David Friedberg: hey everybody we got a spicy show for you today i am going to react to the congressional hearings that took place this morning with tick tock's lying ceo shochu and i give my hot takes on why i believe tick tock is being used to spy on americans the same way they've used private SPEAKER_01: companies to spy on their own citizens in china and i delve into the news that coinbase has been issued a wells notice by the sec this meaning this basically means that the sec is about to take legal action against the crypto exchange and finally i'll briefly touch on uh news that crypto fugitive do kwan terraform labs has been pinched in montenegro of all places wow what a SPEAKER_02: bond villain montenegro gonna be a great show so stick with us this week in startups is brought to SPEAKER_04: you by linode apply to linode's rise program for founder-led early stage startups and get a 500 credit up to 120 000 in infrastructure credits in year one cloud consulting and so much more apply at linode.com slash twist lemon.io need to speed up your product development without draining your budget hire vetted engineers from europe at lemon.io go to lemon.io slash twist to get 15 off for the first four weeks and clumio when you're building a company don't let backups and compliance requirements distract you let the data protection experts at clumio help with immutable air gap backups that put compliance on autopilot visit them at clumio.com slash twist to start a free backup David Friedberg: or sign up for a demo okay everybody the tick tock ceo was grilled in front of the house committee on energy and commerce today and let's just say it didn't go very well here is representative bill SPEAKER_08: johnson republican from ohio grilling tick tock ceo in this 63 second clip that we edited for time SPEAKER_10: i'm an information technology professional been doing it for the most of my life you've been evasive in many of your answers i'm going to talk to you in some language that maybe you'll better understand SPEAKER_12: ones and zeros okay tick tock source code is riddled with back doors and ccp censorship devices SPEAKER_13: mr chu as ceo of tick tock why have you not directed your engineers to change this source code congressman SPEAKER_15: thank you for the question have you directed them to change the source code like what we are offering SPEAKER_16: and my fourth commitment have you directed them to change that source code congressman um if you give me SPEAKER_13: a bit of time to just no i i don't it's a yes or no question have you directed your engineers to change that source code i i'm not sure i understand why are you allowing tick tock to continue to have the capacity for censorship and yet you claim here that you don't let me remind you of something do you realize that making false and misleading statements to congress is a federal crime yes okay well i never SPEAKER_08: thought i'd see the day when a congressman in a congressional hearing would know more about technology than the ceo of a technology company unless of course the ceo of the technology company was hiding something or being evasive in some way and if you want an example of evasiveness check out this 22 second clip of representative michael burgess from texas asking shochu the ceo of tick tock SPEAKER_22: who helped him prepare for this hearing are you willing to share who helped prepare you for this hearing with the committee and you can do i can follow up with you okay like can you guarantee that no one at bite dance had a role in preparing you for today's hearing like i said congressman this SPEAKER_14: is a high-profile hearing a lot of people around the world were sending me wishes and unsolicited advice SPEAKER_28: but i prepared for this hearing my team here in dc oh boy there you go uh all deflection no straight SPEAKER_29: answers and johnson goes on to absolutely destroy the citizen lab report that tiktok used to try and exonerate itself uh from being essentially a chinese spyware app which as you all know i believe David Friedberg: it is and that it should be banned okay and here is about a minute of johnson destroying SPEAKER_32: a citizen lab report that tiktok tried to use to exonerate itself from its ties to china SPEAKER_12: got the report here by uh citizen lab i want to read you uh something from ron deebert SPEAKER_13: specifically in your written testimony to congress you stated on page nine citizen lab found that there was no overt data transmission by tick tock to the chinese government and that tick tock did not contact any servers within china you implied that citizen lab exonerated tick tock from any information SPEAKER_12: sharing with china well the director of citizen lab saw this and issued a statement correcting the record yesterday and i'm quoting ron deebert the director of the lab i am disappointed that tick tock executives continue citing the citizen lab's research and their statements to government as somehow exposed exculpatory i've called them out on this in the past and it's unfortunate that i have to do it again unquote he goes on to say and i quote we even speculated about possible mechanisms through which SPEAKER_13: the chinese government might use unconventional techniques to obtain tick tock user data via pressure on bite dance end of quote mr chu you sent congress written testimony citing this lab SPEAKER_12: as a support of your claim that china cannot access user data u.s user data and now this lab has come out to say we never said that that's misleading mr chu i hope you understand what that is that's misleading mr chu this is yet another instance of tick tock attempting to mislead americans about what their technology is capable of and who has access to their information here's a pro tip for tick tock SPEAKER_08: ceo show if you're gonna submit a report to defend yourself you might want to check with the person who wrote it that it actually does but let's pause now and take a step back from tick tock being a chinese spyware app and let's talk about spyware in china and how china uses private company apps to David Friedberg: shape the behavior and to monitor the behavior of its own citizens wechat for example is an app from a SPEAKER_29: private company in china that the ccp uses to spy on and track its citizens back in 2019 the south china morning post reported that the chinese government was testing a mini program inside of wechat they nicknamed it the deadbeat map and here are the alleged screenshots of the app basically what does this do well according to scmp quote the map gives blue yellow orange and red alarms based on the amount of deadbeats around you a deadbeat meaning somebody who doesn't pay their debts and from the telegraph uk back in 2019 by tapping on a person on the minium app the app will reveal personal information including their full name and partial home address here is a quote from he bay the people's court newspaper from 2019 announcing this new app and now these are apps in china this has nothing to do with the united states but this is how they treat their citizens note this is translated from chinese to english so bear with us once a dishonest laoli a chinese term for someone who does not repay their debts leaves the original working life circle to other places it basically does not feel the moral pressure from society this is obviously not conductive to the construction of a country ruled by law and a social credit system the authority of the law is achieved through refereeing and enforcement and malicious evasion of enforcement is the greatest dishonesty i mean basically this summarizes how the chinese think about their citizens and in 2019 due to their low social credit scores more than 18 million people have been banned from flying in china and 5.5 million people were prevented from buying high-speed rail David Friedberg: tickets according to the telegraph uk and speaking of rail tickets again this is in america this is in china with private companies quote unquote and their apps uh here's a video that trended on twitter recently and other social media sites it's warning folks on the train reasonably to not smoke or like SPEAKER_51: black mirror their social media credit score will be reduced for your good personal credit please obey relevant national laws regulations and regulations of the railway company please don't smoke on the cr8 train David Friedberg: thank you for your cooperation i mean let's let this sink in in china there's a social credit store and it is deployed via private company apps and if that's not enough china also cracked down on kids playing on video games something parents here in the united states might like to see but perhaps not from the government perhaps from parents to get them more focused on educational content and school work so what are they doing in china right now with apps what are they doing with their systems uh and how their children are allowed to use online services well in 2021 the ccp restricted kids under the age of 18 from playing video games on weekdays and they only allow a max of three hours per weekend according to SPEAKER_29: reuters the rules were put in place as a response to the impact that video games have on children's physical and mental health let's pause for a second the ccp the chinese government they understand David Friedberg: exactly how bad social media is and how bad video games are for their own children and they've created a rule set against that okay and here's how the ccp is verifying that kids won't play gamers will not SPEAKER_29: be penalized if they fail to comply but the gaming companies will be in other words the gaming company David Friedberg: is responsible the person providing the video games and they will have to prove an identification system is in place like requiring minors to use their real names and national identification numbers to track their hours played essentially imagine if our children use their social security numbers SPEAKER_29: so if it is not blatantly obvious through these simple few examples the ccp uses private companies to develop technology and to shape the behavior of their own citizens but don't worry they're David Friedberg: definitely not displaying this playbook in america they would never ever use tick tock to shape our SPEAKER_29: children's behavior and let's face it they definitely would not collect an insane amount of SPEAKER_08: data or in any way try to manipulate the behavior of the 150 million u.s users of tick tock they would SPEAKER_29: do it with their own citizens but they would never use it with their rival america's citizens right sure SPEAKER_61: sometimes we had an offer here at this week in startups that's so great from a partner that i don't even need to read the ad i can just tell you the benefits here's the benefit linode has a startup program called rise r-i-s-e right and it offers more than just free 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linode.com twist to get 500 in free credits you can also apply to their startup program rise rise members receive up to 120 000 in free David Friedberg: infrastructure credits during their first year and up to 50 discounts thereafter and this was uh it was referenced multiple times in the tick tock hearings that one third of us kids use tick tock we can all we all know that and you can be sure they're not tracking or collecting any sensitive data because tick SPEAKER_66: tock ceo said as much in this 38 second clip so i just want to ask you um if uh if tick tock did track and collect the sensitive data that americans um don't want to have disclosed we actually do not SPEAKER_14: believe we collect more data than any other social media company out there a lot of these reports and i we can talk about which specific one specific one you're talking about a lot of them are not that accurate some of them we have contacted the we have actually gotten in touch with the authors to help them understand the data that we're collecting a lot of it is speculation you know this is something they could do they could do but if you look at the subtext this is something that every company could do she's David Friedberg: asking him what about what data are you collecting he's saying he's blaming the media he's blaming the press uh we aren't doing anything other companies wouldn't do it's all speculation the reports are inaccurate okay pause for a second in china they're doing all of this now suddenly they come to america and they're not doing it hmm china knows full well that these platforms are incredibly influential that is why they are so intent on making them drive positive social change inside of china and all we have to do is look at do yin this is the chinese version of tick tock they're using it to make their children smarter and to get them more focused on what matters in life and by the way there are about 37 different ways to pronounce doing it seems from this congressional hearing but here is a 31 second clip from 60 minutes describing the differences between tick tock and do you just listen to this 31 seconds SPEAKER_78: in their version of tick tock if you're under 14 years old they show you science experiments you can do at home museum exhibits patriotism videos and educational videos and they also limit it to only 40 minutes per day now they don't ship that version of tick tock to the rest of the world so it's almost like they recognize that technology is influencing kids development and they make their domestic version a spinach version of tick tock while they ship the opium version to the rest of the world okay very powerful David Friedberg: words there spinach for our kids let's make them strong and let's give the other kids opioids and if SPEAKER_01: you have looked at what's on tick tock it's pretty mind-numbing you got class warfare you've got race baiting you've got people dancing in provocative ways i hate to make this a little bit crass but they are training young people to dress and dance and i'm not a prude in any way but young girls uh young boys are being influenced to dress in a way and to dance in a very provocative way and again i'm not kind of prude here um that probably is age inappropriate any parent who looks like that whether it's conne west talking about his daughter uh being on tick tock at too young of an age or any of us just looking over the shoulder of David Friedberg: kids we probably don't want them doing these dances so let's take a moment to just pause think about how they censor doing and how they cap usage of it and they give you that spinach compared to what we experience here and to a ceo who is lying constantly and deflecting constantly and he is reminded multiple times during this hearing that lying to congress is uh against the law and he does not seem to have a problem with doing that whether it's when they confront him on who has access to the code base who has access to the data what are they collecting deflection deflection or i believe lying it was a running joke that this is the most bipartisan congress has been in a decade but let's pause for a second we've seen how they use social media to control and influence their populace we've seen them deflect that they're doing the same here but let's pause and talk about espionage there have been countless cases of chinese espionage here in the united states and they will claim that tick tock is not going to be used for this we all probably remember that google reported a highly sophisticated and targeted attacks of our infrastructure from china with the goal of stealing intellectual property remember this was gmail accounts and it was a massive uh attack these things occur regularly from china so let's pause for a second the chinese government has used private companies to do hacking in the united states they've used private companies to control their citizens now they have access to 150 million americans and they're going to be on their best behavior let's pause again here and just do some game theory this ceo lied multiple times during this hearing and continue to say that they're a private company and that they're not controlled by the ccp and he kept evading the uh congressmen and women who pointed out that he was in fact lying and that he was probably prepared for this hearing by the ccp the ccp is on the board of this company according to all reports SPEAKER_08: they expect us to trust tick tock after the chinese government has controlled their own people David Friedberg: has done countless amounts of espionage and then we're faced with hmm if this is a private company that's something i know a lot about i may not be an expert on espionage and i may not be an expert on their social control systems inside of china but i am an expert on private companies and investing in them so let's do a little thought experiment there is a windfall of cash coming to the investors in tick tock they could easily take this company public with 150 million americans using it on the american stock exchange and sell their shares to countless buyers who would look at this as the company that will replace and roll right over facebook instagram and perhaps even eventually youtube that's how addicting this product is so ultimate goal of all technology investors is to have an ipo getting purchased by another company is great but an ipo is just unlimited upside in our experience why because a company could grow to be apple or microsoft they could become worth trillions so these investors if the company were to go public would make tens of billions of dollars and then additionally have the ability for this to go 10x and then 10x again it could go to 500 billion dollars in value and then eventually a trillion or two trillion but these investors we are being led to believe would rather take zero dollars and not spin it out hmm why would tick tock shareholders not take tens of billions of dollars today with the ability to make hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars in the next decade with the greatest social media product ever created or at least created in the last 10 years this is obviously the successor to facebook instagram snapchat uh and youtube it's obvious to any of us now will it become as big as them will it have you know billions of users on a global basis probably nothing's guaranteed but at a minimum tens of billions to hundreds of billions of dollars in shareholder distributions are on the line so what group of investors would take zero dollars instead of hundreds of billions well the answer to that is a group of investors who don't care about money but one who care about power and who are in a power war with the united states and that's the chinese communist party the ccp is making these decisions and the ceo of tick tock is an outright liar and a pawn in this game so to hammer the point home again why is china fighting so hard to keep a social media app under its control question two why would chinese private owners of tick tock risk being banned and SPEAKER_08: getting zero dollars instead of getting tens of billions to hundreds of billions of dollars by simply taking the company public and divesting the answer is clear the shareholders aren't making the SPEAKER_61: decision the chinese communist party is okay imagine this you got an idea for a great tech startup and you think it's going to change the world but you got a problem you just don't have the engineers that you need to make it come true why well it's obvious it's hard to find engineers there's a lot of competition and hey you're trying to keep your burn rate low you need to conserve cash now imagine you had a partner who could provide you with more than one thousand on-demand developers right as many as you need and these developers were all vetted experience result oriented and they were incredibly passionate about helping you grow your startup and what if they 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coinbase's shares fell 12 coinbase's ceo took to twitter brian armstrong friend of the pod uh to confirm that they had received what's called a wells notice that was stating that they may be in violation of securities laws if you don't know what a wells notice is and why this really matters it's a letter that the sec the u.s securities and exchange commission sends to people or firms uh at the conclusion of investigation the notice states the sec is planning to bring an enforcement action against them so from cnbc a wells notice generally lays out the framework of the regulatory argument and offers the potentially accused an opportunity to rebut the sec claims in other words it's a formality before action is taken brian armstrong tweeted today coinbase received a wells notice from the sec focused on staking and asset listings a wells notice typically precedes an enforcement action correct it was not confirmed but the staff of coinbase believe these violations could be stemming from their staking product coinbase earn coinbase earn as you probably know that lets you earn up to six percent uh on your crypto deposits remember these staking products are coming under heavy scrutiny uh the estimated reward eth is four percent cardano 5.75 usdc 1.5 uh but listen you're probably just David Friedberg: better off buying treasuries for five percent instead of playing in the crypto space we had a detailed discussion about what staking is with vinnie and sunny back on episode 1680 um in a blog post written by coinbase's chief legal officer quote today's wealth notice does not provide a lot of information for us to respond to the sec staff told us they have identified potential violations of securities law but little more so there you have it folks another quote although we don't take this development lightly we are very confident in the way we run our business the same business we SPEAKER_32: presented to the sec in order for us to become a public company in 2021 so just pausing for a second David Friedberg: here coinbase is a public company they have tried to run the company you know as honestly as possible i actually believe that but the sec has told crypto folks the rules exist for securities offerings the rules exist for giving loans or interest the crypto industry said hey we're doing something different i'm just broadly speaking about the crypto industry uh and they tried to get the sec to respond to them and famously uh brian tried to meet with the sec he had reported on his meetings being canceled the sec does not seem like they want to create a new set of rules for crypto crypto would like a new set of rules and there is some argument that there should be some evolution of the rules because they are doing things that maybe the law doesn't provide for um well here's the truth you don't get to make up the rules and if you do want to make up the rules you better be acting in the public's best interest and the public better be benefiting from it and the public was benefiting from it when everybody was making money but when crypto collapsed and there was a bunch of grift and fraud there whether it was coinbase employees front running the market we had nft nfts being wash traded and and fake trades being put uh underneath an nft cell in other words somebody would trade with their friends or themselves SPEAKER_89: to make it look like there was a floor painting the tape i think is the term or wash trading is the term SPEAKER_01: for that you know you can have uh the reality of this is you could have sympathy for the crypto David Friedberg: companies who asked for rule changes and didn't get them or you could say play by the rules and use the government and wait for the government to change the rules um the reality of this lies between the two the reality is in technology if you're going to bend the rules and try to use products to bend the rules and then get customer support for those rules being bent you better be making society demonstrably better in other words if you were to bend the rules and reinterpret cannabis laws in california right and in other states or even psychedelics now in a couple of states and go against the federal laws well you better have an army of people supporting that in the country we have 70 or 80 percent of SPEAKER_32: people believe in cannabis being deregulated or legalized in some way if you were to look at airbnb SPEAKER_29: people renting out their homes you have an army of people who are making a living from that therefore when a city or any jurisdiction says hey you know we don't want airbnb here it's decreasing quality of life they could have very valid arguments but you would have an army of people supporting you if you were uh ride sharing lyft or uber and you went into a a market where they said hey you have to have David Friedberg: you know a taxi medallion to do this and you say well you know our interpretation of the law is that you know private people can provide rides in their car if they have insurance or whatever and they don't need to and this is a new system all of those examples have something in common which is the end user benefits massively and those people who are participating in those networks will fight for those networks who's going to fight for crypto now on the margins not that many people because there was so much griffin according to the chief legal officer at coinbase he says tell us the rules and we'll follow them give us an actual path to register and we will register the parts of our business that need registering that's a fine sentiment except that a lot of people lost their money and so you need to play by the rules unless you guarantee the betterment of society and people will forgive you in my experience and this is not instructions by the way i'm just accurately describing what i see on the field this doesn't mean i am endorsing breaking the law i am not this doesn't mean i'm endorsing bending the law those are decisions for entrepreneurs to make and to make them in a very thoughtful way but if you want to bend the law if you want to bend society to your vision of what should change and take that risk you better be sure that the public is benefiting now i was very clear on this podcast for many years that i was absolutely certain that dictatorships uh would ban crypto first SPEAKER_29: or uh they would control it in some way and that's exactly what's happening uh you see in china they have their own digital wand you see in other uh jurisdictions they ban this or control it and benefit David Friedberg: from it but what we're seeing now is democracies starting to ban regulate and take legal action against crypto this is the natural order of things if you have a money printing machine whether you're a dictator or a democracy whether you're authoritarian or democratic you are not going to give over the franchise of having the money printing machine to no one or a bunch of crypto zealots in your mind who have already bought low and are ready to sell high no government is going to do that the dictatorships and authoritarians locked it down first and now we're seeing the democracies do that next you're seeing banks that were crypto banks being closed you're seeing celebrities who promoted crypto having legal action taken against them and you're seeing these wells notices go out to the biggest players and this relates to all the fraud that occurred if you give the government the ability to shut your industry down because you committed fraud as an industry over and over and over and over again who is to blame the crypto industry should have regulated itself if you regulate yourself like the movie industry did with their rating system or the video game industry did with their rating system if you regulate yourself if you put controls in place to protect the public yourself then the government is unlikely to come in SPEAKER_29: and regulate you if you allow chaos then the government is going to come down on you like a sledgehammer are you trying to build the next uber or robin hood i hope so well here are three important SPEAKER_61: tips for you first make sure your data is protected obviously remember just because your data is in the cloud doesn't mean it's automatically backed up your data is your responsibility you got to make sure it's backed up second don't let backups and compliance requirements distract you let your engineers focus on product innovation not writing scripts for compliance audits and when it comes to backups the major players have major limitations like snapshots if your account is compromised your backups are compromised but plumio stores your backups on a different server so if your main account is compromised your backups are always safe the way it should be in third take control of your cloud costs you'd be surprised how much of your storage costs come from backups snapshots versioning and replication or maybe you're maybe you wouldn't be surprised because you've seen these jaw-dropping bills well clumio can help you with all three of these important points they provide turnkey data protection that is air-gapped immutable and cost optimized clumio has saved customers over 30 on backup costs while putting security and compliance on autopilot visit them at c l u m i o dot com slash twist to start a free backup or sign up for a demo that's clumio.com slash twist looks like the founder of uh luna and SPEAKER_29: anterra remember that stable coin in quotes while the founder doh kwan has reportedly been arrested SPEAKER_01: in montenegro like any other bond villain where else would you arrest him montenegro hong kong singapore he's going to be on a beach somewhere uh in a casino playing poker high stakes the government SPEAKER_29: officially tweeted police have detained a person suspected of being one of the most wanted fugitives south korean citizen doh kwan co-founder and ceo of singapore-based terraform labs he's been on the David Friedberg: lamps in spring when terra usd collapsed erasing 40 billion dollars worth of shareholder value interpol also issued a red notice for doh kwan for his arrest that informs uh if you don't know what a red notice is it's it's also a book a great book uh but a red notice informs law enforcement agencies SPEAKER_32: worldwide to locate and temporarily arrest a fugitive pending extradition surrender or similar legal action David Friedberg: uh he was allegedly caught with falsified documents and detained by police at a local airport montenegro SPEAKER_32: authorities were in contact with the korean national police agency and they confirmed that the suspect in custody appeared to be doh kwan based on checking age name and nationality of his id card SPEAKER_01: and uh if you haven't seen it here is a viral clip of martin shrelly the farmer boy giving advice SPEAKER_08: to doh kwan that has aged like a fine red wine hey doe um i just want to let you know jail's not that SPEAKER_107: bad it's um it's um it's not the worst thing ever you know so don't don't fret if that i hope it doesn't SPEAKER_01: happen but if it does happen it's not that good to know good to know that was a wild one and if you want to watch a completely insane interview uh that was basically the peak of crypto craziness check out my interview with doe kwan from july 2021 episode 1251 that was wild because i couldn't figure out how they made money or how it all worked uh so you see me maybe playing a little bit stupid there and trying to get him to explain this uh like the nikola interview i did with trevor milton uh which wound up being part of him getting pinched um a lot of times in these interviews i just ask very basic questions and i let people talk and um if the person is doing something criminal those talks will wind up uh being evidence in a case and if they wind up doing something great those SPEAKER_29: will be legendary interviews for all of us to take notes from so there's a wild one and it's been a wild couple years in crypto and i'm glad to see crypto maybe going to this end game of accountability and then regulation and then protecting of consumers if the crypto industry wanted a different outcome they should have regulated themselves a bit more and in fairness folks like coinbase uh folks like circle they did do it by the books it seems uh and i give them credit for doing that but you don't David Friedberg: get judged as an industry based upon the best behavior of the vertical you you get judged on the SPEAKER_01: worst behavior and maybe the average over time and just a little button here on the episode going back SPEAKER_32: to tick tock real quick there was an article this morning published in the financial times china says SPEAKER_01: it firmly opposes for sale of tick tock that's fine that they firmly oppose it but reciprocation is David Friedberg: the ultimate test this did not come up in the hearings all that much the greatest way for you to intellectually come to a determination about what should happen with tick tock is first what does SPEAKER_29: china allow us to do inside of their country and with their citizens no twitter no google no facebook no instagram no snapchat no google search no youtube not allowed in china so if they don't allow us to have our social networks and our content in china why on earth would we allow them to deploy their products and services and their content and their social networks here in our country the answer is we shouldn't now we do allow the financial times we do allow uh publications uh limon from france inside David Friedberg: the united states and vice versa why because we're part of the free world and we have a fair reciprocation we can publish content we can cover news in france or germany and they can have their reporters here that's the free world the authoritarian world does not allow that it is one way they would love to have influence over our citizens and they would love to spy on our citizens with this tool but they will not allow us to do the same now let's reverse it if america could use uh i don't know instagram inside of china to spy on china if they were researching weapons of mass destruction bio weapons would you be okay with that well of course you would if we were going to use tools that we had assets inside an authoritarian country north korea iran uh china would you be okay with our spies trying to avert the invasion of taiwan uh the creation of a bio weapon the sale of nuclear materials to another authoritarian country you would be completely fine with that i think most americans would so if we would be fine spying on china with the tool that we had implemented there then we should SPEAKER_89: assume that they are doing the same and if there is no reciprocation there then we probably should not SPEAKER_45: allow them into our country india came to the same conclusion block these things a long time ago why SPEAKER_29: because they're smart and they're not in on the tape and then it took a while but i think now finally David Friedberg: our government has had enough with this and we are going to force them to sell it and divest and if they don't force people to divest it tells you exactly what you need to know because there's so much money at state that the payday is so much greater than letting it go to zero here's a quote from the chinese SPEAKER_89: commerce ministry who seems to have strong feelings on tick tock hmm forcing the sale of tick tock will seriously damage the confidence of investors from all over the world including from china on investing SPEAKER_01: in the united states china firmly opposes it so there's a threat we're not going to invest in american companies that tells you exactly what you need to know it's exactly what i said in my argument about David Friedberg: investing in china if you invest in china you're investing in a black box where the game is rigged the accounting anything can be changed and you have no recourse there's no justice system there for you to sue somebody and get your money back and china is now saber rattling oh why would anybody invest in the united states why because we're a free country with a justice system and that's what you don't have in china so you can also if you want to do a little intellectual exercise here replace china as the owner of tick tock with a more authoritarian uh regime how about iran or north korea if north korea owned tick tock would you be comfortable with north korea having access to 150 million americans phones what if we took a country uh like afghanistan uh under taliban and having al-qaeda in that country would you be okay okay with afghanistan being the owner of tick tock you can let these scenarios play out on your head as just an intellectual exercise if the taliban was running if al-qaeda was in control of afghanistan and they own tick tock how would you feel about tick tock being here in the united states you would think very differently about it right we all SPEAKER_29: would so and according to the ft beijing has installed a communist party official as a director at bite dance's main chinese entity which developed the tick tock algorithm who has the right to vote on any David Friedberg: spinoff or divestiture does it sound like a neutral company this would be the equivalent of somebody in SPEAKER_29: the biden or trump administration previously being on the board of uh facebook meta how would you feel if one of the board members at facebook could ban trump or reinstate trump this is why we separate these things uh this is not a company we want managing our kids data and this is not xenophobic this is about free uh countries in the world and democracies versus authoritarian countries and this is about national security we all could love aspects of tick tock but not want to give this gift this trojan horse to the chinese communist communist party again tick tock they use it as spinach in their country and they make it digital fentanyl for our country uh this is not something we should allow it's been SPEAKER_106: a great episode and i'll see you all tomorrow bye bye