TikTok, Trump and the need for a digital non-aligned movement
As we enter a new digital cold war, it’s time for a new non-aligned movement to operate as a buffer between the U.S. and China to protect the value of an open Internet.
Recent weeks have seen a dramatic escalation in the U.S.’ stance towards tech companies from the People’s Republic of China (PRC). After hounding the telecommunications company Huawei for years, the social networking app TikTok is the latest Chinese company to enter the firing line.
On 5 August U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo published a press release that could be seen as the master plan that explained the logic behind these policies: creating a parallel internet, defined as a place where companies from the PRC have no place. The text states that “the momentum of the Clean Network program is growing. More than thirty countries and territories are now clean countries…”
But what is the ultimate goal of this program? The press release, which is more than 450 words long, includes the term ‘safety’ only in its title, ‘Announcing the Expansion of the Clean Network to Safeguard America’s Assets’. It refers to security only four times, mostly included in the term ‘national security’. However, the word ‘clean’ is mentioned 14 times. Clean, as opposed to dirty. And, in Pompeo’s press release, dirty is defined as anything the…
