Washington’s War on TikTok: The “Spy Balloon in American Phones” Isn’t Hot Air
Welcome to the New Cold War ...
In this issue of Investing Daily Dose (IDD):
🚫The TikTok Ban Takes Shape🚫
A little more than a year ago, it was China’s spy-balloon overflights – dubbed “Balloongate” – that lit the fuse on Washington’s anti-Beijing sentiment.
Fast-forward 14 months …
The House of Representatives – where “bipartisan agreement” is synonymous with “under no circumstances” – came together with 360 “yes votes” to 58 “no votes” to decree that China tech player ByteDance Ltd. must sell its popular social media venture TikTok.
House members believe TikTok is amassing data on 170 million Americans and that Beijing is using the app to spread propaganda – all to allegedly nefarious ends.
For a large base of TikTokers, the app’s videos play the same role that newspapers used to: Providing news, entertainment and opinion – and shaping their views of the world.
That’s not a groundless assumption: About a third of Americans aged 18 to 29 say they regularly get news there, the PEW Research Center think-tank found.
That’s why lawmakers who can never reach an agreement on anything are unified against TikTok – viewing it as a threat to U.S. national security.
The bill’s author, Michael McCaul (R-Texas), says “this bill protects Americans and especially America’s children from the malign influence of Chinese propaganda on the app TikTok. This app is a spy balloon in Americans’ phones.”
Bill’s Investing Takeaway
“When I first wrote about this in March, I said the real issue isn’t whether a bill passes or not … it’s that we’re having this discussion at all.
It underscores the broader reach of what I’ve been talking about over at Stock Picker’s Corner (SPC) and calling the ‘New Cold War’ – an escalating conflict where a growing number of battles will be fought digitally … virtually … and sweepingly.
Global defense budgets are climbing. And will keep climbing over the next few decades as new technologies – artificial intelligence (AI), directed-energy weapons, hypersonics, digital cyberweapons, missile interceptors – are deployed. And that will create a whole new vocabulary … much like we saw after the First Gulf War (anybody remember when ‘smart bombs’ went mainstream?).
You need to understand what’s happening. It’ll shift investing narratives. It’ll create new opportunities for your money. But it’ll also raise new investing threats.
I’ll help you with both.
I’ve prepared a multi-part special report that accomplishes all of this – and more.
Part 1 is available here. And Part 2 is available here.”