Benign Malignancy

(Benign Malignancy)

One can hope that people are getting along today with that extra hour of sleep gone. Daylight Savings Time is an anachronism that should go the way of speed limits on the open road. But the time change is a fact of life, except for the people of Arizona and Hawaii, who apparently know better.

Anyhow, there is a Bill in front of the House that would seek to ban Tik Tok. Now, the service is a very platform for people and their ability to be self-expressive. People dance. they sing, public service announcements are regularly made. There can be value to these activities. However, all TikTok really is at the core is an "expressive" arm of the Chinese Communist Party.

As the chief adversary of the United States, it would be in the interest of the Peoples' Republic to have a social media platform with the pervasiveness of Tik Tok, especially with younger people, which can be susceptible to Chinese propaganda. It was for that reason that Tik Tok use is being banned of use by government agencies. That is until President Biden opened his own account in order to "reach" all those young people.

Therefore. a Tik Tok "ban" is desirable for national security reasons. However, such an action would not be desirable politically. All those users vote and they usually vote Democratic. Biden would not give these people the light if day were it not for their "intrinsic value." That is the reason there continuing controversy over the President's use of the term "illegal" in reference to Laken Riley's murder.

There is action that could be taken that would limit Chinse access while still allowing people to go on camera and make fools of themselves. If banning legislation were to switch out servers controlled by Beijing to ones controlled by Washington, that would necessarily curtail Chinese intelligence gathering off that platform and replace it with severs for a more domestic audience.

The delimitating factor is that this separation from Tik Tok could the beginning of a broader separation from China overall. There is a feeling that President Biden might be somewhat compromised by the Chinese hence his less than aggressive stance. For their part, however, the Chinese Communist Party and Premier Xi Jinping, know Biden all too well. They saw his speech too.