 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. In today's episode of Talking Science in Tech, we will be discussing the issue of TikTok and the pressure it is facing from various governments across the world and more recently the US in where President Donald Trump has been threatening to ban the app and now he has been citing security concerns saying that the Chinese Communist Party could be able to access this data of US citizens and now he has been pressuring the app to sell its business to US tech giant Microsoft. So we are joined by Praveer Puthas to discuss this issue. Praveer, can you first tell us about this deal itself and how much sense does it make for TikTok to sell its business to a company like Microsoft and Microsoft to buy it when it's not even in the social media business? Well, let's for the time being forget about Microsoft what is in its interest. Clearly, TikTok is one of the hottest properties in the social media market and if it gets a bargain-basement price, which is what the United States government is trying to force my dance to do and get the TikTok version of the app for the American market take it over completely. Well, it's a huge gain for Microsoft to enter a platform with a platform which is hot selling which at the moment Microsoft does not have doesn't have any social media platform worth the name. So that of course for Microsoft it makes sense. But let's look at it from another point of view. The U.S. government forcing a company which it allowed to enter U.S. It allowed it this app to be downloaded by I think last year, the millions of people have downloaded this app inside the United States. It is one of the, as I said, one of the hottest selling social media properties that has come in the last two years. TikTok has been a huge, huge hit with the youngsters. Now, let us also look at what the government of the United States is saying and early the Indian government had also said while banning 59 Chinese app in which TikTok was also one of them that these are security threats. Now, how are 20-year-olds or 25-year-olds or 18-year-olds who are lip-syncing to some music and dancing, 30-second clips are a defense or a security threat to these countries? I do not know. So it's basically a part of a larger trade war or strategic economic war that countries may be waging. In the case of India, it was clearly a response made to the border clashes. In the case of the United States, they have been conducting a trade war and a tech war against China for the last more than a year. And now that the trade war doesn't seem to be going anywhere, Trump has expanded it to a tech war against Huawei first, now it has started against Chinese apps and the intention is very clear. The intention is that get rid of as far as it can all the Chinese network products, personal computers, smartphones, as well as software or apps in the market. Now, this is a process of economic disengagement. It is not simply a war. It's basically disengaging completely from the Chinese economy and whether that is possible in the long run or not is a different question. But that's really the intent. And the first or the critical element of that has been essentially the network. So that's why when Pompeo talks about the clean network program, the idea is at least from the telecommunication network and the internet, particularly the internet, where the future of technology is going to be decided, that area to try and keep China out or at least break it into multiple regions. But each one would then have control over and then a kind of economic and technological autarky if you will, in which these markets split completely. Now, splitting the internet, which is the consequence of all of this is not a happy prospect because ultimately it is the internet and the free movement of information on the internet that has really created the new quote unquote network society that we are seeing. So this would be a really huge blow to that. So there are huge repercussions of this, not simply from the trade and technology point of view, but also from the point of view of communications which if you remember, this was the telecommunication age is when telephone networks connect to each other. And the telephone networks connecting the next connection is really the internet. And that also connects to each other seamlessly. If we fracture that, what is going to happen? We don't know. So I think the implications of this go far beyond simply tech rivalry or economic rivalry. And I think the United States government is entering into all of this without a clear idea of where this could go. And it is working on the basis of not of a strategic understanding, but of a piecemeal understanding. And I think that's true for the Indian government also. If you want to fight with China economically, technically, if that is the understanding, then you must understand what it means for your strategic role in the world and also your economic role in the world. India, if you look at its expansion in terms of the future, then China is a close partner because it's true that China exports more to us than we export to China. But China is a very significant part of our exports as well. So given all of that, this kind of trying to break away from each other, I think just is not limited to apps, but it is consequences far beyond that. Coming to the more simple question that you said, why or how is the United States doing it, let's put it for what it is. This is daylight robbery of the property of buying guns, forcing it virtually at gunpoint to sell its assets at a low price. How is it being done? Because the US says, I'm outside global laws, I can do what I want. And they have used what in WTO's terms is called the nuclear option, which is say this endangers the security of a country. Now the security of a country is one exception that WTO recognizes and which trade barriers can be put up. So they have put up trade barrier on all these issues, claiming security exception, and the security exception has also been used against, for instance, on import of steel, import of aluminum. Even there, it has used the security exception, not only against China, but against others as well. If you see that trajectory of the US, it also needed that WTO's trade rules also should be sabotaged. And the US did that by not putting, not accepting any dispute settlement, new member in the tribunal, as a result of which WTO's dispute settlement now process is completely sabotaged. So US has had a plan to sabotage each of these institutions and also now violate international law openly. And say my laws, I can do what I want. And I can therefore expropriate ByteDance app, TikTok for Microsoft or any company that I favor. And if you don't do it, then I will expropriate it directly or I will say, okay, we brand it completely like India has done. So TikTok will not be able to, TikTok videos or TikToks, whole apps will stop working in the United States. So this is where we are at the moment, but this is also now being extended to WeChat, for instance. Now WeChat is also the way trade takes place with China. For instance, India, once WeChat has been banned, WeChat was a means for India to trade, Indian traders or Indian buyers to trade with Chinese producers and Chinese buyers. Because it did not need each other to know their languages. WeChat is very good translation software by which they could talk to each other and trade doesn't mean that you need to know all the nuances and actually exchange goods without having to know each other's language. So if WeChat is banned, which is what it is at the moment, trade anyway becomes more difficult. But if we disengage the way the United States wants to do and appropriate or stop these apps from functioning, the question is, what are the repercussions? So the repercussions are obviously on the US companies and US apps as well. Because what it is accusing of TikTok, stealing data as it says. Now Communist Party is a hoax. Basically what it says, Chinese government. Well, all those things are applicable to US companies and US apps as well. Facebook, Google, all companies, they take data and put it on US servers. And those servers, all the data is accessible to intelligence agencies openly. This is a part of the US law that the intelligence agencies can access any data of any individual on the servers of any company, which is there in the United States. So this is a hoax when we talk about that the Chinese are doing this as if the American companies have not. And if we come to networks, then Cisco's back doors are a legend. I remember an intelligence analyst telling me, a military intelligence person telling me, that yes, of course, Cisco's back doors are well known. Therefore our communication networks within the Indian military, we didn't use Cisco routers. And now we know after students' revelations. Now of course, students' revelations are also quite sometime back. We know that Cisco had routers which are openly left in their equipment, which were known to the US government, which was not known to others. So this is a very old tactic which US is now accusing others of. Question is that on what basis is the United States accusing the Chinese of doing what it has always been doing? Recently a particular bad example which comes to mind is the fact there is a location app which is now, which has become public. That's been hacked by, it's basically such that it can hack your location data. And millions of this phone location data is being made available to the US military. This by the person or the company which developed the app. The company or the app is one of them is called Anomaly 6. Anomaly itself raises suspicions, but these are not anomalies. These are essentially basic, what shall we say, objectives of the company that it will get this data, personal data and sell it to data brokers in the market or give it to the US military under the contract with the US military. So all of these are public. This happened only about I think a week back with this information became public. So when you are accusing others of doing what you are doing, there is obviously a bad faith in all of this. But I think the basic issue is not to look at it, but is this the reason they are doing it? The reason why they're doing it, it's a part of their continuing trade and tech war against the Chinese companies. And that's the entire scenario is as it is playing out. It started with Huawei and now it has gone to Chinese apps. And with the clean network initiative program, it is actually supposed to include all Chinese equipment, including smartphones as well as any telecommunication equipment. And any country which links to the United States in some form or the other, they will be also asked to follow these policies. The five eyes of the first were pressurized. There are another 14 NATO countries who also do intelligence sharing with the United States, they are going to be asked to fall in line. So you are going to see US using its muscle, particularly its military alliance muscle to make its partners fall in line. And then hope that that will keep its market intact, which is slowly being eaten up by Chinese companies. So thank you for talking to us on this issue. And that's all the time we have. Keep watching this.