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Tuesday, Jan 21, 2025 - 02:12 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Silence Before The Glory

As predicted close to two years ago in Turn 13, Action Round 4 of Twilight Struggle: New Moon, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act would be passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in March 2024, before swiftly being approved by the Senate and signed into law by outgoing President Biden, on April 24th. Although TikTok duly appealed the legislation, the Supreme Court would uphold the ban in an unanimous 9-0 decision last week, justifying it as due to the CCP's ultimate Control over TikTok's outstanding recommendation algorithm (as previously highlighted), and thus potential to track and influence American citizens, particularly the young.

But, as said here back in March 2023: From the strategic fundamentals, we all knew where this was going, lah. TikTok's mortal sin was being a Team Red product encroaching in Team Blue media territory, with Cold War I precedents and "covert Influence ops" explicitly raised in the court judgment. This is The Greatest Game, there's really no need to tiptoe around!

And thus it was that TikTok went ahead with a total shutdown ahead of the Sunday deadline, to the disbelief of many of its fans, some of whom went as far as to call the police in a panic. Quite amusingly, this then resulted in a mass exodus of TikTok refugees to other China-based apps such as RedNote (lit. "[Mao's] Little Red Book"). While the natives were largely welcoming (and happy to teach Mandarin), by all indications, some were reportedly wary of "an American plot to flood their platforms with stealth propagandists and subversive elements". What goes around...

And then, with gloom permeating the U.S. cybersphere, a GOLDEN HERO rode in to rescue the app, fresh off raising billions from his own personal memecoin:


The Emperor Protects (Your First Amendment Rights)
(Source: abcnews.go.com)


Fine, we didn't see this coming back in 2023.

TikTok would restore service hours after its voluntary shutdown, as GEOTUS triggered a 90-day provision for TikTok to find a buyer, while proposing a 50-50 joint ownership deal, that China appears to be considering. This only further confirms TRUMP's unparalleled political genius, with his rescue act surely swinging the youth vote further towards him, with one young influencer pointedly stating that China could have all his data - and if anything, he would go to China himself to give them the data. This seems quite a common sentiment no thanks to the relative inauthenticity of U.S. social media apps, and the reasoning that China would be able to do less harm with it anyway.

This gives us three months to see if a satisfactory resolution can be found to this skirmish in the Tech War front of Cold War II, but for now, America beholds its returning champion, and as presaged in 2017, a likely Golden Age of an expanded U.S.A.:



The (other set of) adults are back in charge!
[N.B. #1 on iTunes!]




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