News came last week that TikTok eclipsed both Google and Facebook as the most visited domain and most downloaded app in the United States. The mainstream media response can be summed up in this piece from CBS, which notes the news, then quotes a TikTok public policy executive. I wish I was making this up, but here’s the quote:
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As has been my practice for nearly two decades, I penned a post full of prognostications at the end of last year. As 2021 subsequently rolled by, I stashed away news items that might prove (or disprove) those predictions – knowing that this week, I’d take a look at how I did. How’d things turn out? Let’s roll the tape…
My first prediction: Disinformation becomes the most important story of the year. At the time I wrote those words, Trump’s Big Lie was only two months old, and January 6th was just another day on the calendar. A year later, that Big Lie has spawned countless others, culminating in one of the most damaging shifts in our nation’s politics since the Civil War. The Republican party is now fully captured by bullshit, and countless numbers of local, state, and national politicians are busy undermining democracy thanks to the Big Lie’s power. A significant percentage of the US population has become unmoored from truth – and an equally significant group of us have simply thrown our hands up about it. Trust is at an all time low. This Barton Gellman piece in The Atlantic served as a wake up call late in the year – and its conclusions are terrifying: “We face a serious risk that American democracy as we know it will come to an end in 2024,” Gellman quotes an observer stating. “But urgent action is not happening.” I’m not happy about getting this one right, but as far as I’m concerned, this is still the most important story of the year – and the most terrifying.
Something’s been bugging me about Tik Tok. I’ve almost downloaded it about a dozen times over the past few months. But I always stop short. I don’t have a ton of time (here’s why) so forgive me as I resort to some short form tricks here. To wit:
We on the same page so far? OK, great.
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So yes, I am planning on going to China on Saturday. My first time, I’m a bit embarrassed to say. It’s not for a lack of opportunities, but rather a conviction that when I did go, I’d make a study of it, staying for at least two weeks, if not more.
But I’ve realized lately that in the past three decades of my career-related travel, I’ve never gone anywhere for more than one week. I admit, I’ve boxed China out, because I assigned it such import, such gravitas, that I needed to justify the 15-hour flight (and its attendant biome and geospatial shock) with a commitment of time I was never able to make.
So this year, I said fuggit. I’ll go when I can go, and for however long I can go. Dip a toe, go longer later. That’s my new approach. China has been looming at the edges of my self-imposed myopia for too long; plus my kids all speak Mandarin and have traveled there frequently. WTF is wrong with me?
So six or so months ago I received, and subsequently accepted, an invitation from a partner of mine, Club de Madrid, to participate in a conference in Guangzhou. The topic could not be more newsworthy: “Advancing Reform and Opening Up: Promoting Win Win Cooperation.” I mean….Win Win? China and the US?! Right?
The plan was to come in a day before, so as to get my jet-lagged shit together, and to leave the day after, so as to be truly in true gonzo form by the time I hit my daughter’s Intermezzo concert back in New York on Weds.
But then…this. The arrest of the CFO of a major Chinese technology company is jaw dropping, both objectively, given what’s going on geopolitically, as well as from my limited and admittedly self-centric point of view. A senior executive of one of the most powerful and important companies in the Chinese data economy – who happens also to be the daughter of the company’s founder– detained in Canada at the behest of the United States. Yeah, I kind of don’t care what the arrest was for (Iranian sanctions, FWIW). This is …A. Big. Fucking. Deal.
Let’s put this another and arguably more cynical way. The Trump administration is playing high stakes poker with China so as to divert attention from its domestic dumpster fires (um, Mueller, for those not playing along at home), and it’s using the Chinese technology industry as a convenient and utterly defensible foil.
Because let’s be honest. It’s beyond believable that a company like Huawei might be in the thrall of the Chinese government. If you think that’s not a defensible statement, well, please leave your comments below, because I’ve no heard anyone I respect who studies China say otherwise.
So the stage is set.
And, by the way, why did Canada do Trump’s dirty work? That’s certainly outside the scope of my ramblings, but well worth investigation. Suffice to say, a scion of global capitalism is now in jail for geopolitical crimes, a first in the modern history of the western hemisphere, as far as I can tell. That she’s Chinese, and in Canada? Icing, folks, icing.
So this move could have been played at any time, but it’s simply perfect that it’s been rolled out now, just as the China trade tariff war has come to a boil, just as the stock markets, so beloved as a symbol of our president’s success, have been tanked by the uncertainty of the global deal between Chinese totalitarian capitalism and…well what now do we properly call the US version (Facebook capitalism? Nah. Google? Um, no. Amazon? Let’s try again….And Apple? Well, that’s complicated…Let’s just say coal capitalism, shall we! Yes, that’s it, coal!)
All of this is worth many more ponderings, and much more thinking out loud. Regardless, one thing I’m certain of: There won’t be a single senior US technology executive going to China for the next week or two, if not longer. And I’m sure simply publishing this piece will lower my odds of boarding a flight this weekend, but I must ask, out loud: Given the facts of today, would you travel to China on Saturday?
Asking for a friend.
I’ve been covering Google’s rather tortured relationship with China for more than 15 years now. The company’s off again, on again approach to the Internet’s largest “untapped” market has proven vexing, but as today’s Intercept scoop informs us, it looks like Google has yielded to its own growth imperative, and will once again stand up its search services for the Chinese market. To wit:
GOOGLE IS PLANNING to launch a censored version of its search engine in China that will blacklist websites and search terms about human rights, democracy, religion, and peaceful protest, The Intercept can reveal.
The project – code-named Dragonfly – has been underway since spring of last year, and accelerated following a December 2017 meeting between Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai and a top Chinese government official, according to internal Google documents and people familiar with the plans.
If I’m reading story correctly, it looks like Google’s China plans, which were kept secret from nearly all of the company’s employees, were leaked to The Intercept by concerned members of Google’s internal “Dragonfly” team, one of whom was quoted:
“I’m against large companies and governments collaborating in the oppression of their people, and feel like transparency around what’s being done is in the public interest,” the source said, adding that they feared “what is done in China will become a template for many other nations.”
This news raises any number of issues – for Google, certainly, but given the US/China trade war, for anyone concerned with the future of free trade and open markets. And it revives an age old question about where the line is between “respecting the rule of law in markets where we operate,” a standard tech company response to doing business on foreign soil, and “enabling authoritarian rule,” which is pretty much what Google will be doing should it actually launch the Dragonfly app.
A bit of history. Google originally refused to play by China’s rules, and in my 2004 book, I reviewed the history, and gave the company props for taking a principled stand, and forsaking what could have been massive profits in the name of human rights. Then, in 2006, Google decided to enter the Chinese market, on government terms. Google took pains to explain its logic:
We ultimately reached our decision by asking ourselves which course would most effectively further Google’s mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally useful and accessible. Or, put simply: how can we provide the greatest access to information to the greatest number of people?
I didn’t buy that explanation then, and I don’t buy it now. Google is going into China for one reason, and one reason alone: Profits. As Google rolled out its service in 2006, I penned something of a rant, titled “Never Poke A Dragon While It’s Eating.” In it I wrote:
The Chinese own a shitload of our debt, and are consuming a shitload of the world’s export base of oil. As they consolidate their power, do you really believe they’re also planning parades for us? I’m pretty sure they’ll be celebrating decades of US policy that looked the other way while the oligarchy used our technology (and that includes our routers, databases, and consulting services) to meticulously undermine the very values which allowed us to create companies like Google in the first place. But those are not the kind of celebrations I’m guessing we’d be invited to.
So as I puzzle through this issue, understanding how in practical terms it’s really not sensible to expect that some GYMA pact is going to change the world (as much as I might wish it would), it really, honestly, comes down to one thing: The man in the White House.
Until the person leading this country values human rights over appeasement, and decides to lead on this issue, we’re never going to make any progress.
Google pulled out of China in 2010, using a China-backed hacking incident as its main rationale (remember that?!). The man in the White House was – well let’s just say he wasn’t Bush, nor Clinton, and he wasn’t Trump. In any case, the hacking incident inconveniently reminded Google that the Chinese government has no qualms about using data derived from Google services to target its own citizens.
Has the company forgotten that fact? One wonders. Back in 2010, I praised the company for standing up to China:
In this case, Google is again taking a leadership role, and the company is forcing China’s hand. While it’s a stretch to say the two things are directly connected, the seeming fact that China’s government was behind the intrusions has led Google to decide to stop censoring its results in China. This is politics at its finest, and it’s a very clear statement to China: We’re done playing the game your way.
Seems Google’s not done after all. Which is both sad, and utterly predictable. Sad, because in today’s political environment, we need our companies to lead on moral and human rights issues. And predictable, because Android has a massive hold on China’s internet market, and Google’s lack of a strong search play there threatens not only the company’s future growth in its core market, but its ability to leverage Android across all its services, just as it has in Europe and the United States.
Google so far has not made a statement on The Intercept’s story, though I imagine smoke is billowing out of some communications war room inside the company’s Mountain View headquarters. Will the company attempt some modified version of its 2006 justifications? I certainly hope not. This time, I’d counsel, the company should just tell the truth: Google is a public company that feels compelled to grow, regardless of whether that growth comes at a price to its founding values. Period, end of story.
I’ll end with another quote from that 2006 “Don’t Poke a Dragon” piece:
…companies like Yahoo and Google don’t traffic in sneakers, they traffic in the most powerful forces in human culture – expression. Knowledge. Ideas. The freedom of which we take as fundamental in this country, yet somehow, we seem to have forgotten its importance in the digital age – in China, one protesting email can land you in jail for 8 years, folks.
…Congress can call hearings, and beat up Yahoo, Google and the others for doing what everyone else is doing, but in the end, it’s not (Google’s) fault, nor, as much as I wish they’d take it on, is it even their problem. It’s our government’s problem….Since when is China policy somehow the job of private industry?
Until that government gives (the tech industry) a China policy it can align behind, well, they’ll never align, and the very foundation of our culture – free expression and privacy, will be imperiled.
After all, the Chinese leaders must be thinking, as they snack on our intellectual property, we’re only protecting our citizens in the name of national security.
Twelve years of making predictions doesn’t make writing them any easier, regardless of my relatively good showing in 2015. In fact, I briefly considered taking the year off – who am I to make predictions anyway? And so much has changed in the past few years – for me personally, and certainly for the industries to which I pay the most attention. But the rigor of thinking about the year ahead is addictive – it provides a framework for my writing, and a snapshot of what I find fascinating and noteworthy. And given that more than 125,000 of you read my post summarizing how I did in 2015 (thanks Medium and LinkedIn!), it was really you who’ve encouraged me to have at it again for 2016. I hope you’ll find these thought provoking, at the very least, and worthy of comment or debate, should you be so inclined.
So let’s get to it.
(image) Yesterday I finished reading Larry Lessig’s updated 1999 classic, Code v2. I’m five years late to the game, as the book was updated in 2006 by Lessig and a group of fans and readers (I tried to read the original in 1999, but I found myself unable to finish it. Something to do with my hair being on fire for four years running…). In any event, no sooner had I read the final page yesterday when this story breaks:
Sina, Tencent Shut Down Commenting on Microblogs (WSJ)
In an odd coincidence, late last night I happened to share a glass of wine with a correspondent for the Economist who is soon to be reporting from Shanghai. Of course this story came up, and an interesting discussion ensued about the balance one must strike to cover business in a country like China. Essentially, it’s the same balance any Internet company must strike as it attempts to do business there: Try to enable conversation, while at the same time regulating that conversation to comply with the wishes of a mercurial regime.
Those of us who “grew up” in Internet version 1.0 have a core belief in the free and open exchange of ideas, one unencumbered by regulation. We also tend to think that the Internet will find a way to “route around” bad law – and that what happens in places like China or Iran will never happen here.
But as Lessig points out quite forcefully in Code v2, the Internet is, in fact, one of the most “regulable” technologies ever invented, and it’s folly to believe that only regimes like China will be drawn toward leveraging the control it allows. In addition, it need not be governments that create these regulations, it could well be the platforms and services we’ve come to depend on instead. And while those services and platforms might never be as aggressive as China or Iran, they are already laying down the foundation for a slow erosion of values many of us take for granted. If we don’t pay attention, we may find ourselves waking up one morning and asking…Well, How Did I Get Here?
More on all of this soon, as I’m in the midst of an interview (via email) with Lessig on these subjects. Once I’ll post the dialog here once we’re done.
(image) Waaaay back in January of this year, in my annual predictions, I offered a conjecture that seemed pretty orthogonal to my usual focus:
“China will be caught spying on US corporations, especially tech and commodity companies. Somewhat oddly, no one will (seem to) care.”
Well, I just got this WSJ news alert, which reports:
Using seven passwords stolen from top Nortel executives, including the chief executive, the hackers—who appeared to be working in China—penetrated Nortel’s computers at least as far back as 2000 and over the years downloaded technical papers, research-and-development reports, business plans, employee emails and other documents.
The hackers also hid spying software so deeply within some employees’ computers that it took investigators years to realize the pervasiveness of the problem.
Now, before I trumpet my prognosticative abilities too loudly, let’s see if … anybody cares. At all. And if you’re wondering why I even bothered to make such a prediction, well, it’s because I think it’s going to prove important….eventually.
