OSD 265: What is technology controlled by a foreign adversary?
Guns and social media are both dangerous technology. That's a feature, not a bug.
In the latest T.REX Talk podcast, Isaac Botkin says the following about the TikTok ban bill currently in Congress:
It basically bans apps from app stores if they are determined to be controlled by foreign adversaries. And then, to be lenient, there is a mechanism by which the foreign adversary can sell the app. In this case, the one we’re talking about is of course TikTok. But it could be any app. If the foreign adversary sells it to a non-adversarial country or an American company, then it’s fine for it to stay on the app store.
Now one of the obvious problems with this is essentially what it does is it gives the federal government control over what can and cannot be on the Apple App Store, the Google app store, the Amazon app store — any of the large companies that distributed or disseminate apps for phones. Essentially, they have to do whatever the government tells them. It’s the only way for there to be teeth to this bill that actually forces foreign adversaries to sell their companies to non-foreign adversaries — oh, I mean non-adversaries.
And it isn’t just app stores. It is in fact websites as well…. Any website that is deemed to be controlled by a foreign adversary needs to be hidden from people. And the only way that they can stop if from being hidden from people is by selling it to a non-foreign adversary.
At 43:40 of the latest Fifth Column podcast, Michael Moynihan had this opinion about the animating principle behind the bill:
There’s a stupid thing that exists among everybody in politics at some point in their life, and I’m sure I thought it at some point to. But after observing politics for a very long time, you start to realize that the general premise isn’t true. And the general premise is, “If only people didn’t have access to information that I don’t like, or that I believe is deleterious to the health of American democracy, then it wouldn’t exist and it would go away.
This is a hot topic right now because it is a radical departure from settled ideas about free speech. Currently the government may not ban, force divesture, or otherwise encumber media based on that media’s geopolitical impact (or in TikTok’s case, because of predictions about its geopolitical impact), full stop. The doctrine of viewpoint discrimination says that speech may not be banned based on the viewpoint of the speaker. Separately, the Supreme Court has ruled that speech which is offensive, dangerous, and even generally advocates violence is constitutionally untouchable. First Amendment law is clear on three points:
People have the right to access information tools of their choice.
It is for individuals, not government, to decide what the valid uses of those tools are.
The government doesn’t have the power to parcel out access to those it deems worthy.
This is notable for OSD because it precisely inverts a common view of the Second Amendment. That view is that:
People do not have a right to access personal defense tools of their choice.
It is for government, not individuals, to decide what the valid uses of those tools are.
The government has not only the power but also the responsibility to parcel out access to those it deems worthy.
In other words, the government has the power to determine that some technology is so powerful that they can’t let it be used by an adversary. Who’s an adversary? They’ll decide.
A gun control group might read that and say, “You’re talking like that’s a weird idea. It’s just common sense gun laws that we’ve all been used to since 1934.“ But that’s exactly the point. It’s a worldview that in the First Amendment context is anathema to individual freedom, but in the Second Amendment context it’s so commonplace that people forget there was ever a time before it.
We’ve made progress on this front though. Gun rights are much healthier today than they were at the nadir in 1994, and they’re accelerating in a 2A direction. But looking at the First Amendment is a reminder of how high the 2A community has left to go. It’s also a reminder to be ambitious and optimistic. Across the whole world, the US has a uniquely absolutist view of free of speech. That’s encouraging — freedom is popular and it’s working well, even in the face of people who’d use emergencies and boogeymen (sometimes very real, sometimes imagined) to argue for less freedom. The US has carried the fire on that front for the First Amendment. No reason it can’t for the Second, too.
This week’s links
Garand Thumb interviews Paul Harrell
Here’s Paul’s first-ever YouTube video, a comparison of big-bore revolvers. He has posted 411 more videos since then.
How civilian shooting matches make better Green Berets
h/t Discord sub @RS3
Do current trends in drone technology favor offense or defense?
From Tyler Cowen. “OSD 169: The prisoner’s dilemma of permissionless power” goes into a similar topic: “This is really a philosophical bet about whether the benefits of technology accrue more to constructive uses or destructive ones.”
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Fantastic read! I feel that it's important to note that TikTok is more than just a platform for speech, it's a tool for tracking and data gathering as well as potentially a vector for cyber attack.