> yet Russian apps are in our app stores

Major social media apps? Chinese apps are still in our app stores, just not TikTok (as of Sunday).

The only Russian app I'm aware of is Telegram. What other Russian apps might people be unwittingly running?

And yet Russian apps are in our app stores.

There are no Russian apps that collect extensive data on hundreds of millions of Americans. (And if I'm wrong about that, the US should absolutely force divestiture of those apps or ban them).

>a treaty partner who gave up their nukes in exchange for a security alliance with the US

If it wasn't ratified by the senate then we didn't enter into a treaty, I really don't understand why this is so hard for people to understand.

You are free to have that our opinion but our elected government disagrees with you. It’s not the job of the court to adjust laws based on personal preference of HN commenters.

Yes but there are Reagan's interests and Hitler's interests. You have no choice but to pick the lesser evil.

> Meta could still turnaround and sell this information to Chinese companies

Let them collect and ban this. Difference between Meta and TikTok is you can prosecute the former’s top leadership.

Your question is irrelevant because none of the parties you've listed have interests that are aligned with the CCP, assuming you're referring to the people as a whole. Obviously there are specific individuals whose interests are aligned with China's government but laws in a democracy aren't meant to make everyone happy, they're meant to meet the interests of the majority of people

> Nobody wants China to take Taiwan, that's not something its possible to convince people of

It's not about convincing them to want it but rather about sowing doubt and confusion at the critical moment.

David French's NYT column last week starts with what one might call a "just-plausible-enough" scenario: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/09/opinion/tiktok-supreme-co... (gift link, yw).

Im not so confident about that. Attenuating isolationist policy in the face of Taiwan is the easiest, but I can see anti-ROC propaganda in the mix.

They would be within their rights to do that. But then they would have to compete with other participants in the discussion. On TikTok they can ensure there is no such competition.

The magnitude of the attack is not comparable. One thing is being a bad actor in a network owned by someone else where you can get monitored, caught and banned. Versus owning the network completely and amplifying messages with ease at scale. The effort needed and effectiveness of the attack is extremely different.

Domestic based social media platforms can be pressured to comply with demands such as the DOJ's investigation into Russia's 2016 disinformation campaign on Facebook. Likewise social media platforms based in a foreign adversary would be pressured to comply with demands of that foreign adversary.

This is a common criticism in these kinds of discussions, but no, protecting oneself from foreign influence and threats does not require a moral high-ground, just as locking your front door doesn't.

Self-interest doesn't require moral justification.

For some reason I can't reply to "luddit3" below you. But he should check a list of countries that started the most wars and invasions in the last 150 years and which one tops it easily.

There is no good, just bad and kill-it-with-fire kind of evil. You choose bad you get a bad life. You choose the other you get literally hell. One government harvests and sells the organs of its healthy population[0][1][2] and the other makes some people feel sad.

Ironically, the "good" guys here allow you to talk shit on the internet about them while the "bad" guys would catch and harvest my organs someday for writing this comment.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_... [1] https://chinatribunal.com/ [2] https://theowp.org/reports/china-is-forcibly-harvesting-orga...

In preventing a country from being invaded, yes, we are.