Wow. Worked so hard on this book. Holding it in my hands is something else.
“Countering China’s Great Game: A Strategy for American Dominance”
Available everywhere on April 15th
Owner of the
@warriors
🏀 says he doesn’t care about the Uyghurs.
The conversation goes downhill from there.
@chamath
…
- questions whether a genocide is actually happening
- says the CCP isn’t a dictatorship
- says the US is no better than the CCP
😳
@TikTokPolicy
literally says it cannot comply with the divestment requirement because “the Chinese government has made clear that it would not permit a divestment” of ByteDance’s algorithm.
They’re literally making the national security case for the U.S. government.
.
@elonmusk
, on
@theallinpod
: “I think I understand China well…”
Then proceeds to compare Taiwan to Hawaii: “an integral part of China that is arbitrarily not part of China”
He’s repeating CCP talking points with no mention of US interests.
Taiwan donates $1m to Ukraine for power generators so Ukrainians won’t freeze.
Beijing sends
@kiraincongress
an intimidating letter demanding Ukraine reject the aid.
The response? “I haven’t seen any help (from China) coming in.”
WHAT?
The White House cut the video feed of Taiwan’s Digital Minister during the Summit of Democracies.
Why?
Because Audrey Tang’s slide show displayed 🇹🇼 in a different color than 🇨🇳
This is insane.
Let’s be clear about what’s happening here.
The Biden admin is giving press credentials to influencers on TikTok — Beijing’s Trojan Horse app — to boost Biden’s re-elect campaign.
And we’re supposed to believe Biden would ban TikTok if given the chance?
A bombshell scoop from
@Hailey_Fuchs
of
@politico
“The Chinese Embassy has held meetings with congressional staff to lobby against the legislation that would force a sale of TikTok, according to two of the Capitol Hill staffers.”
@chenweihua
Instead of being on Twitter — something the Chinese people don’t enjoy — maybe you should focus on convincing Russia to withdraw from Ukraine.
And ending the Uyghur genocide.
And upholding your treaty obligations in Hong Kong.
And being peaceful toward Taiwan.
On 9/17, Gen. Milley insisted the spy balloon didn’t collect any intel.
Biden admin officials have said the same.
Now, nearly a year after the incident, NBC learns that the balloon used a U.S. telecom network to “send burst transmissions, or high-bandwidth collections of data…
Let’s define “other issues”
- the ongoing Uyghur genocide
- China’s belligerence toward Taiwan
- CCP malign influence w/in the US
- China’s fentanyl production
- COVID origins & disinformation
- militarizing the South China Sea
- breaking North Korea sanctions
- aligning w/…
.
@SonyPictures
deserves recognition & praise for refusing the CCP’s censorship requests.
🇨🇳 asked Sony to remove shots of the Statue of Liberty🗽
Sony said no — and forwent 100s of millions of $$$ in the process. But they made the right call 🇺🇸
John Mearsheimer, in an interview with CCP media, claims there’s “no evidence” of Russian imperialism in Ukraine, but sees plenty of evidence for “NATO expansionism.”
.
@SpeakerPelosi
: China “will not isolate Taiwan by preventing us to travel there…We will not allow them to isolate Taiwan. They are not doing our travel schedule.”
Pitch-perfect. 💪🏻👍🏻🇹🇼
.
@SecGranholm
praises China for being “sensitive” on climate change, and has “invested a lot in their solutions to achieve their goals.”
“We could all learn from what China is doing.”
No mention of slave labor or the Uyghur genocide.
Big 🇹🇼 news out of the Nick Burns confirmation hearing today.
@tedcruz
announcing intent to introduce legislation to elevate Taiwan's status for arms sales to the same level as America's closest allies/partners.
Good, sensible policy.
LeBron accuses Kanter of “using my name to create an opportunity for himself.”
No sense of irony. LeBron ignored human rights abuses in China to create opportunities for himself.
Shouldn’t be surprised when he gets called out for that.
Literally a Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece throwing down fire support for CCP-controlled TikTok.
Echoing TikTok talking points.
Weaponizing the U.S. Constitution against American lawmakers.
This is what information warfare looks like, folks.
Everyone is noticing. Including the very friends and allies the admin pressured months ago.
“It’s almost as if they’re suddenly afraid of upsetting China.”
This screenshot is a dream for TikTok and the CCP.
A former president calling an American tech company a bigger threat than TikTok.
A US senator using the 1st amendment to protect the CCP’s Trojan horse.
The world’s richest man agreeing.
This, from
@marcorubio
, is absolutely true.
“This place is full of people that love to talk tough on China, but when the rubber meets the road, they’re not there.”
“Tang's presentation included a color-coded map…ranking the world by openness on civil rights.
Most of Asia was shown, with Taiwan colored green, making it the only regional entity portrayed as ‘open.’”
China was correctly marked red.
Wendy Sherman lobbied against the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in 2021.
Now she’s blocking sanctions on CCP officials and companies like Huawei.
Why? Because she “was eager to reschedule the Blinken trip” to China.
Apparently the
@CatoInstitute
thinks that protecting American TikTok users from CCP influence is somehow “the largest removal of speech in US history.”
Incidentally, guess who Cato’s vice chairman is.
Jeffrey Yass.
In light of Disney’s cooperation w/ Xinjiang CCP authorities for filming “Mulan,” nominating Iger as China ambassador would be an enormous insult to Uyghurs.
You guys…the map was about *civil rights.*
How is it that acknowledging the blatantly obvious - that Taiwan is freer than China - cannot be acknowledged *at the Summit for Democracies*?
@kevin_klyman
@elonmusk
@theallinpod
Not at all. Those words are in the video I posted.
The point is that Elon is once again only presenting the CCP side of Taiwan, with no mention at all of America’s or Taiwan’s perspectives or interests.
Alternatives to Huawei have existed all along. Yes, they’re more expensive — but what’s abundantly clear now is the greater cost of trusting the Chinese Communist Party.
Good grief. This detail from
@james_t_quinn
is nuts.
Michael Beckerman, the top in-house lobbyist for
@tiktok_us
, compared Uyghurs to terrorists and al-Qaeda specifically.
The best shot the US ever had at convincing China to release Liu was legislation from Ted Cruz that would have renamed the street in front of the PRC embassy to "Liu Xiaobo Plaza." Not exactly subtle...but highly effective. PRC diplomats HATED this bill & lobbied against it /2
Tonight, the countdown for TikTok begins. Once President Biden signs the legislation, it must divest from its Chinese Communist Party-controlled parent company ByteDance within nine months.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. Per
@schwartzbCNBC
,
@tiktok_us
and ByteDance spent over…
@elonmusk
Another layer… the
@WalterIsaacson
bio of
@elonmusk
confirms what many have long speculated: he is managing this website with the CCP’s interests in mind.
Walter Isaacson reports in his book that Elon Musk told Bari Weiss last year "that Twitter would indeed have to be careful about the words it used regarding China, because Tesla's business could be threatened. China's repression of the Uyghurs, he said, had two sides."
TikTok’s parent company is ByteDance. ByteDance is based in China, which makes it subject to Beijing’s National Intelligence Law of 2017 and Counter-Espionage Law of 2014.
Accordingly, ByteDance must cooperate w/ PRC intel requests and turn over any requested evidence for…
🧵2/2
They want to ban TikTok because it’s “owned by China”
Not true.
60% of the company is owned by US and international investors.
20% is owned by the company founders.
20% is owned by company employees, including over 7,000 Americans.
The CEO of TikTok is from…
Amazing to me that anyone could publish a piece like this and not once — not once — mention the established fact that the CCP is currently committing genocide.
In this
#Xinjiang
camp,
#Uyghur
children are forcefully separated from their parents and ordered to chant, “My mother is China, we love our mother, we love China.”
The inner workings of
#China
’s
#Communist
re-education machine on full display.
.
@MariaCantwell
, who is pumping the brakes on the TikTok bill, has three former senior staffers lobbying for
@TikTokPolicy
.
More directly: Cantwell’s former staffers are lobbying to protect the CCP’s control of TikTok.
Frankly shocked this hasn’t gotten more attention.
These two statements read entirely differently. The first emphasizes the constraints & borders of the One-China policy; the second emphasizes its flexibility, and the expanding partnership w/ Taiwan.
The first is vague about US interests; the second is clear.
They won’t stop at Taiwan.
We are not dealing with a defensive power seeking security assurances.
We are dealing with an expansionist nation chasing imperial greatness.
Biden said “don’t” to Putin. Russia invaded Ukraine anyway.
Biden said “don’t” to Ayatollah Khomeini. Iran attacked Israel anyway.
What lesson could Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party be learning right now?
The CCP can paralyze America politically with TikTok. It can deceive Americans through it. It can target them with tailored lies.
Sever TikTok from the CCP. Now.
To boost electric car purchases, the White House carved out China’s EV battery industry from export controls.
That’s an issue, because there are documented Uyghur slave labor concerns.
At this point, Speaker Pelosi has to go. Yes, there are risks either way. But the risks of her trip pale in comparison to the risks of allowing Beijing veto power over America’s Taiwan policy.
Bob Costas on 🔥 about the upcoming Beijing Olympics…
“The
@iocmedia
deserves all of the disdain and disgust that comes their way for going back to China yet again…they’re shameless about this stuff.”
#GenocideGames
#WhereIsPengShuai
So, at 10pm the Friday before Christmas, we learn the final story about the CCP spy balloon.
Contrary to the Biden admin’s narrative, the balloon didn’t stop transmitting due to US efforts. It stopped transmitting when its existence became public knowledge.
Quoted by
@joshrogin
in
@washingtonpost
:
“When your bottom line depends on a genocidal regime, you become a de facto apologist for a genocide. The only difference between
@chamath
,
@iocmedia
and companies like
@Apple
is the degree of how brazen they are.”
The one word missing from this statement: divestment
Because the legislation doesn’t ban TikTok. And TikTok knows that.
They don’t want to talk about divestment because it leads straight to ByteDance. Straight to the Chinese Communist Party.
Our Statement on Enactment of the TikTok Ban:
This unconstitutional law is a TikTok ban, and we will challenge it in court. We believe the facts and the law are clearly on our side, and we will ultimately prevail. The fact is, we have invested billions of dollars to keep U.S.…
If your article makes it past the censors…
…that means your message is helping the Chinese Communist Party.
But if you wanna wear that as a badge of honor, go for it I guess?
The Biden admin asked Beijing for help with the Afghanistan disaster and to reign in Putin. Neither worked.
Now, they’re asking for help with Iran.
At some point, we’ve got to see the CCP as part of the problem, not the solution.
A few things…
1) It takes a lot of maturity to respond to public rebuke with thought and reflection. Props to
@chamath
for listening.
2) It’s telling he doesn’t mention the Uyghurs by name.
3) He’s still drawing a moral equivalence between the US and the CCP.
The Biden admin asked the CCP multiple times from 2021-22 to dissuade Putin from further invading Ukraine.
Beijing responded by sharing US intelligence with the Kremlin.
What will it take for us to see Beijing as an adversary?
The CCP needs to stop telling America what our Taiwan policy was, is, or should be. It’s our policy. And — spoiler alert — it’s never been the “one China principle.”
This law is not just about TikTok, it is about censorship and government control!
If it were just about TikTok, it would only cite “foreign control” as the issue, but it does not.
First, Gina Raimondo calls banning TikTok political suicide.
Then, the White House offers TikTok influencers press passes.
Now, Biden officials are attending an *ethics conference* with a TikTok executive.
.
@jonstewart
: “Let’s not kid ourselves, this idea of a moral high ground, that somehow our problem with China is their treatment of Uyghurs or their labor camps — that’s a joke.”
It’s not a joke, Jon. Cynicism doesn’t help Uyghurs, and it doesn’t protect Americans.
.
@iocmedia
President Thomas Bach: “The Olympics cannot solve problems that generations of politicians have not solved.”
No one is asking the IOC to reform tyrants or stop genocides. We’re just asking that you don’t whitewash their dirty work for them.
I have concerns with the Tik Tok ban bill.
1. If we are concerned about people’s privacy and data then why aren’t we protecting it universally from every company stealing their data and invading their privacy?
2. This one bothers me. This bill forces the sale of a company…
The CCP keeps on saying “come to Xinjiang and see for yourself!” When ppl take them up on it, they send the goons after you.
Good reporting from
@sophia_yan
⤵️
Big China provision in the House NDAA:
Sec. 808: Prohibits DOD from contracting w/ firms that have provided consulting services to the PRC, the CCP, the PLA, or other covered entities.
“An onscreen disclaimer later declared: ‘Any opinions expressed by individuals on this panel are those of the individual, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States government.’”
“When the moderator returned to Tang a few minutes later, there was no video of her, just audio, and a screenshot captioned: ‘Minister Audrey Tang Taiwan.’”
This morning I, a U.S. citizen, woke up to the news that an arrest warrant & a HKD $1 million bounty have been placed on my head by the Hong Kong govt. for exercising my freedoms in my own country.
More to say later but for now: I will never be silenced, I will never back down.
Xi promised Obama he wouldn’t militarize the South China Sea. He also promised to curb IP theft. Then he proceeded to break both promises.
Biden was VP during that time and saw how cheaply the CCP viewed these agreements.
Why is he falling for this again?
Biden and Xi set to pledge a ban on use of AI in autonomous weaponry, such as drones, and in the control and deployment of nuclear warheads, sources confirmed to the Post.
Important scoop by colleagues
@ipatrickbr
@markmagnier
, Amber Wang in DC
When news headlines compare the much-debated, democratically voted divestiture of a controversial app with a massive comet that once ended all life on earth.
Surprise surprise.
@tiktok_us
servers in Virginia are made by Inspur, a US-sanctioned entity controlled by the People’s Liberation Army.
Anyone out there still wanna argue that the security concerns about TikTok are overblown?