The TikTok Bill Targets China’s Cultural Influence. That’s a Big Shift from the Tech War.
3 min
Congress’ new swing at social-media app TikTok might seem like more of the same old U.S.-China tech war that’s been running for several years—just that now it has come for dancing teens.
But what leading advocates of the new TikTok bill want would significantly expand the scope of the U.S. government’s interventions into the economy in the name of national security. The law would effectively ban TikTok if it didn’t change owners out of Chinese hands. The hallmark of China-focused regulation in recent years has been to keep American stuff—advanced technology, data, and intellectual property—out of the hands of the Chinese military. The TikTok bill would attempt to do something different: regulate companies’ ability to wield cultural power over Americans.
U.S.-China competition has already been hugely consequential for both countries’ economies and the world. Flows of trade, capital, information, and people between the two have fallen by 28% over the past decade, a report out today on the state of globalisation by logistics company DHL finds. The rise of industrial policy and other political interventions in markets are helping keep inflation high worldwide. Any expansion of regulation into new areas could add to that pressure.
To be sure, the bill is still far from becoming law. It passed the House today with overwhelming margins, but it must still pass the Senate and be signed into law by the president. Its advocates make a strong case that something really is new when it comes to TikTok. But given the stakes, it’s worth understanding exactly what that new thing is.
The bill’s leading advocates want it for two reasons . One, they argue TikTok is effectively a vast data-collection tool that can hand information about Americans directly to the Chinese Communist Party, whose requests TikTok’s management can’t refuse. This is a familiar issue in tech regulation. It is also why U.S. government employees aren’t allowed to keep the app on their phones.
The other issue is more novel. This is the idea that TikTok can be used “to mobilise public opinion,” as one of the bill’s lead sponsors, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D., Ill.), put it in a hearing with the leaders of the U.S. intelligence community on Tuesday.
Many TikTok users saw a pop-up last week urging them to contact Congress about the pending legislation, and quite a few did. Doesn’t that show exactly how the Chinese Communist Party could manipulate Americans, Krishnamoorthi asked? “While I can’t speak to the specific example,” responded FBI Director Christopher Wray, “I can tell you that the kind of thing you’re describing illustrates why this is such a concern.”
Avril Haines, U.S. director of national intelligence said that she couldn’t rule out that the CCP would use TikTok just like that to intervene in the 2024 election, something the intelligence community warned about in a new public threat assessment issued this week.
The TikTok legislation would resolve that worry not by taking away TikTok’s ability to influence Americans—only a full ban would do that. Instead, it would give the government leverage to force ByteDance, the app’s parent company, to hand ownership to an American company. Americans could still be influenced— Meta , X, and other social-media companies have been the target of other foreign-influence campaigns—but they could at least be more confident U.S. enemies aren’t secretly try to push them ideas.
TikTok’s leadership doesn’t see the issues this way. It believes the legislation is intended to ban the app, not just force divestment, and says it doesn’t take orders from the Chinese Communist Party in any case. Its CEO is from Singapore, not China, and the company is working with U.S. tech company Oracle to keep its data local to the U.S.
What no one seems to dispute is that TikTok really is wildly influential. Its 170 million users care deeply about what happens on the platform.
The question Congress is raising is whether some of TikTok’s users have been manipulated. This is a version of the argument Democrats made when it became apparent that Russia tried to intervene in the 2016 election to favor President Trump. The problem with that logic, as Republicans pointed out at the time, is that it’s not clear where it leads. If a bunch of Americans vote for the wrong reasons, does that mean the election is illegitimate? That’s a dangerous road to go down.
The point of the TikTok bill is to essentially head the debate off at the pass. Let there be no questions about the legitimacy of voting, because there wasn’t any illegitimate foreign influence behind it in the first place.
As Chris Fenton, a former Hollywood executive-turned-China critic who advised the bill’s sponsors, points out in an essay for RealClearPolitics , there is some precedent here. The Federal Communications Commission prohibits control of U.S. broadcasters by hostile governments. “Why should TikTok be an exception?,” he asks.
That’s the question the Senate will have to answer, while considering the costs of a major expansion of the U.S.-China fight and the risk that calling into question the political judgment of millions of U.S. social-media users will backfire in unexpected ways.
This decision will matter for much longer than the next dance craze.
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A divide has opened in the tech job market between those with artificial-intelligence skills and everyone else.
A 30-metre masterpiece unveiled in Monaco brings Lamborghini’s supercar drama to the high seas, powered by 7,600 horsepower and unmistakable Italian design.
A divide has opened in the tech job market between those with artificial-intelligence skills and everyone else.
4 minThere has rarely, if ever, been so much tech talent available in the job market. Yet many tech companies say good help is hard to find.
What gives?
U.S. colleges more than doubled the number of computer-science degrees awarded from 2013 to 2022, according to federal data. Then came round after round of layoffs at Google, Meta, Amazon, and others.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts businesses will employ 6% fewer computer programmers in 2034 than they did last year.
All of this should, in theory, mean there is an ample supply of eager, capable engineers ready for hire.
But in their feverish pursuit of artificial-intelligence supremacy, employers say there aren’t enough people with the most in-demand skills. The few perceived as AI savants can command multimillion-dollar pay packages. On a second tier of AI savvy, workers can rake in close to $1 million a year .
Landing a job is tough for most everyone else.
Frustrated job seekers contend businesses could expand the AI talent pipeline with a little imagination. The argument is companies should accept that relatively few people have AI-specific experience because the technology is so new. They ought to focus on identifying candidates with transferable skills and let those people learn on the job.
Often, though, companies seem to hold out for dream candidates with deep backgrounds in machine learning. Many AI-related roles go unfilled for weeks or months—or get taken off job boards only to be reposted soon after.
Playing a different game
It is difficult to define what makes an AI all-star, but I’m sorry to report that it’s probably not whatever you’re doing.
Maybe you’re learning how to work more efficiently with the aid of ChatGPT and its robotic brethren. Perhaps you’re taking one of those innumerable AI certificate courses.
You might as well be playing pickup basketball at your local YMCA in hopes of being signed by the Los Angeles Lakers. The AI minds that companies truly covet are almost as rare as professional athletes.
“We’re talking about hundreds of people in the world, at the most,” says Cristóbal Valenzuela, chief executive of Runway, which makes AI image and video tools.
He describes it like this: Picture an AI model as a machine with 1,000 dials. The goal is to train the machine to detect patterns and predict outcomes. To do this, you have to feed it reams of data and know which dials to adjust—and by how much.
The universe of people with the right touch is confined to those with uncanny intuition, genius-level smarts or the foresight (possibly luck) to go into AI many years ago, before it was all the rage.
As a venture-backed startup with about 120 employees, Runway doesn’t necessarily vie with Silicon Valley giants for the AI job market’s version of LeBron James. But when I spoke with Valenzuela recently, his company was advertising base salaries of up to $440,000 for an engineering manager and $490,000 for a director of machine learning.
A job listing like one of these might attract 2,000 applicants in a week, Valenzuela says, and there is a decent chance he won’t pick any of them. A lot of people who claim to be AI literate merely produce “workslop”—generic, low-quality material. He spends a lot of time reading academic journals and browsing GitHub portfolios, and recruiting people whose work impresses him.
In addition to an uncommon skill set, companies trying to win in the hypercompetitive AI arena are scouting for commitment bordering on fanaticism .
Daniel Park is seeking three new members for his nine-person startup. He says he will wait a year or longer if that’s what it takes to fill roles with advertised base salaries of up to $500,000.
He’s looking for “prodigies” willing to work seven days a week. Much of the team lives together in a six-bedroom house in San Francisco.
If this sounds like a lonely existence, Park’s team members may be able to solve their own problem. His company, Pickle, aims to develop personalised AI companions akin to Tony Stark’s Jarvis in “Iron Man.”
Overlooked
James Strawn wasn’t an AI early adopter, and the father of two teenagers doesn’t want to sacrifice his personal life for a job. He is beginning to wonder whether there is still a place for people like him in the tech sector.
He was laid off over the summer after 25 years at Adobe , where he was a senior software quality-assurance engineer. Strawn, 55, started as a contractor and recalls his hiring as a leap of faith by the company.
He had been an artist and graphic designer. The managers who interviewed him figured he could use that background to help make Illustrator and other Adobe software more user-friendly.
Looking for work now, he doesn’t see the same willingness by companies to take a chance on someone whose résumé isn’t a perfect match to the job description. He’s had one interview since his layoff.
“I always thought my years of experience at a high-profile company would at least be enough to get me interviews where I could explain how I could contribute,” says Strawn, who is taking foundational AI courses. “It’s just not like that.”
The trouble for people starting out in AI—whether recent grads or job switchers like Strawn—is that companies see them as a dime a dozen.
“There’s this AI arms race, and the fact of the matter is entry-level people aren’t going to help you win it,” says Matt Massucci, CEO of the tech recruiting firm Hirewell. “There’s this concept of the 10x engineer—the one engineer who can do the work of 10. That’s what companies are really leaning into and paying for.”
He adds that companies can automate some low-level engineering tasks, which frees up more money to throw at high-end talent.
It’s a dynamic that creates a few handsomely paid haves and a lot more have-nots.
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