Restoring an open internet requires softer China policy

A common reaction among tech policy and internet freedom advocates to the upcoming ban of TikTok in the US is to reject it as a step back from the traditional US internet policy of openness, free speech, and innovation. How, they say, can the US argue for these traditional values internationally when the US is so blatantly violating them itself? This reaction fails to come to grips, however, with the implications of the United States’ current confrontational policy toward China, a policy that is predicated on a conception of China as seeking every opportunity to undermine and destroy US interests domestically and internationally. Once one adopts the perspective that the Chinese government is the mortal enemy of the US, it becomes unthinkable to allow a social media app under its control—with access to half the US population—to operate in the US, even under a regulatory regime designed to prevent its use for surveillance and propaganda. And this exclusionary practice is only beginning. Other Chinese companies will almost certainly be banned as well. Tech policy and internet freedom advocates who want to restore the traditional US posture of openness, innovation, and the free flow of ideas toward China must challenge the underlying foreign policy and national security posture that justifies the TikTok ban.