TikTok Banning Politicians Are The Real National Security Threat

Adam Smith’s observation that “the sole use of money is to circulate consumable goods” cannot be repeated enough. It explains so much, and in particular it explains why world leaders were so eager to convene at Bretton Woods in 1944 so that the world’s currencies could be pegged to a dollar that was defined as 1/35^th of a gold ounce.

The view then was that a movement away from free trade and toward protectionism in the 1930s was a major cause of the odious 2^nd World War, at which point a fixed exchange rate regime with the dollar at the center would facilitate a great deal more of the global trade that makes war so expensive. Stated simply, when people are trading with one another they’re improving one another, and people improving one another are less likely to shoot at each other.

The view of trade as the antidote to war begs to be revived modernly as politicians from both sides of the aisle excuse their blatantly protectionist efforts to ban TikTok as having to do with national security. The excuse isn’t serious. Worse, it’s dangerous.

Precisely because TikTok can lay claim to 170 million American users, the last thing any national security-focused politician would do is ban it. As opposed to a vehicle meant to spy on Americans (no nation, including China, is reliant on apps to “spy” on Americans as is) for nefarious purposes, the success of TikTok in the U.S. exists as a peaceful shield that greatly reduces the odds of China’s military aiming its guns and bombs at a nation so pregnant with customers. Which is a short way of saying a ban of TikTok wouldn’t enhance our national security, rather it would imperil it by reducing the cost of warring against us.

To which some will say TikTok is not about spying, it’s about propaganda. It’s about the Chinese government allegedly tweaking the content seen by Americans in order to turn them against the United States. How very insulting.

If we ignore that governments bat 1.000 when it comes to making unappealing whatever they touch, we can’t ignore the simplistic nature of the allegation. The CCP would or could use TikTok to brainwash us? You mean our politicians think so little of us that we require protection from what they imagine is communist speech? Why?

Have the members of our political class forgotten what a brilliant country the United States is, and how the people of the world routinely risk it all (including their lives) to get to the United States? Yet we’re supposed to believe an app with videos allegedly slanted by the CCP can turn Americans against their own country?

Where’s the outrage? The U.S. politicians out to ban TikTok think the American people so gullible, and their devotion to our way of life so gossamer thin as to be turned by a government run app. Let that sink in for a minute or two, then contemplate the real threat to the United States. Don’t worry, it gets worse.

Exactly because the TikTok banning political class thinks the Americans are so susceptible to Chinese influence, they’ve voted to deprive 170 million of those Americans of what they enjoy a little, or a lot. Translated, because Americans supposedly can’t be trusted to see through what panicky politicians think is slanted propaganda, the American people must suffer the loss of freedom that is the animating principle of the United States, and the one that has lured the world’s most talented to the United States for centuries.

We’re being asked to give up our freedom to allegedly protect it. No thanks. It’s bad enough to give up freedom, and it’s even worse to give it up to politicians who think so little of us.