The Senate has passed legislation that would force TikTok’s China-based parent company to sell the social media platform under the threat of a ban, a contentious move by U.S. lawmakers that’s expected to face legal challenges and disrupt the lives of content creators who rely on the short-form video
I think you should check out this article in The Atlantic, it goes into the history of the US government’s previous laws to protect against foreign propaganda and manipulation of the media. What you’ll find is this is more of an update (to catch up with the internet era) than a revamp of US domestic policy.
but it also allows the President to denote any other entity in one of those countries as a significant threat
The president can only do this for apps from the countries covered in the US code as Foreign Adversaries, which means the president can act quickly against threats, but this is a bad avenue for attacking competition in other friendly countries (e.g., shutting down Proton would require congress to pass a law that Switzerland is a foreign adversary – which would not be good for relations – AND a law specifically targeting Proton accompanying that or the president to then act against Proton).
All of this is still subject to judicial review as well.
What does the judicial review process look like? Because the bill only states (unless I missed it) that the President needs to give notice to Congress.
What it looks like is if China or Russia has a competitor to a US product (say, Yandex or Baidu), a US company (say, Google) could lobby the President to mark them as a threat and ban them from the US. The product doesn’t need to actually have the capacity to cause harm, it just needs to be from one of the adversary countries (currently China, Russia, N. Korea, and Iran).
It’s not as bad as it could be, but I think it misses a lot of the point here.
I think you should check out this article in The Atlantic, it goes into the history of the US government’s previous laws to protect against foreign propaganda and manipulation of the media. What you’ll find is this is more of an update (to catch up with the internet era) than a revamp of US domestic policy.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/03/tiktok-bill-foreign-influence/677806/
Also a key point I think you’re missing here:
The president can only do this for apps from the countries covered in the US code as Foreign Adversaries, which means the president can act quickly against threats, but this is a bad avenue for attacking competition in other friendly countries (e.g., shutting down Proton would require congress to pass a law that Switzerland is a foreign adversary – which would not be good for relations – AND a law specifically targeting Proton accompanying that or the president to then act against Proton).
All of this is still subject to judicial review as well.
What does the judicial review process look like? Because the bill only states (unless I missed it) that the President needs to give notice to Congress.
What it looks like is if China or Russia has a competitor to a US product (say, Yandex or Baidu), a US company (say, Google) could lobby the President to mark them as a threat and ban them from the US. The product doesn’t need to actually have the capacity to cause harm, it just needs to be from one of the adversary countries (currently China, Russia, N. Korea, and Iran).
It’s not as bad as it could be, but I think it misses a lot of the point here.