Script of my national radio report yesterday re bans on Chinese
products and services
This is the script of my national radio report yesterday evening on the
topic of Congress and bans on Chinese products and services. As always,
there may have been a few minor wording variations as I present these
live.
- - -
Yeah, so as we've been seeing, both parties in Congress have been on a
rather dramatic China bashing binge lately. So it seems to be
increasingly important to separate fantasy from reality in this,
because what Congress is doing in some cases could dramatically affect
U.S. consumers while not impacting at all in those areas where we have
completely legitimate grievances with how China operates.
Obviously our economies are enormously interconnected, and of course
China didn't force that to happen, U.S. companies over time
voluntarily chose that path for their own financial benefit. But the
point is that any simplistic analysis of U.S.-China relationships
tends to be flawed, and all too often we hear claims about China that
are not backed up with evidence. This is unfortunate because there are
many areas where there is solid evidence of China's wrongdoing. But
most of those don't seem to be of much interest to politicians in
either party.
So right now we have the new TikTok ban, which stands a good chance of
being overturned in U.S. courts for any of a number of reasons. And
the point of this ban appears to be bipartisan *speculation* about
what China might do in the future in terms of purposely stealing data
or influencing people in scary ways. Now as we've noted before, China
could just buy data on U.S. citizens from U.S. data brokers who
operate with little regulatory oversight here. But the TikTok ban was
pushed through despite there being effectively no evidence and
considerable reason to believe that efforts have been taken by the
firms involved (U.S. based data centers and various controls) to help
make sure that what the politicians are so dramatically speculating
about doesn't ever happen.
And yet right here in the U.S., we know there are U.S. firms like
Facebook that have abused our data and pushed misinformation, in fact
just today the FCC announced it's fining the big four mobile carriers
hundreds of millions of dollars for providing privacy sensitive
location data of their subscribers to other firms! But you don't hear
calls to shut down Facebook or AT&T from these same politicians. What
*those* firms have done isn't speculation, it's reality!
Similarly, there's efforts to ban Chinese drone maker DJI for use by
*anyone* in the U.S., again based on speculation of what *might* be
possible and not actual evidence of wrongdoing. And given that public
safety organizations, agriculture, utilities, and so many more depend
on DJI drones because they just haven't found alternatives to be as
reliable or as well supported, one has to wonder if DJI drones are
banned what's going to happen. Because if there were U.S. alternatives
available that worked as well they'd be the first choice in the first
place. DJI even builds comprehensive flight safety features into their
drones that some other drone manufacturers don't bother with at all.
Meanwhile, we don't hear these politicians complaining about Chinese
made laptops, tablets, phones, cameras, all sorts of internet attached
consumer equipment, a wide array of widely used devices that are
chosen because they do the job.
Now, if the U.S. government wants to put significant funding into U.S.
firms creating these kinds of high tech products to better compete
with China, where the government does heavily support their industries
-- that seems like an idea definitely worth considering for here. But
if you're actually going to ban products and services that millions of
U.S. citizens and innumerable crucial organizations depend on, it
should only be done on the basis of hard facts and direct evidence and
not be based on rampant speculation with political overtones that are
often unfortunately seemingly divorced from reality. Congress can do a
whole lot better.
L
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
[email protected] (https://www.vortex.com/lauren)
Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com
Mastodon: https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren
Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org
PRIVACY Forum: https://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
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