The White House has expressed support for a bipartisan bill that could ultimately ban TikTok, the social media platform, in the United States.
The [Senate] bill, the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act, or RESTRICT Act, would give the secretary of commerce broad power to regulate tech produced by six countries that have adversarial relationships with the U.S.: China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela. The White House endorsed the RESTRICT Act on Tuesday, calling it “a systematic framework for addressing technology-based threats to the security and safety of Americans.”
NBC’s report goes on to note what I believe is a serious flaw in the legislation’s intent, saying that the bill is “designed to let the federal government pre-empt situations in which technology produced in any of the six authoritarian countries named in the bill becomes popular in the U.S., as was the case with the Russian antivirus company Kaspersky, which is banned on federal computers, and the Chinese telecommunications equipment manufacturers Huawei and ZTE.”
But what about technology developed for American corporations in the U.S. but deployed — sometimes with horrifying results — globally? Like Twitter and Facebook?
For example, there’s an intensifying Federal Trade Commission investigation into Twitter’s handling of users’ personal data after Elon Musk’s acquisition of the company and his raft of firings. Under Musk, Twitter has foreign investors who come from countries that have faced criticism from the U.S.
Still, House Republicans have come out against the investigation, claiming it’s “harassment” by the FTC — despite Twitter appearing to have at least as many issues with unsecured data and nefarious foreign actors as TikTok. And the same can be said for Meta and Facebook, whose manipulation by foreign governments targeting Americans has been documented in a bipartisan Senate investigation.
The legislation being crafted to target social media technologies produced outside the U.S. seemingly ignores the threat of foreign manipulation of U.S.-based companies — let alone dangerous manipulation by Americans.
If lawmakers were searching for a bill that accomplishes their jingoistic goal of deriding foreign adversaries yet barely tackles these countries’ influence over Americans, they’ve found it in the RESTRICT Act.
The rest of us who know better should recognize it for the theater it truly is.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.