“Members of the Senate Commerce and Intelligence committees will get a classified briefing on Wednesday about TikTok and the House-passed bill to force its sale, according to two aides with direct knowledge of the briefing,” Punchbowl News reports.
SpaceX Building Network of Spy Satellites for U.S.
“SpaceX is building a network of hundreds of spy satellites under a classified contract with a U.S. intelligence agency, demonstrating deepening ties between billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s space company and national security agencies,” Reuters reports.
Young People Get Their News from TikTok
Columbia Journalism Review: “TikTok users aren’t just kids mindlessly scrolling dance videos. Roughly one-third of Americans aged 18–29 regularly get their news from TikTok, the Pew Research Center found in a late 2023 survey. Nearly half of all TikTok users say they regularly get news from the app, a higher percentage than for any other social media platform aside from Twitter.”
“Almost 40 percent of young adults were using TikTok and Instagram for their primary Web search instead of the traditional search engines, a Google senior vice president said in mid-2022—a number that’s almost certainly grown since then. Overall, TikTok claims 150 million American users, almost half the US population; two-thirds of Americans aged 18–29 use the app.”
China Signals Opposition to Forced Sale of TikTok
“The Chinese government is signaling that it won’t allow a forced sale of TikTok, limiting options for the app’s owners as buyers begin lining up to bid for its U.S. operations,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Chinese officials have criticized the U.S. for its moves targeting the short-video-sharing app. They have also sent signals to TikTok’s owner, Beijing-based ByteDance, that company executives have interpreted as meaning the government would rather the app be banned in the U.S. than be sold.”
Starship Launches
“SpaceX launched Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built, on a journey part of the way around Earth,” the New York Times reports.
“The nearly 400-foot-tall vehicle is being built to carry astronauts to the moon for NASA, and perhaps someday to send humans to Mars.”
The Politics of TikTok
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Steve Mnuchin Wants to Buy TikTok
Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is putting together a consortium to try to buy TikTok, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Said Mnuchin: “I think the legislation should pass and I think it should be sold. It’s a great business and I’m going to put together a group to buy TikTok.”
White House Urges Senate to Act on TikTok Bill
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Wednesday that the White House hoped the Senate would quickly take up the bipartisan House bill that would force TikTok to cut ties with its parent company ByteDance or be banned in the U.S., The Information reports.
President Joe Biden has said that he would sign the bill if it passed the Senate.
AI Tool Will Block Fake Images of Trump and Biden
“The popular artificial intelligence image-generator Midjourney has started blocking its users from creating fake images of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump ahead of the upcoming U.S. presidential election,” the AP reports.
TikTok Bill Easily Passes House
The House easily passed a bill to force ByteDance to divest its holdings in TikTok, 352 to 65 with one voting present.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has not said if he will take up the bill.
How TikTok Was Blindsided by Bill That Could Ban It
Wall Street Journal: “Inside TikTok, some leaders were aware that lawmakers were working on legislation, but they didn’t expect it to win so much support so quickly.”
“The company has scrambled in response, messaging its users to call their representatives, which angered some lawmakers. TikTok executives, though, are considering additional, similar notifications to users urging them to contact Congress.”
Bloomberg says the company “intends to exhaust all legal challenges before it considers any kind of divestiture from Chinese parent company ByteDance Ltd. if the latest US legislation targeting the app becomes law.”
“A sale of the viral video app is considered to be the last resort for ByteDance, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private matters. A divestiture would also require approval by the Chinese government, which said last year that it would firmly oppose a forced sale.”
Politico: TikTok fights for its life in Washington.
The Problem with TikTok Is Propaganda
Matthew Yglesias: “My sense of the argument around TikTok is that the debate has been bedeviled by overstatements from TikTok’s critics, which have in turn been met by TikTok defenders setting an excessively high evidentiary bar.”
“Here’s the analogy I like to use. It’s 1975 and a state-owned Soviet firm wants to buy CBS. What happens? Well, what happens is they wouldn’t be allowed to. The FCC would block it. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the US or its predecessors would block it. If they didn’t have the power, congress would write a new law. And even if it wasn’t CBS, if it was a chain of local TV affiliate stations, the outcome would be the same. There would be no detailed factual analysis or demand for gold standard evidence that a Soviet-owned television statement might do Moscow’s bidding or that television is capable of influencing public opinion. We’d reject the idea out of hand. And rightly so, because the downsides would be very clear, and the upside minimal.”
“That’s how the TikTok situation looks to me.”
House GOP Barrels Ahead on TikTok Vote Despite Trump
“House GOP leaders are barreling ahead on a vote that would push TikTok to divest from its Chinese government-linked parent company, mostly ignoring pressure from Donald Trump to abandon the bill,” Politico reports.
“If TikTok’s parent company does not divest, the legislation would block it from app stores.”
For members: TikTok Is Not Like Other Social Networks
Trump Asked Elon Musk If He Wanted to Buy Truth Social
“Donald Trump asked Elon Musk last summer whether the billionaire industrialist would be interested in buying Trump’s social network Truth Social,” the Washington Post reports.
“The overture to Musk, whose business empire includes SpaceX, Tesla and the social networking site X, did not lead to a deal. But the conversation, which has not been previously reported, shows the two men have communicated more than was known. The two have had other conversations, too, Trump advisers say, about politics and business.”
TikTok Is Not Like Other Social Networks
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China Used TikTok to Influence U.S. Elections
“China’s government has used the wildly popular video-sharing platform TikTok to influence recent U.S. elections, the American intelligence community warned in its annual threat assessment on Monday,” Axios reports.
“The warning comes during an election year and as the House prepares to vote on legislation to force China’s ByteDance to divest from TikTok or else the platform will be banned from app stores in the U.S.”
TikTok Bill Hits House Floor on Wednesday
The bill that could lead to a TikTok ban is slated to come up for a House floor vote Wednesday, Bloomberg reports.
Trump Gives Rambling Answer on TikTok Ban
“Former President Donald Trump offered a rambling and confusing explanation on Monday of why he had reversed himself on whether the United States should ban TikTok over concerns that its Chinese ownership poses a threat to national security,” the New York Times reports.
“In a CNBC interview, Mr. Trump said that he still considered the social media app a national security threat but that banning it would make young people ‘go crazy.’ He added that any action harming TikTok would benefit Facebook, which he called an ‘enemy of the people.’”
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