to prevent that. If we decide China is a real enemy, then we should cut them off completely. Sure, but we haven't made that decision yet. We still, most still a significant amount of stuff that we buy here in America is made in China, including a lot of our electronics and stuff. We need to be serious or we need to pretend that this is just a game. One way or the other, we need to get serious about it. TikTok is not being serious. TikTok is a joke. It's again. And if they ban TikTok, 150 million Americans have TikTok accounts, Americans really gonna be happy about this. Americans gonna say, yes, great for national security. I mean, maybe it plays out as verbiage with once you actually get it crushed, then what? Americans gonna be happy about it. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran book show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening. You get value from watching. Show your appreciation. You can do that by going to iranbookshow.com slash support by going to Patreon, subscribe star locals and just making a appropriate contribution on any one of those channels. Also, if you'd like to see the Iran book show grow, please consider sharing our content and of course, subscribe. Press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live. And for those of you who are already subscribers and those of you who are already supporters of the show, thank you. I very much appreciate it.