These days, the TikTok hearing held by the US Congress told the world a story of "Wolf and Lamb":
The wolf wanted to eat the lamb drinking water by the stream, and found an excuse to say that the lamb had polluted the water he drank, but he completely ignored the fact that he was upstream and the lamb was downstream.
This sentence is also the best portrayal of this TikTok hearing.
But unlike the fable story, the story is about the crisis of the lamb, but in reality, it is a crisis of the wolf — — TikTok has 150 million monthly active users in the United States, most of whom are young people.
According to America’s own survey data, this group of people are more likely to distrust the American government than to distrust TikTok.
If TikTok is banned, the US government is almost against "half of the United States". Even US Commerce Secretary Raymond himself admits, "My political feeling tells me that this move will cause us to lose all voters under 35, forever."
TikTok incident, originally a crisis directed and performed by wolves, ended up hurting itself — — This incident has turned into a wolf crisis and a crisis of trust of the American government.
This hearing is the climax of the recent encirclement and suppression of TikTok by the US Congress.
In fact, this ban drama is not the first time.
A few years ago, the then US President Trump tried to "solve" TikTok quickly by means of a presidential executive order, but he did not want to be caught in a legal loophole and was finally rejected by the federal judge who accepted the case.
The Biden administration learned the "lesson" from the previous administration and decided to move the Congress out — — Pass legislation to authorize the government to take action.
The White House+Congress, using the "whole government" to suppress China, is a distinctive feature of Biden’s strategic competition with China. The extermination of TikTok is just one of the evil moves.
Therefore, this hearing was held.
"This is a hearing that cannot be won." This sentence is the judgment of the American media Bloomberg report before the TikTok hearing.
Zhang Tengjun, who has studied the US Congress for a long time, told Tan Zhu,According to the original intention of American system design, the hearing should play the role of providing basis for decision-making, that is, it should listen to suggestions extensively, balance the opinions of pros and cons, provide public consultation for policy formulation, and serve as a reference for congressional legislation.
Balance is one of the biggest characteristics of the hearing.
Under normal circumstances, representatives of multiple stakeholders need to be invited to the hearing. Take this hearing as an example, Congress should not only invite the heads of TikTok enterprises, but also invite young Americans who use TikTok and interest groups related to TikTok, such as some business entities extending above TikTok.
The data shows that there are 5 million American corporate users on TikTok, most of whom are small and medium-sized enterprises. This also means that banning TikTok will damage a large number of enterprises and individuals who make a living with this APP.
Did the American government hear these voices of the American people?
In addition, banning TikTok will affect the normal life of more Americans.
As can be seen from this picture, a large number of Americans use TikTok as an online shopping platform, and there is a trend of further growth.
Did the American government hear these voices of the American people?
According to Washington post poll data, 83% of TikTok’s daily users do not support the ban.
Did the American government hear these voices of the American people?
What does the U.S. government want to do at the expense of the interests of the people? Judging from the hearing, most American politicians used the phrase "data security".
A lawyer familiar with American law told Tan Zhu,There is currently no federal data security law passed in the United States. A large part of the reason is that large American technology giants are unwilling to be regulated, and they keep lobbying, which makes it more difficult to legislate for data security.
There is no data security law, but "data security" is promoted every day. These rules and concepts in the United States are like the emperor’s new clothes.
Recently, Tan Zhu has been doing the program # Americans reveal America #, and also met a predecessor of Snowden. She saw the truth earlier than Snowden, and even saw many things that Snowden could not see.
The former US National Security Agency official named Karen Kvyatkovski also told a truth:
American politicians are very concerned about software backdoors, and they want to have access to all programs developed in the United States. Before all kinds of software and operating systems were released to the public, the US Security Agency had been involved.
Obviously, data security is not a topic of concern to US lawmakers, so what do they care about?
We reviewed and combed the hearing and found more intriguing details.
By 18: 30 p.m. on March 25th, the total number of videos related to the hearing had reached 34.4 million on TikTok, and we found that 80% of them were poking fun at the performance of US congressmen at the hearing.
This situation is mainly due to the questions raised by two Members.
Richard Hudson, a Republican congressman from North Carolina, asked at the hearing, can TikTok access home WiFi (wireless network)?
Another Republican congressman, Earl Buddy Carter from Georgia, asked at the hearing whether TikTok was tracking the user’s pupil activity through the mobile phone camera.
Such questions have also made the American people feel humiliated.
For these two members aged 51 and 65, some technical problems may really be incomprehensible. Obviously, they will not be TikTok users. In this case, why do you want to attend this hearing?
A detail at the meeting pointed out the real purpose of this hearing:
According to the regulations, each member has five minutes to ask questions, but many members use these five minutes to explain their positions, leaving no time for TikTok enterprise leaders to answer. Even when the head of TikTok Enterprise said that this question was very important and needed to be answered, these lawmakers were still talking about it.
Many Members have repeated what they usually advocate at the hearing.. They used the hearing as a platform to announce their political stance.
Richard Hudson and Earl Buddy Carter are such people.
During the Beijing Winter Olympics last year, Hudson made a "tirade" about the threat of China, and declared that China’s technology and economy constituted the greatest threat to the United States. Earl Carter also listed China as one of the biggest threats to the United States in media interviews.
Because of this, they can ask such a "stupid" question at the hearing.
Congressional hearings originally assumed the public education function of introducing American democratic procedures. American lawmakers hope to send a message to the American people by broadcasting this kind of hearing live — — How American democracy works and how American policies are brewed and produced.
But now, the hearing system has increasingly deviated from its original intention.
Not only members, but also various groups in the US Congress are aggravating this "derailment".
There are still many problems in the internal structure of the US Congress, and there are overlapping jurisdictions. Once a topic crosses many fields, all committees want to get involved, especially in the case of TikTok, which may have a great political and social impact, all committees want to take the initiative, so that they can continuously mix their own political interests in the follow-up process.
At this hearing, the Energy and Commerce Committee of the House of Representatives won the first place among many committees.
In order to pay more attention to the hearing, these congressional groups have taken great pains in the types of hearing topics, the choice of witnesses, the agenda setting, and even the organization of the hearing.
Zhang Tengjun also summarized the routine of the hearing in recent years:
Create an occasion where many members of Congress face a certain enterprise, an entity or a certain person together, thus creating a huge sensation visually, thereby arousing widespread concern of public opinion in the United States and even in the world.
Only in this way can the hearings organized by these congressional groups have enough topics and gimmicks, and can they amplify their voices and expand their influence.
At the same time, the two parties in the US Congress are increasingly inclined to use hearings as a tool to satisfy the self-interest of a certain party.
Since most Americans do not support banning TikTok, the Democratic Party in charge of the White House needs to consider people’s wishes. The Republican Party is precisely holding the Democratic Party’s unwillingness to disobey voters. With the control of the House of Representatives, it is hard to promote the result of "blocking" TikTok by the Democratic Party at the hearing. Republicans want Democrats to shoot themselves in the foot.
The hearing system has increasingly become a large-scale political performance show. On the "show", American politicians danced wildly for "ratings" and "exposure".
Such an operation, the first impact is the American people’s trust in the US government.
The public trust of the American legislature is not high all the year round, sometimes even more than 20%. In recent years, due to the infighting between the two parties, many bills involving the interests of the American public could not be passed, which further aggravated the distrust of the American people.
This vicious circle reminds Tan of the recent Silicon Valley bank incident. This incident reflects not only the American people’s distrust of the government, but also other countries’ distrust of the US debt and the US dollar.
This is not surprising. How can a government that lives in the cold war mentality and only wants to suppress and harvest other countries and ignore the interests of its own people be trusted?
Once trust is lost, it is difficult to get it back.