It has become a cliché to lament that the U.S. government no longer does big, audacious things. But banning TikTok — a social media platform that roughly half of Americans use — would certainly qualify as big and audacious.
That outcome became more likely yesterday, even if it is far from assured. The Supreme Court unanimously upheld a bill that Congress passed last year forcing ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, to sell it. If ByteDance refuses, as Chinese officials have so far insisted, the app will no longer be available for downloads or updates in the U.S. as early as tomorrow.
The potential ban of a media platform as large as TikTok has little precedent. It would create inconveniences and costs for millions of Americans. Many would have to alter their daily habits, and some would lose business opportunities.
Yet allowing a Chinese company — and, by extension, the Chinese government — to control a U.S. communication platform and vast amounts of Americans’ personal data also has major downsides. Congress and the Supreme Court have decided that the risks are large enough to justify the disruption. It’s a sign of the intensity of the U.S.-China competition for global influence.
Both the boldness of the TikTok law and its bipartisan nature wouldn’t have seemed so unusual decades ago. U.S. history is full of ambitious projects whose rationale was at least partly to confront foreign adversaries, including the space program, the Interstate Highway System, the post-Sputnik investment in scientific research, and the industrial mobilization during World War II.
Forcing the sale of TikTok, or shutting it down, obviously doesn’t approach the scale of those projects. Still, it is far-reaching in its own way. It’s a big enough change that many Americans have found it hard to believe that the federal government will go through with it. And it is on the cusp of happening because a broad range of policymakers have decided the alternative is unacceptable.
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