> One key for him is that it’s only a possible threat. Our best intelligence, including in a briefing for Congress from the Biden administration Tuesday, is that the Chinese government has not actually done the things the ban fears.
> I look to Jim Himes, who is the senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, the ranking member. He's in what's called the Gang of Eight. He has the most exquisite access to intelligence. Jim voted against the ban. And I thought, you know what? If this guy is not seeing anything on the national security level.
> [00:44:36] There was an off the record or confidential briefing to the House Intelligence Committee. You think in that meeting, there was nothing that was very meaningful that was disclosed about TikTok?
> [00:44:45] Nothing that I had seen. Is it owned by the Chinese government? Absolutely. But is there a national security risk? I have not seen that.
Moreover your factoid is misleading because it omits the fact that the chair voted for the ban, along with most of the members. Of the 25 members on the committee, only 4 voted against.
He voted against the March bill that narrowly focuses on the TikTok issue, but voted for the April bill which also includes foreign aid for Ukraine and Israel. They are not the same bill.
> The decision by House Republicans to include TikTok as part of a larger foreign aid package, a priority for President Joe Biden with broad congressional support for Ukraine and Israel, fast-tracked the ban after an earlier version had stalled in the Senate. A standalone bill with a shorter, six-month selling deadline passed the House in March by an overwhelming bipartisan vote as both Democrats and Republicans voiced national security concerns about the app’s owner, the Chinese technology firm ByteDance Ltd. (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/possible-u-s-tiktok-ba...)
Putting shit like that in an unrelated bill can be translated as a 'horseman bill' and would have been censored so fast in my country it isn't even funny. What does your supreme court do exactly?
Intelligence is kinda unnecessary at this point. A Tiktok VP already admitted to a UK parliament select committee that they used to harshly moderate anything the Chinese government found sensitive
Q90 - John Nicolson: It may happen elsewhere, and I can tell you what your official TikTok response was to this leak. You did not deny that these were instructions. In fact, you confirmed that these were instructions, but what you said was that the company had changed its policy in May 2019. Previously, you instructed your moderators to take down videos critical of China, specifically talking about incidents in Tiananmen Square, separatism in Tibet, all straight out of the Chinese Communist Party playbook. You confirmed that is what your moderators did, but your defence was that you had changed your policy in May 2019.
Theo Bertram: It is highly regrettable that that is what it was, but it is not our policy today, nor has it been for a long time.
> One key for him is that it’s only a possible threat. Our best intelligence, including in a briefing for Congress from the Biden administration Tuesday, is that the Chinese government has not actually done the things the ban fears.
Also, from a recent All-In interview (https://www.happyscribe.com/public/all-in-with-chamath-jason...):
> I look to Jim Himes, who is the senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, the ranking member. He's in what's called the Gang of Eight. He has the most exquisite access to intelligence. Jim voted against the ban. And I thought, you know what? If this guy is not seeing anything on the national security level.
> [00:44:36] There was an off the record or confidential briefing to the House Intelligence Committee. You think in that meeting, there was nothing that was very meaningful that was disclosed about TikTok?
> [00:44:45] Nothing that I had seen. Is it owned by the Chinese government? Absolutely. But is there a national security risk? I have not seen that.