EL5

What the RESTRICT Act creates, in a massive overreaction to concerns about Chinese-based companies, is a system for the US to create its own Great Firewall. Our attempt at pushing back on China only serves to make the US more like China, and stupidly bless their repressive and illiberal approach to banning foreign companies. Warner, in fact, more or less admits all of this in an interview he gave to Russell Brandom at Rest of World. Brandom highlights just how anti-open internet and illiberal all of this is, and Warner’s response is basically “but China made us do it”:

• But for me, it comes back to the hypocrisy of the Chinese government. China has prohibited American apps like Facebook and Google from their market for years. The Chinese version of Twitter is completely censored by the Chinese government.

So, because China takes a dictatorial, authoritarian, illiberal approach to the internet, so must the US?