London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Oct 09, 2025

Washington's plan to ban TikTok lays bare its hypocrisy in upholding fairness and freedoms

Washington's plan to ban TikTok lays bare its hypocrisy in upholding fairness and freedoms

Although the Oval Office claims to oppose authoritarianism, it has a penchant for arbitrarily demonstrating its own authority. Especially when, by doing so, it can reinforce the perception that China is a threat to the United States and it can present itself as the only true defender against what it calls debilitating Chinese infiltration.
In the latest move, the US president said on Friday that he would ban the Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok from operating in the US because it poses a national security risk.

"I have the authority (to ban TikTok). I can do it with an executive order," or emergency economic powers, he told reporters.

Although TikTok's general manager for the US, Vanessa Pappas, responded confidently, "We're not planning on going anywhere", the fact that Microsoft suspended its takeover talks with TikTok's Chinese parent company ByteDance, means the company might be forced out of the US.

Although that will disappoint its 100 million users in the country, some of whom make their living through producing and sharing videos on the platform, it will enable the US administration to boast of eliminating a national security threat that "passes US users' data to the Communist Party of China". Despite this being an allegation that, like so many others, it has never provided any evidence to support.

Presumably, being able to claim a "success" in countering what is a phenomenally successful Chinese company would serve the US president's reelection campaign. But he would not be the only one chalking up a win.

A ban would also have Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg looking even smugger than usual, as the proposal to effectively kill his company's largest competitor came immediately after he alleged to the United States House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law on Wednesday that there is "irrefutable evidence" showing China is stealing technology from US companies. Even though the CEOs of Apple, Google and Amazon all said the opposite.

The alliance of political and commercial interests formed between the US administration and Facebook have found common cause in their joint witch hunt against the Chinese company, which became the most downloaded app in the US in October 2018, thereby becoming the first app from China to achieve that feat. What a parcel of rogues. Not only are they in collusion to crush the company, but they have been acting in league with one another trying to engineer regime change in China.

All of the principles and moralities in the forms of laws, rules and conventions that are the cornerstones of the modern world are expendable when the US lags behind in business and technology.


* The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect our editorial stance.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
×