Discourse Power X Following the Yuan: Why Won't the U.S. Ban TikTok?

There are many reasons to ban TikTok, and national security concern tops the list. But the word has become synonymous with an omnipotent mandate to proceed with everything and anything

Back in January 2023, I had the pleasure of co-authoring with the fabulous Yaling Jiang on her substack Following the Yuan. We dived into the political imperative and advantages of TikTok-bashing, analyzed a recent academic report from the Georgia Institute of Technology on TikTok's national security challenges, and "girlspained" about Marco Rubio.

Image source: AI art via Pixabay and NightCafe studio

Our piece was titled “Why Won't the U.S. Ban TikTok”? There are many reasons to ban the app, and national security concern tops the list. The words "National security" have become synonymous with an omnipotent mandate to proceed with everything and anything that would ensure the protection of it. Ironically, as Yaling and I argue in the piece, the Rubios are dreaming of a scenario that could only happen in China, where the one-party central government *could* call off things in an outright ban.

Suppose we ignore the fact that there are more than 100 million TikTok users (now 150 million since then) …