The congressional vote was that the youngens will not be happy. This definitely isn’t a simple, black and white issue. On one hand, you can’t trust the separation between corporate China and the CCP. The CCP is the effective controlling shareholder in every Chinese company. Otoh, it’s not very free enterprisey to ban commercial enterprises owned by foreign companies. China will start insisting that Tesla, Alphabet, Apple, etc divest their Chinese operations. And on top of all that, my (sort of former) firm’s pretty astute CTO thinks it’s all nonsense. Easy for tech savvy youngsters addicted to tik tok to circumvent bans (don’t ask me how - I’m busy adjusting the rabbit ears on my black and white television set).

For all our issues with China, we really don’t want a sudden decoupling. That would be disastrous for China, but no fun for us either. This move really could start us down that path irrevocably. Those real world concerns exist alongside the security concerns, with which I do agree. I don’t think Trump has anything in mind other than opposing Biden and Zuckerberg, but I’m totally down with the potential damage tik tok could do if (when) China decides to use it that way - disinformation, leveraging personal info, etc. But it really isn’t as easy as turning off a faucet, and the kids are gonna be pissed! Which, politically, hurts Biden more.