OPINION:
In May, Microsoft, which has one of the largest presences in China of any U.S. corporation, asked 700 or so of its employees to consider moving out of China to continue their work.
The employees worked on chips for machine learning and artificial intelligence products, and the company has said it is responding to pressure from the U.S. government to protect American defense technology from Chinese infiltration but will otherwise continue to do business in China.
The threat is real: China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law compels companies operating in China to store data within China, effectively prohibits them from encrypting information and imposes other requirements that threaten U.S. security.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, this requirement exposes the data of any American business operating in China to potential exploitation and theft.
In other words, Microsoft is pulling out a few of the tens of thousands of employees from China because it knows it can’t overcome security vulnerabilities. Indeed, last summer, vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s software allowed Chinese hackers to access the emails of U.S. government officials. But for the nearly 7,000 Microsoft employees not working on these highly sensitive projects, it’s business as usual.
Now consider TikTok. It has nothing to do with artificial intelligence or machine learning or military technology of any kind. It is a social media app used by people all over the world for everything from information on crop rotation to the thousands of videos of people dancing to Taylor Swift’s music.
But it was TikTok, whose security concerns amount to “so what if the Chinese wanted to spy on the truck farmers and Taylor Swift dancers,” that got banned. And Microsoft, which has proved — and is now admitting through its request for workers to decamp that it can’t protect itself from Chinese spying on sensitive military projects —and has been banned by the China hawks in Congress continues to do business as usual.
For that matter, where is Sen. Joni Ernst, the Iowa Republican who pushed for the TikTok ban but continues to support Microsoft’s operations in China when it is Microsoft’s operation that has had real, serious and documented problems with Chinese spying? Why does she continue to push for a TikTok ban when Walmart, the largest retailer in the world and the largest U.S. employer with 1.6 million on its payroll and operates more than 400 stores in China? That number doesn’t even come close to the number of Americans who shop at Walmart.
Why isn’t Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the second-ranking Republican in the House, more concerned about Walmart’s enormous presence in China than that of a social media company? Could it be because the company is a donor to Mr. Scalise and Louisiana’s largest private employer?
Moreover, in 2018, Mr. Scalise credited Republicans’ efforts to roll back taxes in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act with playing an essential part in Walmart’s decision to give $13.7 million in bonuses to its more than 37,000 Louisiana employees. Did those tax cuts also benefit Walmart’s China operations? Did Mr. Scalise ask?
The answer is likely no. Lawmakers seem more concerned about the apps on Americans’ phones than where the actual phones are bought or made.
Apple now asserts that more than half the smartphones in the U.S. are made in China. In March, its CEO, Tim Cook, traveled to China to meet with its suppliers and declared, “There’s no supply chain in the world that’s more critical to us than China.”
As The New York Times has reported, Apple has a long record of compromising with the Chinese government to operate there, including storing Chinese customers’ personal data on Chinese state-owned computer servers.
Some Republicans have been even more blatant in their political posturing on a TikTok ban. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida urged President Biden’s campaign to delete its TikTok account back in February but said nothing when former President Donald Trump’s campaign joined TikTok in June. If Mr. Rubio believes Mr. Biden should not be on TikTok but it’s OK for Mr. Trump, then we can surmise that Mr. Rubio does not consider TikTok an actual threat, and neither must Mr. Trump, who is known for being tough on China.
If Republicans are serious about protecting Americans’ data from China, fine. Pass a comprehensive federal data privacy law and enforce it. But this is not a serious effort; this is playing politics. Data privacy is not dependent on one company; Americans can’t afford for lawmakers to pretend it is.
• Brian McNicoll is a freelance writer based in Alexandria, Virginia, a former senior writer for The Heritage Foundation and a former director of communications for the House Oversight Committee.
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