TikTok, imperialism, and the end of internet utopianism
This ban marks the death of Silicon Valley ideology - and that's a good
thing.
Yasha Levine
Aug 3
You've probably heard about this whole TikTok business. Donald Trump has
given the company 45 days to either sell itself to an American firm or be
banished from our borders. So it looks like TikTok is going to be forced to
sell to a bunch of drooling Silicon Valley oligarchs for pennies on the
dollar. "Nice viral app you got there, kid. Would be a shame if something
were to happen to it. Hey, we just want to help out!"
A bipartisan War With China campaign has been building for quite a while
now, so something like this ban was just a matter of time. What's incredible
is how many influential people on the prog-left are cheering it on.
Ryan Grim @ryangrim
@DougHenwood US should ban TikTok in the US is my point.
August 3rd 2020
1 Retweet50 Likes
Ryan has gone full pro-empire and is totally onboard with Donald. But I
guess it shouldn't be surprising.
There's coaliton of prog-type journalists and political activists in DC -
many of them centered around The Intercept and Matt Stoller's elite-driven
antitrust movement - that's been pushing for a clash with China. Many of
them, like Ryan and Matt, really believe that China is a "new Nazi Germany"
- which to me is code for "we must go to war with China" to protect the free
world. What other response to can there be to a new Nazi Germany, right?
The Bulletin, 1886
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I'm going to write something longer about the politics surrounding the
TikTok ban as the story evolves, but I want to get a few quick thoughts down
on paper now.
To me the most interesting part of this ban is that it marks the death of
Silicon Valley ideology - and that's a good thing.
From the start of the dot com boom, Silicon Valley and America's political
elite has done a great job of marketing the Internet as a totally new type
of technology - a utopian system that's removed from American imperial and
business interests. Google? Facebook? Apple? eBay? These companies aren't
extensions of American imperial power. No way! They're neutral technological
platforms involved in connecting and empowering people. They're serving
users with digital democracy, regardless of their nationality or politics.
They're post-ideological and post-historical!
For a long time a lot of people believed this sales pitch. Even Silicon
Valley bought into its own hype.
Of course, this idea of technological neutrality was itself extremely
ideological and underpinned by massive historical revisionism. As I show in
book Surveillance Valley, the Internet has always been an instrument of
American economic and military power. The Internet has always been a weapon
- ever since it was developed by Pentagon in the 1960s and then unleashed on
the world in early 1990s.
This ban of TikTok proves my point.
But there's something bigger going on, too. It shows once again that no one
really believes in Silicon Valley global utopianism anymore.
Read reporting on the issue and you'll find that a kind of paranoid
realpolitik prevails these days. No one talks about the Internet being a
post-political platform. Now it's all about how technology can be weaponized
by a rival power againstAmerican interests. If an Internet company is
Chinese, it naturally must be an extension of Chinese national power. If a
company is Russian, the Russian government must be benefitting from its use
somehow. And if a company is American - like Google or Facebook - it of
course must pledge allegiance to American imperial interests. And Google and
Facebook publicly agree.
The logic makes a lot of sense - and represents the hard reality that has
always underpinned information technology. But what's surprising is that is
also represents a total reversal in American political culture.
From the moment that computer networking emerged in consumer culture,
everyone believed in openness. It was a fundamental religious tenet of the
Information Age. From Al Gore to Newt Gingrich to Wired magazine - the
consensus was that open networks, like open markets and free trade, would
create a new global order.
This is a short version of a longer piece only available to subscribers -
read it here.
-Yasha Levine
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