When it comes to the Internet, Trump prefers the Chinese model
This week, the Trump administration explicitly announced its intention to work toward a new bipolar world of technology, carved up between the United States and China. The administration had already made clear that it would either ban the Chinese video app TikTok or force its sale to a U.S. company. Then it announced a sweeping “Clean Network” program, which seeks to ban virtually all Chinese information technology products — phone carriers, apps, cloud servers, even undersea cables.
Taken together, these efforts suggest a reversal of decades of U.S. policy. Instead of favoring a global Internet of open systems, open architecture and open communications, the United States now envisions a restricted Internet that is cordoned off by governments, with political considerations dominating economic or technological ones.
Let’s be clear. There are legitimate concerns about China’s technology strategy. The country has walled off its cyberspace like no other. The government can force any Chinese company to hand over data. And it routinely engages in international espionage to steal intellectual property, technology and data from other countries. (To be fair, the U.S. government is also in the cyberespionage business in a big way.)
In 2018, ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, was forced to shutter its “Neihan Duanzi” (“inside jokes”) app. The young, tech-savvy chief executive, Zhang Yiming, published a letter of self-criticism that read like a confession at a Stalinist show trial. “I profoundly reflect on the fact that a deep-level cause of the recent problems in my company is: a weak [understanding and implementation of] the ‘four consciousnesses’ [of Xi Jinping]. .?.?. All along, we have placed excessive emphasis on the role of technology, and we have not acknowledged that technology must be led by the socialist core value system,” he wrote.
The Trump administration’s decision on TikTok, however — like so many of its decisions — looks like an arbitrary, impulsive one, made in the heat of the moment, prompted by the timing around the presidential election more than anything else. It does not follow from any clear description of policy that will animate future decisions. In an interview that airs Sunday on my CNN show, Bill Gates reacted to it, saying, “We need principles that are applied broadly and in a predictable way.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/when-it-comes-to-the-internet-trump-prefers-the-chinese-model/2020/08/06/a9298236-d823-11ea-9c3b-dfc394c03988_story.html
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