What we're seeing is that legislators are very concerned on two grounds. The first grounds is a national security argument. What happens to that data? You know, does that data end up in the wrong hands? And then there's the other argument, which is content manipulation. TikTok is the one that decides to take it dark hours before the deadline.

And that's what I call what I call the Zoomer Nam because they didn't know what to do with

their lives.

So this is a bit like psychological manipulation, if you think about it.

The outrage that was expressed during this 12 hours is a bit of a, it's a propaganda play.

That to me is a foreign influence operation. And if that's happening, that's really what the

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Melissa Chen, welcome back to Trigonometry. You are our go-to person for all things China. And one of the things that's been really big in the news, and I think it's a really important conversation, actually, is TikTok, whether it should be banned. And that is something you have a

very interesting perspective on. So give us your take and why you think or what you think.

So TikTok is a app, a US-based app, but it's actually owned by a Chinese company called

Bid Dance.

And that necessarily entails that bite dance, because it's a Chinese company,

there is this law in China that exists called the National Intelligence Law, and it compels any company that is Chinese to hand over any kind of data.

And so it recruits basically anyone in individuals, companies, in Chinese societies, could be organizations as well.

It recruits them to basically be part of an intelligence gathering effort whenever the Chinese state requires it.

And because of that corporate structure, TikTok is a huge liability. There are actually two concerns that we have about

the, and by we, I mean, you know, U.S. lawmakers, because we haven't seen something like that happen in a long time.

This bill to ban TikTok, which I'm using, you know, inverted quotes, because it's not really a ban.

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