The US doesn't have much in the way of rules to begin with when it comes to data usage. That's the problem. Outside of wiretapping laws, COPPA, HIPPA and Financial data laws they effectively don't exist. Not at the federal level. There is no law requiring that TikTok not provide data access to employees located in China. They promised to cease doing so, because Trump threatened to use his broad executive powers to ban it under the claim that they were a unique national security threat. Huawei absolutely was, albeit primarily on the infrastructure side. And China definitely has a history of patent and general intellectual property theft.

Overall, I don't disagree that the CCP is a threat to western civilization. I don't even disagree that TikTok should be regulated and even banned if they repeatedly break the rules. However currently there aren't any real rules that apply to them.

If we are gonna ban them, it has to be for breaking rules that actually exist, with the consequences clearly written out in those rules/laws. Calling to ban them outright now however is completely legally and ethically unjustifiable. They haven't broken the law because there are no laws on what they are doing. They aren't collecting anything unique.

The reason why I can't help but see this as being racially motivated is because American companies have been guilty of the same things, and rather than calling for widespread reform they leave the call at banning TikTok. Like banning TikTok will solve all of our problems. Outside of Google and Apple, almost no private sector American company has much of an emphasis on security, and Apple holds the lone title for large American corporations that actually care about protecting privacy even somewhat meaningfully.

Rushing to ban TikTok before there are even any rules to attempt to constrain them, and assuming that because they are Chinese they will inherently violate data regulations immediately and fully is racist. Full stop. Regulate them like any other company from any other country. If they violate those rules then go ahead and ban them if that's the penalty written down in the laws. Whether they are a company from Panama or China should be completely irrelevant under the law. Anything less is in fact racism. By definition. We don't need to discriminate to kneecap the influence of the CCP. Doing so infact means we are acknowledging their ideology is superior. Don't do it. Don't push for us to become like them in the name of containing them. Don't repeat the mistakes of the cold war.