Tech Won't Save Us - What the US-China Divide Means for Tech w/ Louise Matsakis

Episode Date: January 12, 2023

Paris Marx is joined by Louise Matsakis to discuss the growing divide between the US and China, the long history of Western concern about the East, and why we should pay attention to who these anti-China narratives benefit.Louise Matsakis is a technology reporter at Semafor who previously worked at NBC News, Rest of World, and Wired. You can follow her on Twitter at @lmatsakis.Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.Also mentioned in this episode:Please participate in our listener survey this month to give us a better idea of what you think of the show: https://forms.gle/xayiT7DQJn56p62x7Louise wrote about YouTube videos predicting China’s collapse, the rise of Shein, and the prospect of TikTok bans.Many US states are banning TikTok from government-issued devices.In 2000, Bill Clinton said that trying to place restrictions on the internet was like trying to nail Jello to a wall. China proved him wrong.India has already banned TikTok and a number of other Chinese apps.Speakers of the Khmer language in Cambodia used voice chat on Messenger because keyboards weren’t designed to work with their language.Shein is taking off in Mexico.Support the show

It's often using China or using some like cartoon really, really simplified version of what's going on in China to justify or explain something that's actually happening here. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. I'm your host, Paris Marks. Just a reminder that this month we are running a podcast listener survey. So if you have about five minutes and wouldn't mind filling that out, you can find a link in the show notes. Certainly appreciate it if you do that. Now this week, my guest is Louise Matsakis. Louise is a technology reporter at Semaphore and previously worked at NBC News, Rest of World and Wired. I've been reading Louise's work for a

while as she's been covering the tech industry and, you know, how various tech platforms have been affecting different parts of the world. She recently had a story around YouTube videos that are predicting the crash of the Chinese economy and how this has become even more and more common, though has certainly been around for a long time. And I wanted to dig into that a little bit more, but also to talk to Louise about China policy and the interactions between China and the United States more broadly. In recent years, we've obviously seen the United States taking more aggressive rhetoric and policy moves toward China in trying to restrict its access to technologies, in trying to cut off key economic ties between the two countries,

though that certainly doesn't mean that those things have been cut off and that the United States and China aren't still very dependent on one another economically. That is, of course, still the case. But I wanted to explore that more deeply and to talk about the potential implications as these policies are implemented and as we go further down this route where these two countries seem to be more hostile toward one another than we've seen in quite a while and I think wherever you stand on the question of China politically I think that you'll enjoy this conversation because we do get into some very important issues when it comes to the US-China relationship and where that might be going and the potential implications of that and how, you know, framing this as a competition

between two countries instead of trying to work collaboratively maybe might not serve us the best in the long run. So with that said, I hope you enjoy this conversation with Louise Matsakis. If you do, make sure to give the podcast a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You can also share the show on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think would learn from it. And if you do enjoy these conversations, if you want to ensure I can keep doing more like this,

you can join supporters like Kyle and Stephanie from Berkeley, Kayfabe Friend from Cleveland, and Ben from Cooper Nook in Australia by going to patreon.com slash techwontsaveus where you can become a supporter. Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation. Louise, welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. Hey, thanks for having me. Absolutely. I've been reading your work for a while, you know, when you're at Rest World and the various other places that you've been, you know, now you're writing at Semaphore. And you wrote this piece last week that was on these YouTube videos that many people have probably come across that suggest that the Chinese economy is imminently about to collapse, right? Or various other things that are suggested about China, like it's going to

run out of food or water, or any of these sorts of things. Do you want to give us a basic overview of, you know, what you found with these YouTube videos and what they are suggesting about China and its future? Yeah. So about, I would say around like six months ago, I started to see this very specific type of video popping up on YouTube. A diverse range of creators were publishing these. So like, you know, the finance bros, the NFT guys, Fallen Gong, sort of like this melting pot of characters were publishing these really similar videos. So almost always the headline or the video title is something like China's economy is on the verge of collapsing. Or sometimes they would even give like a timeline, you know, 24 days till China's economy collapses. Things are getting really bad, dot, dot, dot.

China's economy, you know, 27 days till the end. Or, you know, like, update. China's economy is, you know, getting worse. You would see these creators, you know, publish a few weeks later after their first round. And they almost always sort of had a really sad picture of Xi Jinping, a lot of red, maybe like a dragon, maybe fire. They all had this really similar aesthetic. And I was just really interested in this because I felt like it was an exaggerated version of a narrative that I see a lot sort of in mainstream media. And this was a, you know, exaggerated sort of like the cartoon version of that. And I thought that was really interesting. Yeah, it's fascinating that you say, like, these narratives are coming from many different places, right? On the one hand, you have Falun

Gong, which is this kind of anti-CCP group. You know, I don't know exactly how to describe them, but I think that's fair. It's a religious group, I would say, religious movement. And, you know, they're behind, oh, what's that publication? The Epoch Times is one of the main ones that they're behind. Yeah. And I think it makes sense that this would be the sort of narrative that the Epoch Times and similar publications would pick up because they've done a really good job of catering to the far right in the US. And I think these sort of anti-China narratives are really popular right now in those sorts of media ecosystems. So it makes a lot of sense to me

that you would see this, but they've sort of been doing that for a really long time, you know, saying this is the end of the CCP. But I think right now these narratives are maybe more popular than they ever have been in a lot of ways. Yeah, it's convenient that something that they have been saying for a long time is now kind of in vogue, both on the far right in the United States, but also increasingly further along the political spectrum as there's this growing kind of tension with China and the United States, which we'll talk about a bit more. But then, of course, you note that these are narratives that we also see in mainstream media, though maybe not as exaggerated. You know, people, I'm sure, will be familiar with seeing articles that suggest, oh, the Chinese economy is on the brink of collapse many times

in previous years, whether it's because of real estate bubbles or excessive investment by the CCP in various sectors of the economy. And then also just random people who probably don't have much knowledge of China at all, who are seeing these types of videos kind of pick up and saying, oh, maybe I should make one of these. And because it will do popular with the algorithm, people are looking for these types of videos. Definitely. I think this is just an age-old narrative. Like even when relations between the West and China were, you know, relatively rosy, this narrative is just so timeless. There's just something about a communist power and the West, you know,

wanting to see it being taken down or seeing it as fragile or thinking it's, you know, another Soviet Union. I think the most recent example is probably in November when there were these, you know, really widespread, really, I think, most recent example is probably in November when there were these, you know, really widespread, really, I think, impactful and important protests across China against their COVID-19 lockdown policies, the zero COVID policies. But you did see a number of sort of mainstream commenters, you know, mainstream journalists say, is this going to be regime change? You know, they immediately went to, okay, you know, there's a few sort of young people calling for Xi Jinping to step down. Is this going to be the end

of the Chinese Communist Party? And I think when you see similar protests or even more widespread protests in places like the U.S., rarely, if ever, does it go to, you know, the U.S. government is going to be toppled, right? But in China, you sort of see that narrative really, really quickly. I think it's often wishful thinking. But you sort of mix that with the YouTube algorithm and sort of like, you know, what kinds of incentives there are on a platform like YouTube. And you get this like really cartoon version where it's going to happen in a certain number of days.

There's going to be fire. There's going to be doom. It's really interesting because it's easier to sort of see what this narrative is when you see it put through like a system like YouTube. Because I think when you sort of see, you know, a New York Times article, maybe like kind of suggesting that there's going to be a regime change or kind of suggesting that this is the end of the CCP because of these protests or like, you know, really emphasizing the people calling for Xi Jinping's downfall versus a YouTube video that's just like, it's going to collapse in

20 days, right? It's a lot easier to sort of like see what's happening here, what the underlying narrative really is, and what people I think often want to hear. It is interesting as well, like when you look at, say, protests, like what happened in November, you know, very clearly protests against the zero COVID policies, you know, kicked off by particular developments that happened in the country, you know, the burning of a building, I can't remember where it was in the country. And, you know, how this kind of set off various degrees of anger through the population. And immediately, a lot of the Western responses, they want liberal democracy or something like that, because that's kind of the playbook that often gets run. But I was wondering, you know, with these videos that we see on YouTube,

how you perceive them and what they're doing, like the people who are creating these videos, and maybe it's different for different people. As you say, you know, some people are not China experts. You know, some groups might be associated with Falun Gong. Are they looking to manufacture consent for particular kind of policy approaches toward China? Are they trying to develop a greater kind of skepticism toward China or opposition to China within the public that would be watching these videos? Are they responding to a desire that's already out there for people who want to see kind of critical content about China to justify, you know, ideas that they already have? Or are they just kind of further pushing people to extremes or, you know, ideas that they already have? Or are they just kind of further pushing people

to extremes or, you know, maybe something else? I don't know. I think they're trying to get views. Honestly, I don't think there's like an ideological like movement or anything like really underpinning most of these videos aside from the Falun Gong, right? Like, you know, they're anti-CCP. They have been. They have good reason to be, frankly. But I think why these videos are successful right now in particular is that they're sort of exploiting some things that are very much true, which is, you know, China's borders have been closed for the last three years. It's incredibly difficult to get information from the ground. You know, there are a few dozen journalists, you know, publishing work in English that are still there. Their movement is really restricted.

A lot of information is just like, you know, what we can get on social media or, you know, the few people in certain places that can be reached. So in that sort of information vacuum, what is going to come out, right? It's going to be speculation. It's going to be fear. And I think that's sort of the natural result. And there's also, I think, a kernel of truth, which is that China's economy sort of was this miracle from the early aughts until now, where it just continued to grow at an incredible pace. There were millions of people who were lifted out of poverty, who were able to live middle-class lives. And it was this incredible transformation that the country went through. And now that's stopping. Growth has slowed. There's not as much purchasing power.

I think people are upset. There's been genuine problems in particular with the real estate industry. So I think there's sort of a kernel of truth here and there's an information vacuum. And I think that there is growing sort of anti-CCP sentiment all over the West for good reason, often. I think a lot of people point to human rights abuses or they point to sort of things like the zero COVID policy or, you know, aggression towards Taiwan. So I think all of that mixed together with the YouTube algorithm and these very sophisticated creators who I think know sort of their audience really well, they know what does well. And I think they also mimic each other, right? They see like, hey, that one guy did this video about China's economy collapsing. Let me try that three weeks

later. The economy didn't collapse, but I'm just going to say it again. And oftentimes, too, I think it's worth noting that these are kind of clickbait headlines in a way. They're like the clickbait headlines of YouTube. I watched a lot of these videos, spent a really long time watching them. And a good number of them are a little bit more reasonable, or they're sort of just like playing mainstream news clips and sort of like talking over them or like they're not really outright being as extreme as the framing and the marketing is. And I think that they're sort of careful because they don't want to totally lose their audience, especially I think some of these like finance bros who their audience sort

of comes to them for investing advice, right? Or like advice about what to do with their money. So they need to be sort of careful. But I think the overarching thing that sort of like lays on top of all of that, maybe of like all sort of like the current context is just that this narrative about the East collapsing or the East being on the verge of, you know, destruction or taking over the world is so alluring and has been for a really long time. You know, something I really like to do is look back at like mainstream magazine covers from like the 80s and stuff. And I'll never forget, it's like seared into my brain. When we were so terrified of Japan in the 80s, there is an incredibly racist Atlantic cover of

like a sumo wrestler. And this is a sumo wrestler next to the world. And the headline is like containing Japan. And it's like this big sumo wrestler who's like as big as the rest of the earth. And it's like that narrative hasn't gone away. It maybe is not so overt. Right. But it's this idea of like some analysts have come to call it Schrodinger's China after Schrodinger's cat, and the sort of concept of Schrodinger's cat is that it's neither dead or alive, right? It's inside this box. And we can't really say it's both of those things at the same time. And I think that is always how China is talked about in the West by people who are not there. And it's either on the verge of taking over the world, or about to collapse

tomorrow or in 34 days or whatever the YouTube headline says. And sort of like these YouTube videos are one side of that everlasting double-sided coin. And I always tell people like the truth about China is that it is Schrodinger's China. Like the answer to basically every question you can ask is always yes and no. It's always like yes, but or no, but kind of or like yes, but only in this one place. And, you know, that's like everywhere else, right? It's complicated. 1.4 billion people, it's an incredibly complicated place. But I think that we have always loved simple narratives about China or about Japan or about sort of the East in general and making it into this, you know, mythical place of comparison

or this mythical place that we can use to sort of judge our own society against. And I think that these YouTube videos are just sort of like one part of that. And they're just YouTube-ified. And that's what I find so sort of like, I hate to use the word charming, but sort of like silly about them is that they're the YouTube-ified version of that narrative that we've had for decades, really. Yeah, it's always convenient to reduce any complex problem to something that's going to be very simplified, very simplistic. And also that kind of justifies or reinforces your kind of pre-existing ideas about what it might already be, right? And I find it really fascinating that you bring up Japan, because Japan has been on my mind like for the past few years, as there's been this growing

discussion around chips and semiconductors as well, right? Because in the 70s and 80s, when all this was happening, one of the big threats or one of the big things that the tech industry was worried about was that China was kind of picking up a lot of the semiconductor manufacturing business that was previously in California and the United States more broadly. And, you know, there was a bunch of kind of public support in order to defend and protect US industry from Japan. And there were like agreements with Japan to regulate semiconductor prices and all these sorts of things. And so then when you see, you know, the concern in the United States over the past couple of years around China's control over

semiconductor manufacturing, and, you know, the need to limit their access to technology and the need to subsidize US manufacturing of semiconductors, bring more of it back on shore. I was like, man, this is like Japan all over again. Oh, my God, totally. There's such amnesia sort of about this narrative. It's like, you know, it's a lot of like we've never had a competitor like this before. You know, this has never happened. Like, you know, this is like the future of the world if we don't secure this technology. And I want to, you know, be careful to say that I do very much understand these concerns

in some ways. And that's what makes, I think, this conversation really difficult because there are things to be worried about with China and with China's growing power. And there's no doubt about that. But the way these arguments are presented is often really disingenuous, I think. And also, it's often using China or using some cartoon, really, really simplified version of what's going on in China to justify or explain something that's actually happening here. And China is almost like a mythical place that doesn't really need to exist. It's just like an example you need to have in your head in order to understand, you know, the argument that this U.S. politician is making. Right. It's not actually about making some point about something that's actually going on in China, because if you really wanted to do that, you would have to listen to

people in China, right? Or listen to people who really knew what they were talking about. And so I think that these discussions are often just sort of like a way to say, we want to bring chips here. We want to build a factory here. We want to do this. We want to justify this immigration policy or other sorts of policies, I think, just based on this idea of a place that we're going to warn you about, because if we don't do this, we're going to become like that scary place. Right. Yeah, absolutely. And you can use China in that very kind of convenient way in order to promote these sorts of policies that you might have wanted to pursue anyway. And, you know, we've had, what, a number of years now of these kind of narratives growing in the United States, you know, we've had, what, a number of years now of these kind of narratives growing

in the United States, you know, particularly under the Trump administration. But a lot of these things have really stuck around as the Democrats took back power in 2020. You know, the Biden administration has kind of kept up that, I guess, you know, more hostile or more divisive policy toward China and wanting to create more of a divide between those two countries that had been so close, so aligned and, you know, are still very economically dependent on one another, despite the kind of rhetoric that goes on. And I find it interesting that, you know, you say that because as you talked about, there are legitimate concerns to have about China and the Chinese government, right? Whether it's on human rights abuses, whether it's on hostility toward Taiwan

and things like that. But then I feel like those narratives are kind of used in a very convenient way to justify what is really more of like a geopolitical and economic concern on the part of the US government to try to, you know, I guess, create, as we're talking about this growing kind of agreement or desire within the public to accept these sorts of policies toward China, instead of, you know, I guess, working more collaboratively? Yeah, I think the sort of trope that people say is like engagement has become a dirty word in Washington these days, right? It's really difficult, I think, to propose any sort of collaboration, even on issues that I think used to be pretty nonpartisan or that we could all

agree upon, like climate change, global trade policies. I think there was a little bit more leeway there. And now I think it's just totally a political nonstarter to say that you want to work with China or that you think that there's a better way to engage with China. And I think that that's sad in a lot of ways, because this is the second largest economy in the world. And we need to collaborate on things like climate change, if there's going to be any hope, right? It's also just really sad, I think, for Chinese Americans. I think for anyone who cares about both of these countries, it's just been really difficult. But you know, I think it's worth saying that I don't think China's made it any easier. And that is sad as well. But yeah, I definitely think it's

interesting to see how nothing unites Americans like an enemy. And that is sort of something that I think is as true as time. And right now that enemy is China and, you know, like maybe secondarily Russia. And I think the Biden administration is just realizing that this is a total bipartisan issue. And I think the Democrats have really sort of woken up to it and realized that they are also concerned about China's rising power. And I think the Biden administration is sort of reacting appropriately to that and like, you know, to voters. And I think you're watching Biden sort of like move towards the center. But I just get

concerned when I think that these policies don't actually have the teeth. There's no follow through, right? Like I can't take seriously that when these politicians say we're worried about this, you know, tech issue with China, that they are totally genuine about it. Because when you look at the specifics of the policy, it's like, okay, we're concerned about human rights abuses in Xinjiang, me too. But so where is the policy where we're going to allow, you know, more people from Xinjiang to get asylum, right? Is there going to be some pathway for people from Hong Kong to move here safely, right? Like there going to be some pathway for people from Hong Kong to move here safely, right? Like you sort of see some efforts maybe. And I think the elephant in the room that I'm obviously thinking about right now is TikTok, if you want to talk about sort of the

growing TikTok ban. So I think it's the perfect example of what we're discussing, which is sort of like this fear and uncertainty about China, the need to do something, the need to find a boogeyman, but it not actually disturbing US business interests too much or not actually having a long-term impact beyond a single app. And I think over the last few weeks, we've watched, I think it's up to 19 US states now have banned TikTok from U.S. government devices or state-owned devices, and Congress has also done the same. What is that really accomplishing, right? Like in the off chance that the Chinese government was going to use, you know, I don't know, someone's TikTok app on like a junior congressman's cell phone to hack the U.S. government.

You know, the U.S. government has already said that China has hacked the US personnel office, and I think it was Marriott Hotels. These are sorts of targets where if they want information, I think going through one person's TikTok app is not going to be particularly effective. And it doesn't do anything to actually protect anyone's privacy more broadly. It's very ironic to me watching all of the hoopla over TikTok when two of the most popular apps in the country right now are Timu and Shein, which are both Chinese e-commerce apps, right? They're incredibly popular. Timu was like, you know, been in the number one or number two app for weeks now. It had a really good holiday season.

Lots of people are buying from that app. Millions of American teenagers are obsessed with Sheinan. And we see nothing about that, right? If the concern is like an app on American's phones that can collect data about you, why are these other apps not mentioned, right? There are hundreds of Chinese apps like this. And that's not to say that I think that banning Chinese apps or regulating Chinese-owned apps is the solution necessarily. But I think you can just see that this is not a genuine, serious effort to do something about an issue that is genuinely concerning. I think this is a way to win political points. And I think voters should not fall for it. They should see, is my privacy actually protected? Do we have a national privacy law? The answer is no. What if the Chinese government decides to hack an American owned app, right?

Like, would that do anything? No, because we're allowing these companies to collect wide swaths of data about us all the time, trade that data, sell it, send it to third parties. And we've done nothing about that, despite, I think, you know, at this point, hundreds of hearings about the tech industry in Congress over the last few years. So that just makes me sad. And I think that if you're trying to score political points by being tough on China in a sort of presentation or in an optics way, I think the only result of that is like increased xenophobia. I think you're

encouraging people to sort of turn away from China. And what I would love to see, honestly, is just encouraging more Americans to actually learn about the country, because I think that that would actually help American security if we had more people who were wanting to study there, wanting to learn Mandarin, or wanting to spend more time learning about the country. But instead, we sort of have this optic situation of everything Chinese is untrustworthy, and we're going to sort of like nominally ban it, or we're going to nominally tell you it's bad and leave it at that because those sorts of things I think are also really easy to pass, right? Because if a piece of legislation or a new rule is not going to have an impact or have a really minimal impact,

easy to move that through, right? I think that's why you saw these states do it really quickly. And I think you saw some of the bigger impacts actually get rolled back. Like in Georgia, I think that they realized, oh, our state football teams have gigantic TikTok accounts. And then they had to clarify, oh, just kidding. Like it doesn't apply to that. So like, don't worry. You know, because they realized like, oh, this is like a big like, you know, recruiting and promotion tool for our schools. And then they moved, they rolled that back. Right. So I think when there is even sort of like somewhat of an impact, you see these politicians saying, oh, nevermind. And yeah, I just find it really

annoying, I guess. And we've had a few years of this and, and despite sort of like the shouting of people like me, and I think a lot of experts who are, you know, way more qualified than I am to sort of make this point saying, great, we're so happy you want to do something about this. Let's make it lasting and make it beyond sort of the hottest app of the moment. But that just sort of hasn't happened. Yeah. Like it's incredibly easy to pass legislation that's like, you know, not doing anything concrete that's just there kind of to serve the base. But then when it actually comes to like doing something serious, it becomes a lot more difficult

to get that through, as we've been seeing with a lot of American tech legislation. I wanted to go back to the bigger point that you were mentioning there, though, right? Because what really stands out to me is that, you know, we had this period where the United States didn't really have like a major geopolitical rival, right? And in that moment, it was okay to work with China and to have China grow and to take advantage of Chinese workers and the Chinese economy in order to get low cost goods to the United States and, you know, to have companies trading technology, moving technology over there to kind of move Chinese industry forward. So it would benefit the United States in that way. Then when China rises to become more of a geopolitical foe and to develop its own kind of

technological capacities in a way that challenges the technological dominance of the United States, then all of a sudden it becomes more of a threat. And these kind of policies that need to target China, that need to divide the US and China, that need to create what some people are calling a new Cold War, though I wouldn't say it's gone that far yet, is where these developments have been going. And one place that this stands out to me is in thinking about the internet and tech policy in particular, right? Because since the 90s, the internet kind of spread globally, and that really benefited American companies. And the idea was you need to kind of take down your barriers, you need to let the internet come in and all of these services,

and you shouldn't be having a great firewall or anything like that to kind of protect your own economy, to protect your own businesses. But rather, these American companies really benefited from the global spread of the internet, companies like Google or Amazon or whatever that grew to become global behemoths. And now that other countries are having tech companies or tech platforms like a TikTok that can really challenge the American dominance in a way that we hadn't really seen previously, then all of a sudden more of an American kind of tech protectionism comes to the fore in a way that I feel like we hadn't seen as much in that period. Would you agree with that? Yeah, I think that that's definitely a fair assessment. And I also think sort of in the heyday of engagement with China, there definitely was, I think, sort of wishful thinking that economic prosperity could only come with the rise of democratic values, right? I think anyone who

cares about China will never forget Bill Clinton's, you know, I think it's sort of one of the dumbest things he ever said now is the jello comment, right? The internet is like jello, you know, you can try and contain it and it would just get everywhere. You couldn't contain it. You couldn't sort of do what China was doing forever. I mean, it has been incredibly difficult, right? Sort of this whack-a-mole approach to their sort of internet censorship regime, but it's happened, right? They have a sort of parallel ecosystem in China that is completely different from the one that we have elsewhere, except for TikTok, right? There is a domestic version of TikTok that is not accessible outside of the mainland, which is called Douyin. And TikTok is different, but it is owned by the same company and they have a lot of

similarities and it's sort of the DNA of this Chinese company. But I think that that was sort of a turning point for a lot of people to realize like, oh, this tech actually could be exported. And maybe people have more in common than they do differences and that they like to do the same sorts of things on the internet. And I think what you're seeing now because of TikTok is this sort of like tit for tat mindset, which I think is really dangerous, because I think a lot of people said, well, why can't Trump ban TikTok and WeChat because they've banned Facebook and Twitter, right? Like, isn't that only fair? And it's like, well, then you're sort of adopting an authoritarian regime's policies.

And I think that that's really problematic because there's not sort of a principled approach behind it. Like we're banning this app for this reason, or these reasons, or perhaps a better approach would not be the app itself, but we're banning this sort of practice that tech companies can do. But I think you saw sort of like, okay, well, you've poked us in the eye. You've poked our industry in the eye. We're going to poke you back. And I think also because all of those companies lost access to the Chinese market, you saw sort of a bandwagoning, right? They started to get on this idea of like, okay, we're going to also get on the anti-China rhetoric because we have a lot less to lose. I think another sort of famous example from this time period that we will never forget is Mark Zuckerberg, like running in Beijing. I think it was either

Beijing or Shanghai. I have this picture in my mind of him like jogging along, you know, and I think he's famously said that he would allow Xi to name like one of his children or something like that. You know, there was a sort of groveling to the Chinese government because they wanted access to that market. And then I think once they realized that they wouldn't, there was sort of an about face and there was a like, okay, great. Like let's ban TikTok. TikTok is scary. Now they're a competitor. They banned our international competitors. Right. And I sort of understand why that rhetoric is appealing to some extent or why it can seem logical on its surface.

But I just don't think it's actually a very fruitful policy. And you see now, you know, much later, China still struggles with this. You know, it's like every few months there's another app they need to ban and they're banning it for different reasons, right? It's not necessarily about competition. It's more about censorship. It's more about, you know, controlling the population. Although I think that they are very proud of the fact that they have been able to grow

these domestic companies that are employing people domestically. But it's also that those domestic companies are complying with those censorship requirements. That's also, I think, a huge part of it. But it's like, then Clubhouse comes out. They got to ban Clubhouse. There was a bunch of people a few weeks ago who were making... They're called mini programs inside WeChat. And they were making mini programs with ChatGPT, which is really cool. But of course, ChatGPT is trained on the open internet, right? So those got squashed immediately. It's just this never-ending, very laborious process. And I don't think that we want the US government to be part of that. And I think something that's so beautiful, and maybe I'm just, you know, a kid of globalization, and I'm just still idealistic. But I think it's great to sort of have the system where the vast majority of the world

experiences the internet in relatively similar ways. You know, I think, unfortunately, we've seen a lot of countries sort of take a page out of China's book recently. And I also think if we were to ban TikTok, what would that say to a country like Iran or, you know, many countries throughout the Middle East or in Africa or, you know, basically, I think in any part of the world, I think it would signal, okay, like, it's cool to do that, right? And like, we're going to take a page out of that book and we're going to start banning, you know, a whole host of apps as well. Like, I think it's very disturbing to see. I've seen, you know, a number of sort of lawmakers and analysts in Washington say,

good for India because India, you know, banned TikTok. And they sort of had a wave of domestic competitors who sort of tried to fill the gap afterwards. And you also saw Meta making a big push to sort of like push their own TikTok competitors there as well. And is it really we want to sort of be copying Modi? TikTok competitors there as well. And is it really we want to sort of be copying Modi? That's the model that we want to be following. Like, I just think these sorts of arguments fall apart really quickly. And it's sort of concerning to me to see that sort of rhetoric. It just seems like really shallow and like it's not going to go anywhere.

But I think at this moment, you can win so many political points by being tough on TikTok and being tough on just Chinese companies in general. And I think also it's like TikTok in particular is so fascinating as a target because it has a lot of cultural cachet. And I think that right now, legislators are maybe betting on the fact that sort of the biggest TikTok fans in the US are not voting or they're not old enough to vote. And I wonder if you tested that thesis, would it actually work? You know, I live in Los Angeles and I think about how much of the economy here is sort of powered by TikTok influencers, right? Like there's so many companies now that rely on TikTok for marketing,

you know, whether directly or inadvertently, I think that a lot of jobs and a lot of like commerce flows through the app now, especially because, you know, this arguing over TikTok has taken so long that it's become more sort of entrenched in American culture. You know, it's huge for the music industry, the fashion industry, sort of these like, you know, I think pillars of American culture in many ways. And I do wonder if the effort to actually ban the app became really serious, or you saw it actually have teeth, whether or not those electorates would mobilize. Like, maybe not. But I think you're talking about a lot of people who have a lot of influence already, right? And have like enormous platforms to speak from. You know, these are the kinds of people that politicians, celebrities,

big multinational companies, like, you know, I just wonder if any of them took a stand, would it sort of become this problem where the youths are revolting against Biden or whatever? And I wonder if that's something that the administration is considering. But on the other hand, I think that they're going to lose a lot of moderates if they don't do something. Ultimately, I think that those moderates sort of decide elections, right? Like I think that all the TikTok influencers are probably going to vote for Biden no matter what. So I don't know. I just think it's interesting to think about what would happen if that contingent of people mobilized. Because I think what some of the other companies like, you know, banning sort of semiconductor equipment or advanced semiconductor

equipment being sent to certain Chinese companies or, you know, sort of these more esoteric issues for a lot of people, I think, have less impact. They matter. Like, I think, you know, Biden's semiconductor policies that came out in October were, you know, sort of earth shattering and were much more strict than anyone expected. And I think were really sort of a huge surprise and, you know, matter to a lot of companies, a lot of industries. But they just don't have that sort of like cachet or it's not something

that millions of Americans think about every single day. You know, there's, I don't know, it's something like two thirds of teens or something probably like wake up in this country and look at TikTok first thing. And I think it's just really interesting that that's become the political football, right? Yeah. It's like when Huawei was banned, you know, not as many people have a direct connection to Huawei. So it wasn't like, you know, oh, this is really affecting me. It's like, okay, this is an infrastructure decision that's going to affect the telecom companies, and they'll have to make some different decisions, buy products from different companies. There were like these sad interviews, though, I remember where like there were I remember there

were like interviews where people were like, oh, I like liked my Huawei phone, and I like can't get it at Best Buy anymore. But that was not the same like level of, of I think importance to people. They were like, whatever, I'm going to get a Samsung. Like, I don't think it was like that influential, but I do remember these, like, I think there was like a video or a picture of like a guy outside of Best Buy looking like somewhat distraught. So there was like a change.

Right. But, but I totally agree with you. Yeah. But not as significant because there's more like comparable products, I? But I totally agree with you. Yeah, but not as significant because there's more like comparable products, I guess, than a TikTok to something else. TikTok feels like it's more unique in the social media ecosystem.

Yeah, like I think if you ask like, you know, 100 Americans, like what does Huawei make? Or like, have you ever seen a Huawei device? They'd be like, what? You know, whereas I think like a lot of like grandparents know what TikTok is these days,

like have some sort of like, some sort of awareness of it. Yeah, no, totally. And I want to pick up on what you were saying about the kind of banning platforms and what it means for the tech economy thing, right? Because I find it really fascinating as well, especially when you look at China and how there are other countries who are trying to mimic some of the actions that China has taken. And I feel like on one hand, like there is the concerning part where, yes, you are closing off access to these services. You are limiting access to other parts of the internet, to the open web and things like that. And we should be concerned about that. Right. But then there's another piece of it where it does look like in part an economic development policy right even when we look back to say you know brazil or south korea or japan and how they use tariffs to lock out kind of other products so that they could build domestic manufacturing industries and how

especially in the case of like south korea and japan how that was really successful for them in developing an auto industry or you know the kind of technology industries that they have today. And seeing China lock out American tech companies was felt to me in a way of developing their own kind of domestic tech industry. And that was very successful for them. It's one of the reasons why the US is targeting for them, is targeting them in the way that they are, especially companies like Huawei and things like that, because they weren't able to develop these domestic companies that could compete internationally. And I think that there's some other countries who look at that and say, you know, instead of just allowing, say, Google or Amazon or, you know, Facebook to kind of be

the tech platforms that all the people in my country use, I would kind of like to see domestic companies be able to compete with that to a certain degree. We want to cacao talk, right? Yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think it's a really alluring idea. And I think it makes sense. But I guess my thought is that banning is maybe not the mechanism to do it. Right. I think a lot of the time what we've seen is that Facebook or Google have sort of stumbled into these countries and made a lot of missteps because they didn't understand the local context very well. Like I think a good example of this is my friend Tori Elliott wrote the story about how Cambodians were using Messenger and they were only using like voice notes because it was really hard for them to type. And I think that's a perfect example, right? Like you could

see a domestic competitor that made it easier to record voice notes or just made the keyboard, you know, better, you know, assimilated to the local language, right? Or just made it easier to type or had better options, you know. So I think it's maybe about sort of encouraging those domestic companies to compete in ways that the international platforms can't. Obviously, that's a tall order. And I'm not saying it's easy for a lot of countries to do that. But I think it's a better path than banning the open internet. I think that's the difference, right? It's like one thing to have like tariffs of like physical goods that are being imported. And it's a little bit different when you're talking about like, you know, a website that is accessible anywhere. But maybe it's about regulating the kind of advertising that can happen

on that platform. I think there are creative ways to do it. But I think often when I see the banning, the economic aspect of it is maybe part of the political rhetoric, but the actual intent is about censorship. I would say in 99.9% of cases, the primary reason that a country is trying to do this is because of censorship. And maybe they believe that they will have better control over a local platform. And the other thing that we're seeing is in a lot of authoritarian regimes, screw trying to encourage the local platform that we can maybe control and also get some economic benefits. We're just going to force Twitter or TikTok or Meta to put people here locally so that if they do do something we don't like

and they let that dissident keep talking, we're just gonna arrest their employees. So I think that's sort of like the sorts of tactics that we see expanding a lot faster. But I totally agree. I mean, I think there's been a lot of deserved backlash to these American tech companies going into markets that they don't know much about

and sort of quickly taking over and, you know, sort of chaos or, you know, really serious problems ensue. And I also think that Americans took that for granted, that that was the way that the world worked. It's sort of one thing I find really interesting is you hear from a lot of American TikTok employees, and I'm really sympathetic, you know, to how they feel, but it's sort of surreal because they talk about, oh, like these meetings are in Mandarin and like, I don't know what's going on. Or I get these emails in Mandarin. Or they say these things I don't understand. And I just think to myself, that's how every Google employee must feel in every country around the world. It's like,

oh, this meeting is always in English. Or they're doing this weird American thing I don't understand. But I think that myself included sort of took for granted that like international business standards or like the way that tech companies operated was the way that American tech companies operated. And now I think American employees at companies like TikTok or Shein are realizing like, oh, this is really different. This is weird, right? Like I'm working for a Chinese company now. And I think that is just sort of an interesting wrinkle of this whole situation that I find really fascinating because it is sort of, I think, a turning point. I think a moment that a lot of people are realizing, oh, this country just has more cultural cachet than I ever expected. Because I think just for so long, I think most Americans just associated China with, I call them like plastic widgets, right? Just all the stuff,

right? It's like where clothing came from or clothing that we didn't have a lot of respect for came from. And now I think it's just interesting to see, yeah, these sort of like tech exports. But I think that these battles too are going to be, there's going to be more competition, I guess, is the way that I would put it in other markets. Cause we're like, oh, we have TikTok, right? That's crazy how much TikTok has taken over the US. But I think about a company like Shein and a country like Mexico, for example, right? Where Amazon is not nearly as entrenched, right? And you can see these Chinese companies maybe getting a much larger market share because maybe they understand how that market works

because it's closer to the way that the Chinese market works, right? I just think that's going to be an interesting trend that plays out over the next few years. I sort of have nightmares about, are we going to be pressuring other countries to ban TikTok or to ban other Chinese apps that have large market share in those countries or not? And is that going to be sort of like the next battle that plays out after sort of like the telecom wars or the chip wars that we're seeing take place right now. And I think that's going to be really painful and annoying, but might be sort of interesting to see, I think, sort of the rise of like Chinese consumer apps

and other parts of the world. And I think it's also just an example of how the great firewall is porous, right? Because these companies now are like, oh, we have 800 million users in China, like we've sort of saturated the market, we have to go to Southeast Asia, or we have to go to South America to continue growing. And will the US or those other countries sort of have quabbles about that, especially if they've seen the US ban TikTok or take serious action against the company? Absolutely. No, I think you can totally see that, right? In the way that US tech companies, you know, kind of expanded globally in the 90s and 2000s. I think you can definitely expect that now Chinese companies, as they have kind of reached this level of scale are going to try to do the same things. And whereas in North America and

Europe, we might be a bit more likely to kind of limit some of these Chinese companies from operating in our countries. There's going to be a lot of countries around the world that aren't going to be so proactive in wanting to do that or caring to do that. And we'll be much more open to dealing with Chinese companies, you know, over American companies or won't really have a preference, just whatever works best for me. Right. So I think you can definitely see that happening. And I think the other piece of this as well, and I'd be interested in your opinion, is that it also feels like, as you were talking about Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, the US tech companies also seem to be buying more and more into this, you know, kind of narrative

of division between the US and China as they see Chinese tech companies as competitors to their own products, to their own services, to the way that they've been able to grow globally over the past few decades. And I feel like, you know, as you were saying with Zuckerberg, but I feel like many of these other tech companies have been doing the same thing, being more open to these divisive policies on China or, you know, China policies that are going to restrict Chinese companies from operating in the United States or being able to access chip technology or things like that, for example. And then, you know, the other piece of that being also using it to say, we are your kind of American champions.

We are around the world. You know, this is not the right time to look at trying to break us up or limiting our activities because we are, you know, kind of championing America and American values and things like that in the tech ecosystem. And we need to compete against these big major competitors. Yeah, I think this is the perfect example of using China to justify something else, right? Or using the threat of China to justify something else. So you've seen the tech companies say, you can't regulate us because then we won't be able to compete against China. Or we need to build, you know, the most advanced AI tools and we need to bring them to market

immediately despite the risks or despite the biases of the training data. Because if we don't, China is going to do it first. Right. And I think that's sort of the narrative you've seen take hold in the tech industry right now in the U.S., where there's sort of just like this ambient fear about China that I think can be used for a lot of things. And I think sometimes those things are good, right? Like wanting to increase domestic innovation, wanting to invest in more, you know, research and development in the US. But I guess I worry that using a competition framework to do that is not the best way to achieve what we want. Like, I would love to see, I want to invest in research and development in the U S because like there's millions of Americans who suffer from cancer and we want to

like, you know, alleviate that suffering or, you know, we want to bring high speed trains or like, you know, that's never going to happen, but we want to have this, like, you know, come on, I want the high speed trains. Same, trust me. But you know, we want this great thing for Americans because if the framework is we need to beat China, often I ask those people and I talk to these people a lot. You know, some of them are very smart. And you sort of sit there and you say, so what is winning? And then they're often really dumbfounded because like, wait, I'm like, so what does it look like? When when will we say we've won? Is it when China's economy collapses in 27 days? Is it when there's regime change?

Is it like, like what does winning look like in a competition framework? And I think that that question is really hard to answer because there isn't really one, right? Because if like the competition ends, then like all the air comes out of that, right? All the air comes out of that effort. If in five years or whatever, China's economy does, you know, collapse or whatever, or, you know, they face serious headwinds, then do we just give up on all of these research and development ideas? Then do we give up on all these projects? Do we turn off chat GPT? We don't need the crazy AI tools anymore, right? It's hard to see what

is the endgame of this if the endgame is not making life better for Americans or making the world a better and safer place for everyone or whatever you know pick your sort of platitude but i worry when these tech companies adopt this framework that is about competition and like well we have to beat china we have to win this war this this new cold war as you put it and you see that framework a lot but it's really hard to see what is like the logical end of that and it's a logical end of that like Google, Facebook, and Amazon have more power than ever because we had to give it to them to beat China, right? Like what does that mean? And does that mean like more Amazon workers are working in warehouses under really difficult and I think sometimes inhumane conditions? Does that mean that like Google gets all my data? Do I need to like give Google my diary to ensure that we don't like,

that they can give me the best ads possible so that I don't lose to China, right? Like, I just think when you follow these arguments to their natural conclusions, they're really unsatisfying. But I think in this moment, when you're only looking sort of at the narrow slice of like, what will happen next, it breeds fear. And it breeds like a sort of do anything to prevent that scary outcome from happening. And I think we should really push tech companies on that. Like, what do you mean? Like, what exactly do you mean? Like, don't allow them to sort of like use the fear and the uncertainty and the doubt to push whatever agenda they want. That's, I think, the danger among others of sort of using the enemy to pass policies. Yeah, it potentially sends us in a very different

direction than if, you know, our engagement with China or other countries around the world were based on cooperation rather than competition. And then that competition being used to justify things that we wouldn't otherwise be okay with. But because we have to compete with China, now all of a sudden we need to just kind of suck it up and accept it because otherwise, you know, we're letting the enemy win. Yeah. And I think it's a reasonable and justifiable thing to say we are passing this policy because of something that China has done that we think is unacceptable. Right. Or like we're punishing them for these human rights abuses or whatever. But you usually don't see that rhetoric. And then what happens is I think the Chinese government or, you know, Chinese or the Chinese people sit there and say, well, they don't want to say it, but they're trying to punish us. Right. And I think we need to

be very specific if that is the goal. Right. Because a lot of times, you know, when these, you know, Biden passes a China policy or something like that, a lot of really smart people sit around and say, like, OK, what is the intention here? Right. Like, like is the, cause the intention, like we just said, can't just be to compete, to compete, to do what? Right. But a lot of time, that's how it's talked about. And I think it's just important to say, we're doing this because we want to punish them for this thing we think is unacceptable, or we want to do this to help ourselves.

Right. Because like, we think that this is an important issue, but oftentimes all of that sort of gets muddied together and you're left with like, it almost like I have this image in my mind of like, we're running on a treadmill, right? And like the treadmill is just getting faster and faster. And theoretically, we're running against this enemy who's also on a treadmill somewhere else. But at the end of the day, like we're stuck in our own gym, right? And like, we can make it better or not. But I worry that we're just not sort of like seeing these arguments in full. And all of a sudden, we're going to wake up and be like, well, we've passed

a lot of really dumb stuff, or we've sort of neglected a lot of policies, because we were just worried about TikTok, whatever, and we still don't have the trains. We don't TikTok anymore, but we have like all these other Chinese apps or something, right? And we haven't really done anything that has made the country more resilient. Yeah. And as you say, you know, framing it in this kind of, you know, we're competing against China way, it's good politically, as you were saying earlier, but it also seems like it's good economically, right? Because instead of coming out and arguing in favor of, you know, investing in domestic manufacturing, because you want to create those kinds of jobs in the United States, it's easier to come out and say, you know, we're going to create these jobs in the United States, it's easier to come out and say,

you know, we're going to create these jobs in the United States so they don't go to China or something like that, right? Or because we can't trust the Chinese companies to be able to supply us. And so now, you know, it's not just because you're trying to promote domestic manufacturing, domestic industry, but there's a competition element to it as well, which helps to get more people on side with that sort of a policy. Yeah, I think that's a really good way to put it. And I just worry about like, what is the conclusion? Is the conclusion like more xenophobia? Like, is it like more racism? And I think one of the conclusions I really, really worry about a lot is less immigration from China here, because I think sort of the best and brightest for a long time have rightfully

wanted to study and work and do research in American institutions. You know, and I reported recently that one of the things that the Biden administration was considering, I won't bore you with the specifics, but it's this policy that they've been thinking about exbound investments and sort of limiting Chinese investment in American companies and, you know, like sort of just figuring out like how much money do we want going to these places. And one of the things that they were considering was limiting investment in companies founded by Chinese nationals. And I think that that sort of like policy idea is really, really dangerous because we want a PhD student to come here, get a PhD in computer science and start a cutting edge AI company. And they want to live here, they want to work here. Discouraging that because that company

is not going to be able to get investment just because of the nationality of their founder, I think is really dangerous. And you're already seeing a drop in the number of students who want to come here. They're saying that they want to go to, no offense Paris, but to Canada, or they want to go to the UK, or they want to go to, no offense, Paris, but to Canada, or they want to go to the UK, or they want to go to Europe or other parts of the world. I think that is just such an enormous loss. And I worry that that is the sort of unintended consequence that you get when you're not careful and specific about how you frame these things. Meanwhile, Canadian universities are like, yeah, go for it. We'll take them. I think it's really interesting, right? And I think that to some degree, it seems like the Biden administration is already heading down that path with the CHIPS Act and the restrictions that

it put on people being able to work back and forth in China and kind of exchange information and, you know, kind of intellectual work and all that kind of stuff, you know, but hopefully doesn't go too much further. To end our conversation, I wanted to talk a bit about regulation, right? Because in the United States, there's been a lot of talk about regulating technology in recent years, a lot of discussion around antitrust. And a lot of those efforts really haven't gone very far. And it looks like with the Republicans taking over the House in the United States, so you know, the government will be split between the Democrats and the Republicans, that it looks like these antitrust measures are likely not going to move forward, at least for the next couple of years, unless the Democrats can retake power again

in 2024. Meanwhile, at the same time, China has been moving forward with a lot of, you know, heavy regulation on the tech industry in recent years that's been called a crackdown in some Western media, which targeted financial tech companies, gig companies and the kind of working practices there put limits on online gaming for young people. And there were recent regulations targeting AI tools, as you were saying earlier. What should we make of the regulatory push in China? And do you think that there are any of these attempts that we should be trying to learn from instead of just kind of writing them all off as, you know, an authoritarian government cracking down on tech companies? Oh, definitely. I mean, I think a lot of the regulations that you saw were extremely fascinating and I think mirrored a lot

of the same issues that we've seen in the U.S. I think a good example of that, like you said, is the gig platforms. There was this amazing investigative story that went viral about delivery workers in China, and it showed that they needed to go down the wrong way on one-way streets and that they needed to cross through alleys and that they were getting into accidents because of how quickly they needed to deliver orders and they were sort of being unfairly penalized because an elevator was broken or something like that. And I think that that actually influenced the government to say, we need to do something here to sort of protect workers and to make it more fair for them, basically. And I think that that's a good example of the kind of thing that we still see a lot of, you know, states in the US sort of

fighting over about how to treat, you know, Uber drivers or delivery workers. So I think there's definitely, it seems like natural problems that come from these big tech companies, especially the consumer apps and the impacts that they end up having. I think that's because a lot of these companies had similar investors, had similar mindsets and ways that they organized themselves. I think a lot of times after startups from Silicon Valley, or they had investment or they worked together. It's natural, I think, that sort of the regulatory problems that would come up, therefore, would be relatively similar. I think it's hard to sort of generalize about the quote unquote tech crackdown in China, because I think there were a lot of different policy goals. Like I think cracking down on the tutoring industry, for example, was about sort of making the education system fairer and also less expensive in order to sort

of encourage people to have more children. I think like that's one of the many reasons they might have decided to crack down on that industry. We don't really have a parallel like that in the U.S. where there's like every single kid is like, you know, paying for after school tutoring from a private company. Although, of course, plenty of rich people have private tutors. I think it's important to remember that there are sort of fights, I think, between the government in China and this especially sort of like old guard of these really big tech companies that I think really, at least for a long time, were much more loyal to capitalism than they were to the party. I think it's sort of interesting when you see all this rhetoric about TikTok being in the back pocket of the CCP. This is a company that

irritated the government for many years, founded by somebody who had a blog post about how banning Google and Facebook from China was a bad move. And, you know, he's not a member of the CCP. I think these were sort of idealistic tech founders who had a lot more in common with the kinds of tech founders in Silicon Valley than I think a lot of politicians are saying. That doesn't mean that they're not under different pressure. Like, there's no doubt that someone like Jack Ma cannot behave the way that Elon Musk does towards U.S. politicians, right? Like, we saw that, you know, he basically disappeared for two years, I think, after, you know, criticizing the government. So there's definitely differences, but I think it would help everyone in the US and in the West to look at China's tech industry as similar to their own and sort of after making a lot of money

and growing as quickly as possible than anything else. And I think that almost all of the data sort of bears that out. Sometimes that involves, you know, catering to the government, but it does in the U.S. too, right? I think it's just important to look at that as the intention first. Sometimes the sorts of pressures and issues that they face like this crackdown, which I think could never have happened in such a sweeping way in the U.S. But I think the government was trying to address a lot of the same problems because these companies are similar and they behave similarly. And I think a lot of their customers are similar, right? Like these sort of upper middle class elites in big cities. Now you're

sort of seeing a lot of tech companies in China that are targeting people in third or fourth tier cities. But I think it makes sense, right? Like getting an underpaid delivery driver should get you boba tea in Shanghai is not that different than like ordering a burger from Uber Eats in San Francisco. And of course, like governments are sort of going to respond similarly to trying to protect those workers. You know, the way that that plays out, it's going to be different if you have a different political system. But I think that's how I would look at it. It's just like, yeah, totally. There are similarities. It will be interesting to see over time how these regulations play out. And I think also, they're doing some weird stuff that will be sort of interesting to see. Like a good example is

they're trying to regulate algorithms and like, kind of unfair what that means, how that will work. And a lot of the headlines at the time said, you know, China, the first company to try and regulate algorithms. And, you know, that's sort of a weird, like, who knows what the specifics of that will actually be. But I do think it could be a learning opportunity for other countries to see if these regulations work, what works, what doesn't. Obviously, collecting data about that is not going to be easy. But I think just sort of seeing, do these help alleviate some of the problems that I think a lot of countries are grappling with right now. Yeah, no, I think you've put it really well.

And I think that, you know, even though there's this growing kind of rhetorical division between the West and China, we should still be looking to see what they're doing with the tech regulations to see if there's anything we can learn from that and to try to, you know, kind of restrict our own tech companies over here and make them better serve the public and what we would want. And I remember seeing that I believe some of those regulations were motivated a bit, as you were saying, by cracking down a bit on this more kind of consumer sector. So to refocus some of the attention toward kind of tech manufacturing and research and those sorts of industries as well. Louise, it's been great to speak with you. It's been great to get your perspective on, you know, China and tech and the relationship to the US and how these things are

being communicated across social media, whether it's YouTube or TikTok or anywhere else. Thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you so much for having me. Louise Matsakis is a technology reporter at Semaphore. You can follow her on Twitter at Thank you. won't save us and become a supporter. Thanks for listening. Thank you.