In a new piece of advice for the New York Times, Tim Wu, professor of law at Columbia University and outspoken promoter of the free and open Internet, writes an interesting defense of President Trump’s ban on Chinese apps TikTok and WeChat in the US. Despite calling Trump “the wrong figure to fight this battle,” Wu states that the threatened ties are “too high a response, a tit for tat, in a long battle for the soul of the Internet.” It’s an interesting counterpoint to the myriad, valid issues raised about the ban, and it’s well worth a read.
Core to Wu’s argument is that China has banned TikTok and WeChat competitors such as YouTube and WhatsApp for years. Foreign companies are effectively blocked from competing fully and independently in the Chinese market, while Chinese services like TikTok may have been free to exploit Western markets. As Wu states:
The asymmetry is unfair and no longer needs to be tolerated. The privilege of full internet access – the open internet – should only be extended to companies from countries that respect that openness themselves.
So far, the US has broadly had a favorite internet, in the hope that taking this open approach would eventually encourage China to do the same. But China has instead managed to “use the internet to suppress any emerging political opposition and continually promote its ruling party.” Wu argues that the US’s attempt to maintain the moral high ground and give Chinese companies free access to Western online markets has made it a ‘sucker’.
Some think it is a tragic mistake for the United States to violate the principles of Internet privacy that pioneered in this country. But there is also such a thing as being a sucker. If China refuses to follow the rules of the open Internet, why continue to provide access to Internet markets around the world?
There are valid criticisms leveled at the US TikTok ban. Just last week, my colleague Russell Brandom called it a ‘gross abuse of power’, pointing to the lack of public evidence of crime on the part of TikTok, as the way in which the ban appears to be undermining normal political processes. And that is without mentioning the honestly bizarre call to allocate money to the US Treasury in case Microsoft ends up buying the company’s US operations.
Wu does not support Trump’s methods or motives, but instead states that the West should take an active role in pushing for his version of the Internet to succeed, instead of sitting back and hoping that the rest of the world will is coming.
We need to wake up to the game we are playing when it comes to the future of the global internet. The idealists of the 1990s and early 00s believed that building a universal network, a form of digital cosmopolitanism, would lead to world peace and harmony. Nobody buys that fantasy anymore.
Wu’s counter-argument is an interesting one, and it’s well worth reading.
