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      ‘Time is not on our side’: Congress panel says tackling China defines next century

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      ‘Time is not on our side’: Congress panel says tackling China defines next century‘We do not want a war within the PRC, a clash of civilizations,’ says ranking Democrat as new committee holds first hearingThe US Congress must act urgently to counter the economic and national security threats posed by the Chinese government, a bipartisan chorus of lawmakers on a newly created special House committee has warned during an inaugural, primetime hearing.The two superpowers were locked in an “existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st century”, the committee’s Republican chairman, Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, said as the rivalry between the US and China deepens.With democracy advocates and protesters in attendance, the panel – formally the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party – began its work at a precarious moment for US-China relations. It comes weeks after a suspected Chinese spy balloon traversed the continental US and amid intelligence that Beijing is considering providing lethal weapons to aid Russia in its war against Ukraine.Some politicians seem comfortable with the prospect of a new cold war. They shouldn’t be | Christopher S ChivvisRead moreMeanwhile, China’s militarization and aggression toward Taiwan, a self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own, as well as its response to the coronavirus pandemic, have further escalated tensions.Underscoring the broad range of challenges the panel hopes to address, lawmakers peppered the witnesses with questions on human rights abuses, trade policies, the influence of TikTok, aggression in Taiwan, the origins of Covid-19 and international espionage.Gallagher hopes the committee will help shape China policy and legislation that can win support from both parties. But with the 2024 presidential campaign looming, and Republicans eager to paint Joe Biden as “weak on China”, the possibility of bipartisan action is likely to become increasingly narrow.“Time is not on our side,” he said, imploring a bitterly divided Congress to come together to confront China. “Our policy over the next 10 years will set the stage for the next hundred.”Illinois congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi, the ranking Democrat on the panel, echoed Gallagher’s sense of urgency. He said Democrats and Republicans had for years “underestimated” the Chinese government, believing that economic integration would “inevitably lead to democracy”. But it did not and now the US needed to move quickly to pursue economic and trade policies that would “up our game” as Americans to compete with China.“We do not want a war within the PRC,” he said, referring to the People’s Republic of China, “not a cold war, not a hot war. We don’t want a clash of civilizations.”The hours-long proceeding ​offered a rare display of cross-party unity in a​n​ otherwise bitterly divided Congress​. It featured two former advisers to Donald Trump: former national security adviser HR McMaster and former deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger, a China expert who resigned after the January 6 attack on the Capitol.Offering a sweeping overview of China’s rise, Pottinger said the success of the Chinese Communist party (CCP) at presenting itself as “responsible” and “normal” was “one of the great magic tricks of the modern era”.“You could say the CCP is the Harry Houdini of Marxist-Leninist regimes; the David Copperfield of Communism; the Criss Angel of autocracy,” he said “But the magic is fading.”McMaster said the US and western leaders were guilty of decades of “wishful thinking and self-delusion” in its efforts to integrate China into the international system. But he expressed optimism that the panel’s work could help lay the groundwork in Washington to “rebuild America’s and the free world’s competitive advantage”.Pentagon releases selfie of US pilot flying above Chinese spy balloonRead moreThe panel met in the same chandeliered room where the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol held its hearings. In the audience were Hong Kong pro-democracy activists as well as anti-war protesters who interrupted the proceedings, with one yelling “this committee is about saber-rattling, it’s not about peace” as he was removed from the hearing room.Several members remarked on the interference, noting that the right to protest was a hallmark of American democracy and a freedom not afforded to those in China.Highlighting human rights concerns will be a major focus of the panel. On Tuesday, the panel heard compelling testimony from Tong Yi, a human rights activist who was the former secretary to one of China’s leading dissidents, Wei Jingsheng. Yi told how she was arrested and detained by the CCP in the 1990s. After spending nine months in a detention center she was charged with “disturbing social order” and sentenced to two-and-a-half years in a labor camp.“In the US, we need to face the fact that we have helped feed the baby dragon of the CCP until it has grown into what it now is,” she said.The committee also heard from Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, who argued that the US dependency on China has had a crushing impact on American workers and wages. “While conflict with China isn’t inevitable, fierce economic competition is,” he said.On Capitol Hill, a bipartisan consensus has emerged around measures banning TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media app, bills barring Chinese citizens and companies from purchasing land near sensitive military sites, and efforts to limit US exports and technology trade to China. But there are also sharp divisions.Republicans continue to assail Biden over his response to the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon, which was downed by the US military after it sailed across North America.​Asked during the hearing what message China hoped to send with the balloon, McMaster said he believed it was likely a “metaphor for the massive effort at espionage” Beijing is carrying out around the world. China has denied the airship was used for spying, ​​claiming that it was a civilian aircraft blown off course​.Meanwhile, revelations that the US energy department concluded with “low confidence” that the Covid-19 pandemic was the result of a lab leak in China has inflamed anew a partisan debate over the virus’s origins. Officials in Washington have said that US agencies are not in agreement over the virus’s origins.Critics of the panel have raised concerns that heated rhetoric casting China as the US’s enemy would amplify anti-Asian sentiment amid a surge in hate incidents. Addressing those fears directly, Krishnamoorthi would avoid “anti-Chinese or Asian stereotyping at all costs”.“We must recognize that the CCP wants us to be fractious, partisan and prejudiced – in fact, the CCP hopes for it,” he said.Earlier on Tuesday, the House foreign affairs committee held a hearing focused on countering the rising national security threats posed by China. Testifying before the panel, Daniel Kritenbrink, US assistant secretary of state for east Asian and Pacific affairs, said China represented “our most consequential geopolitical challenge”.Joan E Greve contributed to this reportTopicsUS foreign policyChinaUS politicsAsia PacificCoronavirusnewsReuse this content More

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      Covid-19 likely emerged from laboratory leak, US energy department says

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      Covid-19 likely emerged from laboratory leak, US energy department saysUpdated finding a departure from previous studies on how the virus emerged and comes with ‘low confidence’The virus which drove the Covid-19 pandemic most likely emerged from a laboratory leak but not as part of a weapons program, according to an updated and classified 2021 US energy department study provided to the White House and senior American lawmakers, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.The department’s finding – a departure from previous studies on how the virus emerged – came in an update to a document from the office of National Intelligence director Avril Haines. It follows an FBI finding, issued with “moderate confidence”, that the virus spread after leaking out of a Chinese laboratory.The conclusion from the energy department – which oversees a network of 17 US laboratories, including areas of advanced biology – is considered significant despite the fact that, as the report said, the agency made its updated judgment with “low confidence”.Conflicting hypotheses on the origins of Covid-19 have centered either on an unidentified animal transmitting the virus to humans or its accidental leak from a Chinese research laboratory in Wuhan.The spread of Covid-19, just one in a line of infectious coronoviruses to emerge, caught global health bodies unawares in early 2020. It has since caused close to 7 million deaths worldwide, according to the World Health Organization, and disrupted trade as well as travel.Former US president Donald Trump politicized the issue, calling it the “China virus”, triggering a racialization of a pandemic that his Democratic successor Joe Biden has sought to avoid. But political polarization remains under the surface of efforts to establish its origins.The energy department’s updated findings run counter to reports by four other US intelligence agencies that concluded the epidemic started as the result of natural transmission from an infected animal. Two agencies remain undecided.US officials, the Journal said, also declined to expand on new intelligence or analysis that led the energy department to change its position. They also noted that the energy department and FBI arrived at the same conclusion for different reasons.The CIA remains undecided between leak and natural transmission theories, according to the National Intelligence Council study. But while the initial 2021 report did not reach a conclusion, it did offer a consensus view that Covid-19 was not part of a Chinese biological weapons program.The National Security adviser, Jake Sullivan, acknowledged Sunday that there are a “variety of views” within US intelligence agencies on the issue.“Some elements of the intelligence community have reached conclusions on one side, some on the other, and a number have said they just don’t have enough information to be sure,” Sullivan told CNN.But he said that the Biden administration has “directed repeatedly every element of our intelligence community to put effort and resources on getting to the bottom of this question”.Sullivan added that Biden had specifically requested that the National Laboratories under the energy department be brought into the assessment. “He wants to put every tool at use to figure out what happened,” Sullivan said.“Right now there is not a definitive answer to emerge from the intelligence community on this question,” he added, referring to eight of 18 agencies – along with the National Intelligence Council – that have looked in Covid-19s origins.A previous report by the energy department’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in May 2020 concluded that a lab-leak theory was plausible.The updated, five-page NIC assessment, the Journal reported, “was done in light of new intelligence, further study of academic literature and consultation with experts outside government” and comes as Republicans in Congress press for more information.A spokesperson for the energy department wrote in a statement that the agency “continues to support the thorough, careful, and objective work of our intelligence professionals in investigating the origins of Covid-19, as the president directed”.Chinese officials have disputed that Covid-19 could have leaked from its labs, among them the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, (CDC) and the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products.According to the initial US 2021 intelligence report, Covid-19 first circulated in Wuhan, China, no later than November 2019, when three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology – reportedly involved in coronavirus research – were sick enough to seek hospital care.TopicsCoronavirusUS politicsChinaAsia PacificBiden administrationnewsReuse this content More

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      Competitor or adversary? The west struggles to define its relationship with Beijing

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      Competitor or adversary? The west struggles to define its relationship with BeijingChina, the US’s most vital trade partner and its main long-term competitor, presents the country with a sticky ‘pacing challenge’ If you want to solve a problem, it helps to be able to define it, but when it comes to a problem like China, western leaders have been struggling to find the right words.Liz Truss sought to designate China as a “threat” to Britain, but did not stay prime minister long enough for that to become established policy. Her successor, Rishi Sunak, has opted for the less combative “systemic challenge” but he is under pressure from backbench MPs to follow Truss’s path and call Beijing a “strategic threat”.Sunak has made clear he does not want the UK to be out of step with its allies on the issue, most importantly the US. In Washington, meanwhile, China designation is a delicate and evolving art.China ‘spy balloon’ wakes up world to new era of war at edge of spaceRead moreThe delicacy was apparent when a Chinese balloon sailed over the continental US earlier this month. The US declared the high-altitude airship and its payload to be designed for spying and shot it down once it was safely over the Atlantic. The secretary of state, Antony Blinken, cancelled a long-planned trip to Beijing to address bilateral tensions, but at the same time stressed that channels of communication would be kept open and that the US remained keen on a meeting when conditions allowed. Blinken may meet his counterpart, Wang Yi, as soon as this week, at the Munich security conference.The theme of US-China policy towards the end of the Trump administration was an all-encompassing decoupling, in which China was presented in mostly adversarial terms. Joe Biden has preferred to talk about “stiff competition”. His administration’s national defence strategy paper deemed Russia to be an “acute threat” while China was portrayed as the US’s only long-term “competitor”. In recent weeks, the official catchphrase for Beijing has been the slightly nebulous “pacing challenge”, suggesting the US is the world’s constant frontrunner with China ever closer to its shoulder.The problem with categorising China is that there are multiple aspects to its global role as it expands its presence on the world stage. For that reason, Democratic senator Chris Murphy has warned against digging up old cold war rhetoric.“You can’t use the terminology that we used for our conflict with the Soviet Union for our conflict with China,” Murphy told Foreign Policy. “It is apples and oranges. We had virtually no trade relationship with the Soviet Union. Our most vital trade relationship is with China. So I do worry about a bunch of Cold Warriors and Cold War enthusiasts thinking that you can run a competition with China like you ran a competition with the Soviet Union. It’s not the same thing.”With this in mind, Blinken has adopted a Swiss army penknife multi-tooled approach that is “competitive when it should be, collaborative when it can be and adversarial when it must be.”Washington is acutely aware that it has been complacent in its competition with China for global clout, having assumed that better US technology and its democratic model would win the day, only to find that African countries and other parts of the global south were sitting on their hands when the US called for support in the UN general assembly. Last year an old Pacific ally, Solomon Islands, signed a security pact with Beijing, denying entry to a US Coast Guard cutter not long after.The Biden administration now plans to beef up its diplomatic presence in the Pacific, reopening some shuttered missions. It has set up a “China house” in the state department to coordinate analysis and help counter China’s message around the world. On Wednesday, the deputy secretary of state, Wendy Sherman, summed up the new US approach as Washington takes on the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the contest for hearts and minds in emerging economies.“It is not to say that the PRC can’t invest or that you should toss them out,” Sherman said at the Brookings Institution. Instead, she said the message will be: “Have your eyes wide open”.“Understand what you’re getting, understand what rules apply, what the norms are. Give us a chance, see what we have to offer. Let us compete and help you develop as a country in the ways that you choose,” Sherman said.As for collaboration with China, she said there was little choice other than to work with Beijing to address the climate emergency.“There is no doubt that we cannot meet the climate challenge without engagement with the PRC,” Sherman said. “It’s just not possible because we are both such large emitters and historic emitters.”At the same time, there are plenty of fields in which the US and China are adversaries. The balloon affair has just added another layer to a constant, escalating intelligence struggle between the two powers, in which Beijing has scored some remarkable successes in recent years, stealing designs for the F-35 fighter jet for example. Chinese hackers also stole the personal details of 22 million federal workers – current, former and prospective.Fears of China’s technological capabilities led Biden to introduce draconian export restrictions on semiconductors in October of last year, in an effort to strangle China’s microchip sector. It came close to an economic declaration of war, but Republicans in Congress are still trying to depict him as “soft on China”, calling on him to ban the TikTok app as a threat to national security. Some red states are considering bans on Chinese nationals buying land.It is in the military arena of course where the stakes are the highest and the risks of a competitive relationship becoming adversarial are greatest. Last week, the Pentagon informed Congress that China now had more missile silos than the US. It was an eye-catching claim, though most of the silos are empty and the US retains a substantial superiority in submarine and airborne launchers. China is estimated by the Federation of American Scientists to have 350 nuclear warheads. Even if that number tripled, as the Pentagon predicts it will, it will still be less than a fifth of the US stockpile.China’s long-term threat will depend ultimately on whether it is developing its military clout simply to deter or to attack, across the Taiwan Strait in particular. At the end of January, the head of US Air Mobility Command, Gen Mike Minihan, told other officers that his “gut” told him the US and China would be at war by 2025. It was an estimate quickly disowned by the rest of the Pentagon leadership, who shied away from such expressions of inevitability.US officials say that Xi Jinping is watching Russia’s military debacle in Ukraine with concern and maybe recalibrating his options. Opinions differ within the administration on how seriously Xi takes his pledge to reunite China, another reason it has wavered over the right terminology.There is agreement for now however that repeatedly deeming China to be a threat risks making matters worse, shaping policy in such a way that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.TopicsChinaUS foreign policyBiden administrationUS politicsAsia PacificXi JinpingfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Kevin Rudd: Australia’s incoming ambassador to US says balloon saga threatens push to ease tensions with China

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      Kevin Rudd: Australia’s incoming ambassador to US says balloon saga threatens push to ease tensions with ChinaFormer Labor prime minister says incident has created ‘diplomatic clouds’ that may overshadow efforts to stabilise relationship The incoming Australian ambassador to the United States, Kevin Rudd, has warned the Chinese balloon saga has created new “diplomatic clouds” that put at risk recent efforts to ease tensions between Beijing and Washington.In a speech in Brisbane on Wednesday, Rudd also warned against expecting any “softening in China’s ideological cleavage with the west”.Rudd, a former Labor prime minister who remains as president of the Asia Society until late next month, emphasised that he was offering “personal reflections” which “do not represent the views of the Australian government”.But given he is due to take up his diplomatic posting within weeks, Rudd’s views are likely to attract attention in Washington and Beijing.UK rehearsing economic fallout scenarios if China invades TaiwanRead moreDelivering the inaugural China Matters Oration at the University of Queensland, Rudd reiterated his view that “we are now indeed living in what I have called the decade of living dangerously”.He said the Chinese Communist party appeared to have abruptly changed course on Covid-19 policy because it “feared that not doing so would threaten its unofficial social contract with the Chinese people”.It also worried that a structural slowdown in growth could undermine China’s long-term strategic competition against the US, Rudd said. Those factors made it essential to “return to economic growth at all costs”.“While there has been much internal criticism for how the abrupt change to Chinese Covid policy was made, we should not conclude as a result that Xi Jinping is in real and immediate political danger,” Rudd said.“We should never forget that Xi’s control of the hard levers of power across the party’s security, intelligence and organisational apparatus continues to be near-complete.”Spurred by the “new urgency of its economic growth imperative”, China had attempted to make changes to its international relations in the wake of Xi’s meeting with the US president, Joe Biden, on the sidelines of the G20 summit in November.Rudd said those efforts included Xi’s renewed contact with heads of government around the world, particularly European leaders, to promote Chinese trade and investment opportunities.Xi had also reined in “the polarising practice of ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy seen over the last five years toward US partners and allies around the world, as Beijing embarks on a new approach in the short-to-medium term to accommodate its immediate economic growth agenda”.But Rudd predicted none of those shifts were likely to result in China changing its current military posture regarding the US, Japan and Taiwan.He said China retained its long-term strategic objective of increasing its power relative to the US “to make it possible to secure Taiwan by force at a time of Beijing’s choosing”.He said these structural tensions would “likely manifest in continued and increasing Chinese air force crossings of the median line in the Taiwan Strait; so too with Chinese intercepts of US and allied reconnaissance flights over the South China Sea”.“But nonetheless, prior to recent developments over the interception of the Chinese balloon over the United States, Beijing had begun to moderate its political relationship with Washington.”This was meant to pave the way for a visit to China by the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, to continue talks on putting in place “protections” or “guardrails” to manage growing strategic competition.But Blinken postponed this month’s trip after the detection over US territory – and later shooting down – of a high-altitude balloon that American officials said was a Chinese surveillance device.What do we know about the four flying objects shot down by the US?Read more“While Beijing’s objectives may have been limited in scope, both sides appeared to have agreed not to allow their relationship to continue to freefall for the near term,” Rudd said.“At least that was the case until the extraordinary events of February. As of today, it remains unclear if and when the diplomatic clouds may clear to the extent they would enable the return of Secretary Blinken to Beijing – and the extent to which bilateral political resolve remains to find new mechanisms to stabilise the relationship as envisaged last November.”Rudd is due to take up his posting as ambassador to the US at a time when Australia is planning the most substantial overhaul of its defence capabilities in decades, even as it tries to “stabilise” its previously frosty relationship with China.On Tuesday the Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, received the report of a defence strategic review, which is widely expected to see Australia acquire longer range missiles and attempt to project power further from its shores.Australia is also finalising the details of its plans to acquire at least eight nuclear-powered submarines with help from the US and the UK under the Aukus deal.The head of Australia’s nuclear-powered submarine taskforce, V-Adm Jonathan Mead, revealed on Wednesday that he had handed his recommendations to the government “earlier this year”. A joint announcement by Albanese, Biden and the British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is expected next month.Australia’s deputy prime minister, Richard Marles, told the ABC the government’s response to the wide-ranging defence review would be released “weeks” after the initial Aukus announcement.Marles also said he planned to introduce legislation to “remove any doubt” that former Australian defence personnel must maintain their country’s secrets. It follows a review into concerns about China’s attempted recruitment of former fighter pilots.TopicsKevin RuddChinaAsia PacificAustralian politicsUS politicsAustralian militaryTaiwannewsReuse this content More

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      Tuesday briefing: Why is the US suddenly spying so many UFOs?

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      Tuesday briefing: Why is the US suddenly spying so many UFOs?In today’s newsletter: The use of surveillance balloons has gone largely under the radar until several floating orbs were shot down in North America. But China’s not the only country full of hot air – a look at this mysterious twist in international espionage

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      Good morning. UFOs are being shot down over North America, and one of them is octagonal. OK, that’s a slightly breathless account of events since a Chinese balloon was sighted over Montana 10 days ago, and aliens probably aren’t involved – but the full story is almost as interesting.After that first balloon was brought down and US secretary of state Anthony Blinken postponed a trip to Beijing in response, three other mysterious objects have been taken out in US and Canadian airspace in the last few days – the last of them an “octagonal structure” with strings attached to it. The US views them as potential surveillance tools.China says the first one was a weather balloon, and in any case claims the US does the same thing itself. The US hotly denies it. UK defence secretary Ben Wallace says the UK will conduct a security review of its own airspace in response. Now, as debris from the first balloon is recovered from the Atlantic Ocean, a diplomatic spat that started with literal hot air is floating into the stratosphere.What on earth is going on here? Are balloons seriously part of the cutting edge of international espionage? And what exactly was that octagon? For today’s newsletter, Dr David Jordan, co-director of the Freeman Air and Space Institute at King’s College London and a director of the RAF Centre for Air and Space Power Studies, helps us towards some answers. The truth is out there, and after the headlines.Five big stories
      Policing | Police missed clear chances to identify Wayne Couzens as a danger to women before he murdered Sarah Everard, it emerged as he pleaded guilty to three offences of indecent exposure on Monday. Witnesses recorded either full or partial registration details of vehicles Couzens used, but the cases were not linked to the then-Metropolitan police officer.
      Turkey-Syria earthquake | Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, a Syrian rebel leader with a $10m US government bounty on his head, has made an urgent appeal for international aid to Idlib, a province in the north-west under opposition control. Meanwhile, Syrian regime leader Bashar al-Assad has agreed to open two border crossing points with Turkey to allow more emergency aid to the regoin.
      UK news | The family of Brianna Ghey, a 16-year-old from Warrington who was stabbed to death on Saturday, said her death “has left a massive hole in our family”. They described Brianna, who was transgender, as “strong, fearless and one-of-a-kind”, and thanked the public for their support.
      Israel | Tens of thousands of Israelis gathered in Jerusalem to protest against legislation introduced by the country’s hard-right government aimed at overhauling the judicial system. The changes, which give politicians greater control over the supreme court, could help prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu avoid conviction in his corruption trial, in which he denies all charges.
      Fan safety | Uefa bears “primary responsibility” for the catastrophic failures that turned last season’s Champions League final into a horrific experience for thousands of supporters, the organisation’s own review has concluded. The report found no evidence for claims that Liverpool fans were at fault.
      In depth: What’s behind the stratospheric attempts to protect US and Canadian airspace?Shortly after he left work on 1 February, Chase Doak spotted a mysterious white orb floating far above him. He decided to film it. “I am sitting in my driveway here in Billings, Montana … and this thing is up in the sky,” he said, in a video that went viral. “And I have no idea what it is.”Three days later, after identifying the orb as a Chinese surveillance balloon, the US shot it down. A week after that, last Friday, the US shot down another flying object off the coast of Alaska. On Saturday, a US jet acting on US and Canadian orders shot down another over Canada’s Yukon territory. On Sunday, that aforementioned octagonal thing was shot down over Lake Huron on the US-Canada border. (Leyland Cecco reports on local residents’ utter bafflement.) And overnight, the US military said it had recovered “significant debris” (pictured above) from the first incident.Dr David Jordan, an expert in air power and defence, has not previously been asked to give an interview about balloons. “The military use of balloons hasn’t gained much attention recently,” he said. “But it’s fair to say, no pun intended, that it probably goes on under the radar.”Why is the US suddenly spotting so many UFOs and balloons?While it’s quite exciting to imagine a sudden abundance of mysterious objects prowling North American skies, part of the explanation is comically prosaic: it looks like the US has just turned up the radar a bit.Melissa Dalton, the US assistant secretary of defence, said on Sunday: “We have been more closely scrutinising our airspace at these altitudes, including enhancing our radar, which may at least partly explain the increase in objects.”That doesn’t really clear up whether this is a new problem or something ongoing that nobody’s been monitoring, though. “It might be a bit of both,” Jordan said. “It’s entirely understandable they haven’t been looking for them because you pick up so much other stuff like hobby drones, weather balloons – you get to a stage where it’s a bit, ‘Is it a bird, is it a plane?’ (Here’s a fascinating piece by Jonathan Yerushalmy explaining the problem of ‘sky trash’.)“But if you start to think – hang on, are we in a situation where a potential adversary is using these craft to conduct surveillance based on knowing it’s written off as clutter, they will want to go back and check. If it turns out it’s been going for a while, they will leave the filters turned off.”Why might they be useful?Balloons are useful tools for gathering intelligence, in part because they can stay in one place more easily than a satellite. “They help you maintain a fairly persistent surveillance capability,” Jordan said. “And you can launch them relatively covertly. A satellite launch is going to be detected – there’s not much to stop you letting a balloon off.”While satellites will remain the dominant means of collecting intelligence on what’s going on on foreign soil, they have downsides. “The Chinese have used dazzling lasers to block them,” Jordan said. “And the Americans know when satellites are passing over sensitive locations – so you get a window when you’ll be out of sight.”On the other hand, as James Lewis of the US thinktank the Center for Strategic and International Studies pointed out in this global overview of the use of the “poor man’s satellite”, balloons have issues of their own. “They go where the winds take them,” he said. “I’m surprised the Chinese would resort to it … Why not just send a guy in a campervan to drive around?”That might suggest a motive beyond pure intelligence. “It may be they’re sending a message – saying look, your vaunted air differences can’t stop us flying things over your territory,” Jordan said. “If it’s that sort of cunning wheeze, it has a limited lifespan, but it might still have been good while it lasted.”Is China the only country doing this?It’s worth noting that only the first object has been definitively attributed to China. On Monday, Beijing accused the US of flying its own balloons over Chinese airspace more than 10 times since the beginning of last year. While the US flatly denies that claim – and it seems surprising that it would only come up now – it is certainly true that China is not alone in seeing potential in their use.The US has significantly increased its investment in balloon projects: it went from spending $3.8m over the last two years to more than $27m in 2023, Politico reported – a marginal sum against the vast defence budget, but still a big change.The UK is also developing its own programme. The Ministry of Defence’s 2021 tender for a £100m contract, Project Aether, said the UK was seeking to strengthen its capacity for “Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance using Stratospheric Uncrewed Air Systems.”Even so, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the Chinese claim of US operations in its airspace are true. “My gut feeling is that it’s unlikely,” said Jordan. “You can pick up an awful lot of information from international airspace.”What was that octagon, then?There have been conflicting views from US officials over whether the objects sighted over Yukon and Alaska can be categorised as balloons, with little detail beyond the admirably specific line that they are about the size of “a Volkswagen Beetle”. None of that explains the “octagonal structure” shot down over Lake Huron in Michigan on Saturday.Part of the giddy fascination prompted by that incident was the result of a response from General Glen VanHerck, head of North American Aerospace Defense Command (Norad), to a question about aliens: “I haven’t ruled out anything at this point.”Yikes! Other defence officials hastened to add that, er, there was no evidence of aliens. So WHAT WAS THE OCTAGON?Part of the mystery is the result of the fact that the only sightings were from fighter jets travelling past at hundreds of miles an hour, the White House noted yesterday. Jordan doesn’t know for sure, but he has a fun speculation, drawing on the example of the Coléoptère, an ill-fated French experiment in wingless flight from the 1950s: while no propulsion system was detected, it’s not impossible this was a high-end drone.“It would be very unconventional,” he said. “ but even without wings an octagon could have an aerodynamically viable system with an engine piloted remotely – that would be sophisticated, but not revolutionary.” Again: probably not aliens, though.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIs North American airspace really what’s important here?Probably not. While the subject has come to the fore because of what started in Montana, balloons may be a more pressing issue in Taiwan, as part of preparation for a possible future Chinese invasion.On Sunday, the FT reported (£) that dozens of Chinese military balloons had been observed over Taiwan in recent years, with the most recent just a few weeks ago.Such operations are far more militarily relevant, Jordan said. “They want to fatigue Taiwan’s response – but they don’t want to add fatigue to their own. If the Taiwanese feel they have to intercept it, you probe their defences, you inflict attrition, you work out their response times and their tactics and procedures. So that is a more significant development.”What else we’ve been reading
      Ruth Michaelson and Lorenzo Tondo have a devastating report from north-west Syria, where the earthquake “has compounded layers upon layers of humanitarian crisis in Idlib”. They speak to Mohammed Hadi (above), whose wife died along with two of their five children after she ran back inside their home to try to save them. Archie
      Jedidajah Otte spoke to the people who have gone part-time, after realising that they are better off if they cut down their working hours, and asks what the implications are for a shrinking UK economy. Nimo
      Stuart Heritage compiles 27 great tricks from professional chefs to make your own dinners seem a little more restauranty. Why has nobody told me to put a teabag in my curry until now?? Archie
      Interweaved with the story of her courtship with her husband, Andee Tagle’s piece in the Atlantic (£) explores the enduring magic of mixtapes. “The gift of music curation is powerful, a love language to be wielded with care,” writes Tagle. Nimo
      After scenes of violent disorder outside a hotel housing asylum seekers in Knowsley on Saturday, Diane Taylor writes about the problem of inflammatory rhetoric coming from the government itself: “The government needs to extinguish its anti-asylum-seeker rhetoric before the situation becomes too out of control to be reined in.” Archie
      SportFootball | Czech Republic international Jakub Jankto came out as gay in a social media video, becoming the most prominent current male footballer to come out publicly. Jankto (above) said he wanted to “live my life in freedom without fears, without prejudice, without violence, but with love,” adding: “I am homosexual, and I no longer want to hide myself.”Cricket | England trounced Ireland at the T20 Women’s World Cup, bowling their opponents out for 105 before reaching their target for the loss of six wickets. Meanwhile, seven players picked up contracts in the inaugural Women’s Premier League in India, including a £320,000 deal for Nat Sciver-Brunt, likely making her the best-paid female team athlete in the UK this year.Football | Liverpool triumphed in the Merseyside derby, beating Everton 2-0 thanks to goals from Mohamed Salah and Cody Gakpo. For Liverpool, writes Jonathan Liew, “the hopeful reading is that this comfortable win against their favourite opponents can restore a little of the old swagger”.The front pagesThe Guardian leads with “Police missed chances to arrest Couzens as sex offender suspect”. The Metro carries tributes to stabbing victim Brianna Ghey: “Strong, fearless, one of a kind”. The i has “Hunt urged to boost defence spending – or risk failing to deter Putin”, while the Daily Mail says “Rishi: RAF are ready to shoot down spy balloons”. More surveillance worries in the Daily Telegraph: “Police use of Chinese drones ‘risks UK security’”.The Times has “Exposed, the secret plot to sink tougher sewage rules” while the Daily Express warns “Millions face maximum council tax hikes”. “Cost of living it up” – the Sun is angry on our behalf that an energy company sent 100 “reps” on a Maldives jaunt. The lead story in the Daily Mirror is “M25 road rage killer claims: I’m not a threat to victim’s lover”. Top story in the Financial Times today is “Overseas bets on Vodafone mount as Liberty Global takes £1.2bn stake”.Today in FocusWhy anger is growing in Turkey a week after catastrophic earthquakesIt’s been an agonising time for survivors in Syria and Turkey – especially those whose relatives and friends are still trapped under rubbleCartoon of the day | Martin RowsonThe UpsideA bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all badSuzy Morrison had been working since she was 15, but money always disappeared quickly: “I couldn’t keep hold of it,” she says. “I never learned how to save money.” Morrison developed addictions to alcohol and other substances, holding down a job and raising two children while also funding her dependency by selling drugs. In her late 30s, though, Morrison joined a 12-step recovery programme. But while her life transformed in many ways, her dysfunctional relationship with money did not change. So in 2012, after a lifetime in debt, she joined Debtors Anonymous when she was 61. Ten years later, she is debt-free and works as a counsellor, giving Addiction 101 workshops and webinars. Her life could not look more different. Morrison says she is more self-assured than ever. “I’m at ease in my own skin,” she says. “There’s none of that fraud or impostor thing. Becoming easy in my skin feels like a radical act.”Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every SundayBored at work?And finally, the Guardian’s crosswords are here to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Also try out the Guardian’s new daily word game, Wordiply. Until tomorrow.
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      ‘Hot air’: Marjorie Taylor Greene in State of the Union balloon stunt

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      ‘Hot air’: Marjorie Taylor Greene in State of the Union balloon stuntRepublican extremist appears to reference Chinese surveillance dirigible by parading halls of Congress with white balloon Marjorie Taylor Greene appeared to tee up a State of the Union stunt on Tuesday, patrolling the halls of Congress with a large white balloon in reference to Republican criticism of Joe Biden over his handling of a flight over US territory by a Chinese surveillance dirigible.Now the Chinese ‘spy balloon’ is down, the question is: what was it for?Read more“Just an innocent white balloon everybody,” the Georgia extremist said, hours before Biden’s address to Congress, attempting to keep aloft the balloon saga which ended when it was shot down off the Carolinas on Saturday.Greene did not discuss the Pentagon disclosure that three Chinese balloons passed over the US during the presidency of Donald Trump, only for the Trump administration to fail to spot them.Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told reporters earlier improvements to surveillance under Biden “enhanced our capacity to be able to detect things that the Trump administration was unable to detect”.Greene’s promenade with a balloon prompted widespread criticism.Bonnie Watson Coleman, a New Jersey Democrat, said: “She has to do something with all that hot air.”But Greene is nothing if not a dedicated conspiracy theorist and controversialist. Elected in 2020, she was ejected from committees for threatening behaviour in 2021 but last month restored to key panels as an ally of Kevin McCarthy, the new Republican speaker.President Biden: “Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset. I’m not saying it’s the majority.”Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene: “Liar!” pic.twitter.com/OFUglFuBxC— CSPAN (@cspan) February 8, 2023
      US officials have explained that Biden wanted to shoot the balloon down three days before it was eventually popped with a missile, but was persuaded not to order the operation while it was over land, and might cause injury or destruction on the ground when brought down.China claims the balloon was for civilian meteorological research. Its downing stoked a confrontation with Beijing, as Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, cancelled a trip for talks.McCarthy – who has recently praised Greene – reportedly told Republicans not to plan any stunts in response to Biden’s speech.Greene did not have her balloon with her in the chamber. But she did make her mark when Biden accused Republicans of threatening social security and Medicare.“Liar!” Greene was seen to shout.TopicsState of the Union addressJoe BidenBiden administrationUS politicsUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Revealed: how world’s biggest fossil fuel firms ‘profited in Myanmar after coup’

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      Revealed: how world’s biggest fossil fuel firms ‘profited in Myanmar after coup’Leaked tax records suggest subsidiaries of international gas field contractors continued to make millions after the coup In the two years since a murderous junta launched a coup in Myanmar, some of the world’s biggest oil and gas service companies continued to make millions of dollars from operations that have helped prop up the military regime, tax documents seen by the Guardian suggest.The Myanmar military seized power in February 2021 and according to the United Nations special rapporteur on Myanmar, it is “committing war crimes and crimes against humanity daily”. More than 2,940 people, including children, pro-democracy activists and other civilians have been killed, according to Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.Amid this violence, leaked Myanmar tax records and other reports appear to show that US, UK and Irish oil and gas field contractors – which provide essential drilling and other services to Myanamar’s gas field operators – have continued to make millions in profit in the country after the coup.The documents were obtained by transparency non-profit Distributed Denial of Secrets and analysed by Myanmar activist group Justice For Myanmar, investigative journalism organisation Finance Uncovered and the Guardian.The documents suggest that in some cases the subsidiaries of major US gas field service firms continued working in Myanmar – even after the US state department warned in January last year there were significant risks in doing business in the country – including with state-owned entities that financially benefit the junta, such as the national oil and gas company Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE).On Tuesday the US, UK, Australia and Canada announced more Myanmar sanctions, including on the managing director and deputy managing director of MOGE. But they stopped short of sanctioning MOGE itself.Last February the European Union became the first jurisdiction to announce sanctions against MOGE itself in light of the “intensifying human rights violations in Myanmar” and the “substantive resources” MOGE provides the junta.The EU sanctions prohibit European companies from working on Myanmar’s oil and gas field projects. But the US and UK have not yet introduced similar measures and such work – which may involve direct or indirect dealings with MOGE – is not prohibited.Among the findings, the leaked tax documents show that:
      US oil services giant Halliburton’s Singapore-based subsidiary Myanmar Energy Services reported pre-tax profits of $6.3m in Myanmar in the year to September 2021, which includes eight months while the junta was in power.

      Houston-headquartered oil services company Baker Hughes branch in Yangon reported pre-tax profits of $2.64m in the country in the six months to March 2022.

      US firm Diamond Offshore Drilling reported $37m in fees to the Myanmar tax authority during the year to September 2021 and another $24.2m from then until March 2022.

      Schlumberger Logelco (Yangon Branch), the Panama-based subsidiary of the US-listed world’s largest offshore drilling company, earned revenues of $51.7m in the year to September 2021 in Myanmar and as late as September 2022 was owed $200,000 in service fees from the junta’s energy ministry.
      The services provided to Myanmar’s Asia-owned gas field operators by these companies gave vital support to MOGE, which is a major shareholder in all of the country’s most important oil and gas projects.MOGE collects taxes and royalties for the state on gas field projects, ensuring that the junta gets lucrative tax and royalty payments, as well as a vast share of profits. According to the junta’s own figures the oil and gas industry is its biggest source of foreign-currency revenue, bringing in $1.72bn in the six months to 31 March 2022 alone.Yadanar Maung, Justice For Myanmar spokesperson, called the situation “deplorable”.“Oilfield service companies in Myanmar have blood on their hands for operating in an industry that bankrolls the illegal Myanmar military junta, as it wages a campaign of terror against the people,” Maung said.“These companies have breached their international human rights responsibilities and may be complicit in the junta’s war crimes and crimes against humanity by servicing oil and gas projects that fund the junta’s atrocities.”Maung welcomed the latest sanctions but said “far more needs to be done.“So far, only the EU has sanctioned MOGE, which bankrolls the junta. We call on the US, UK, Canada and Australia to follow the EU and also sanction MOGE,” Maung said.Myanmar is one of the poorest countries in Asia but is also rich in oil and gas deposits. The country’s major projects export gas to China and Thailand, with around 20% of the gas retained for domestic use.The major gas projects in which MOGE has significant shareholdings are run by the South Korean corporation Posco International, Thailand’s PTTEP and Gulf Petroleum Myanmar, also from Thailand. Gulf Myanmar Petroleum, PTTEP and Posco were contacted for comment.Map of major oil and gas fields in MyanmarActivists argue that any role played by western gas field contractors in Myanmar’s gas and oil industry after the coup makes them complicit in the junta’s war of aggression. Some legal experts argue the contractors could face future legal issues from their activities in the country.Baker Hughes told the Guardian its contracts were signed before the coup and completed in early 2022. The company said it had not signed new contracts since the coup and had “a very limited number of personnel in the country to support critical safety and operations needs”.Halliburton, Schlumberger and Diamond Offshore Drilling did not respond to repeated requests for comment.Last January, France’s Total and US’s Chevron – which have long been criticised for their roles as gas project operators in the country – announced plans to exit Myanmar.Chevron told the Guardian that it had now sold its 41.1% interest in the Yadana Project to Et Martem Holdings, a wholly owned subsidiary of MTI Energy, a Canadian company.The situation is complicated by the US’s ambiguous stance on MOGE. Myanmar’s state-owned gems, pearl and timber industries have been sanctioned by the US but Washington has not yet tackled MOGE, the linchpin in the junta’s largest single source of foreign revenue.In 2021 the New York Times reported that the oil giant Chevron had led an intense lobbying effort against sanctions that would disrupt oil operations in the country. That report came after the UN’s special rapporteur on Myanmar, Tom Andrews, had told Congress that MOGE was “now effectively controlled by a murderous criminal enterprise” and called on it and other state entities to be sanctioned in order to “meaningfully degrade the junta’s sources of revenue”.Last January, the state department did specifically warn of the dangers of doing business in the country and cited MOGE as particularly problematic. MOGE and other state-owned enterprises “not only generate revenue for a military regime that is responsible for lethal attacks against the people of Burma, but many of them also are subject to allegations of corruption, child and forced labor, surveillance, and other human and labor rights abuses”, it warned.But while the US has put sanctions on the State Administration Council – the junta’s ruling body which controls MOGE through the ministry of energy – it has stopped short of imposing tougher sanctions on MOGE itself. And the US commerce department’s country commercial guide for Myanmar, last updated in July 2022, describes the “dynamic” oil and gas sector as a “best prospect industry” with “significant opportunities for US investors”.The Biden administration is understood to be struggling with a desire to implement stronger sanctions while maintaining good relations with Thailand, a strategic partner, and also a major buyer of Myanmar’s natural gas.Justice for Myanmr’s Maung said the Biden administration’s contradictory approach to Myanmar “has allowed US oil and gas corporations to continue business as usual in Myanmar, enabling the junta’s international crimes”.“While the Department of State has warned that dealing with MOGE risks money laundering, furthering corruption and contributing to serious human rights violations, the US Department of Commerce is advising US companies to seek profits in the oil and gas sectors in Myanmar and to compete for MOGE tenders,” Maung said. “We call on the US to stand with the people of Myanmar by imposing sanctions on MOGE and helping to cut the flow of funds to the junta.”Pressure is mounting on the Biden administration to act. Last year, the Democratic senators Jeff Merkley, Cory Booker, Dianne Feinstein, Edward Markey and Gary Peters wrote to the US treasury urging the Biden administration to impose sanctions to help stem the junta’s brutality, especially by cutting off revenues from MOGE. “MOGE sanctions are one of the most significant actions the United States could take to degrade the junta’s ability to operate,” they wrote.In December, the US House passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which included a section outlining action on Myanmar that raised the possibility of Joe Biden imposing sanctions on MOGE but stopped short of issuing a stronger ruling.“At the end of last year, Congress made great progress in authorizing sanctions on Burma’s energy sector, which represents nearly half of the junta’s foreign currency income. The administration must use these authorities and work with regional partners to cut off the junta’s ability to fuel its brutal campaign against civilians,” Merkley told the Guardian.The European Union toughened its stance on MOGE in February 2022, expanding its sanctions against the junta, becoming the first jurisdiction to sanction MOGE itself and prohibiting the provision of technical assistance that directly or indirectly benefits the state-owned entity, with a narrow exemption for decommissioning a project.One European company, Dublin-based Gavin & Doherty Geosolutions, a specialist geotechnical engineering consultancy, secured a contract to work on Thai-owned PTTEP International’s Zawtika development project off the coast of Myanmar, according to August 2021 reports. The contract was announced before EU sanctions were imposed on MOGE but seven months after the coup. Gavin & Doherty declined repeated inquiries about the nature of the contract or whether it was still working in the country.MOGE owns a 20% of Zawtika and profits from the project flow directly to the junta.The tax documents suggest Intermoor, a subsidiary of UK-based Acteon, a subsea services company, also continued to profit from work in Myanmar until at least February 2022. The UK has issued sanctions against some individuals and entities in Myanmar. But like the US, it has so far stopped short of sanctioning MOGE and no UK sanctions prohibit working directly or indirectly with the junta-controlled entity.Filings to Myanmar’s tax authority by Diamond Offshore Drilling indicate it made repeated payments to Intermoor between October 2021 and February 2022 for work done on behalf of Posco International. Posco runs the Shwe gas project, which in 2020 Intermoor had publicly announced it was working on. MOGE has a 15% stake in Shwe, in addition to the revenue it gets from taxes and royalties.A Justice For Myanmar source, verified by the Guardian, has confirmed the presence of InterMoor personnel in Myanmar in 2021 and 2022.Neither Intermoor nor its parent company, Acteon Group responded to repeated requests to comment on this story.Despite US and UK reluctance to target MOGE, environmental lawyers claimed companies working on gas projects in Myanmar still faced legal risks from their activities.Ben Hardman, Myanmar policy and legal adviser at Earthrights, a Washington-based human rights and environmental non-profit, said: “Oil field service companies are not just working with international oil majors, they are supporting joint ventures with MOGE, a government agency that has effectively been taken hostage by the junta. When the companies submit an invoice, the junta ultimately pays a share of them and the support of these companies ensures that the junta can keep seizing revenues that flow through MOGE.“If these companies have an EU presence, they are at severe risk of breaching EU sanctions on MOGE. Companies in the US and the UK also face risks because both governments have sanctioned the junta’s State Administration Council, which controls MOGE’s management and revenues.”TopicsMyanmarMyanmar coupOil and gas companiesSouth and central AsiaUS politicsIrelandThailandnewsReuse this content More

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      Why did the US just ban TikTok from government-issued cellphones?

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      ExplainerWhy did the US just ban TikTok from government-issued cellphones?Trump tried to impose a total ban on the China-based app and some states have already prohibited its use on official devices The US government has approved an unprecedented ban on the use of TikTok on federal government devices. The restrictions – tucked into a spending bill just days before it was passed by Congress, and signed by Joe Biden on Thursday – add to growing uncertainty about the app’s future in the US amid a crackdown from state and federal lawmakers.Officials say the ban is necessary due to national security concerns about the China-based owner of the app, ByteDance. But it also leaves many questions unanswered. Here’s what you need to know.TikTok admits using its app to spy on reporters in effort to track leaksRead moreWhy did the ban happen?The US government has banned TikTok on federal government-issued devices due to national security concerns over its China-based parent company, ByteDance. The US fears that the Chinese government may leverage TikTok to access those devices and US user data. TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter said the company was “disappointed” that Congress moved forward with the proposal and that it was “a political gesture that will do nothing to advance national security interests”.The ban means that, in about two months, federal government employees will be required to remove TikTok from their government-issued devices unless they are using the app for national security or law enforcement activities.The director of the US Office of Management and Budget and other offices have 60 days to come up with standards and processes for all government employees to remove the app from their phones. Several federal agencies such as the White House and the defense, homeland security and state departments have already banned TikTok, so it won’t change anything for those employees. And earlier this week, Catherine Szpindor, the chief administrator of the House of Representatives, also instructed all staff and lawmakers to delete the app from their devices.How did we get here?US security concerns about TikTok have existed for years. Donald Trump first attempted, unsuccessfully, to ban TikTok in 2020, but bipartisan efforts to regulate and rein in use of the app reached a fever pitch in 2022 after news outlets reported ByteDance employees were accessing US TikTok user information.National security concerns were reinforced by warnings from the FBI director, Christopher Wray, that the Chinese government could use the app to gain access to US users’ devices. Several, predominantly Republican-led states – including Texas, South Dakota and Virginia – have also recently banned the use of TikTok on state government-issued devices.In April, Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri introduced a similar ban to the one now taking effect, calling TikTok a “Trojan horse for the Chinese Communist party”. The measure, the contours of which were largely replicated in the ban that was passed on Friday, was unanimously approved by the Senate earlier in December.Have other countries taken similar actions against TikTok?While other countries such as Indonesia have imposed temporary bans on TikTok, the biggest country that continues to prohibit the use of the app is India. India permanently banned TikTok along with more than 50 other Chinese apps after a deadly border dispute with China, citing national security concerns. National bans in other countries have not lasted more than, at most, a few months.Should we be more worried about TikTok than other apps?It depends on whom you ask. Several digital privacy and civil advocacy groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Fight for the Future say while the potential for China to exploit access to TikTok is indeed concerning, other apps and services offer government entities, including in the US, similar access to user data.“Unless we’re also [going to] ban Twitter and Facebook and YouTube and Uber and Grubhub, this is pointless,” said the Fight for the Future director, Evan Greer. “Yes, it’s possibly a bit easier for the Chinese government to gain access to data through TikTok than other apps, but there’s just so many ways governments can get data from apps.”But lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have introduced bills and applauded efforts to limit the use of TikTok. In addition to Hawley’s bill, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida introduced a bill to ban the company from operating in the US entirely. “This isn’t about creative videos – this is about an app that is collecting data on tens of millions of American children and adults every day,” Rubio said in a press release announcing the bipartisan bill.The Democratic senator Mark Warner of Virginia has also encouraged efforts to ban TikTok on government devices and called for more states to “take action to keep our government technology out of the CCP’s [Chinese Communist party’s] reach”.What are the geopolitical implications of this ban?The US has ramped up its efforts to address potential national security concerns from China over the last few years, including adding more China-based companies and entities to a commerce department blacklist limiting exports to those firms. The focus on TikTok is part of this larger campaign, but some groups warn that a ban on TikTok would lead to similar moves from China.“Blanket bans on apps based on a company’s foreign ownership will only hurt US businesses in the long run because countries could seek to block US online services over similar national security concerns,” said Gillian Diebold, a policy analyst at the Center for Data Innovation.Like other privacy advocates, Diebold said that “policymakers should pursue more promising solutions that address the underlying risks.“For example, to address data concerns, lawmakers should prioritize passing federal privacy legislation to protect consumer data that would explicitly require companies to disclose who they share data with and hold them accountable for those statements,” Diebold said.Could the US ever ban TikTok outright?There have been several attempts at banning TikTok from operating in the US entirely. Rubio’s bill, for instance, would block all of the company’s commercial operations in the US.But the viability of such bans have yet to be proved. Trump’s previous attempt to ban new users from downloading TikTok was blocked in court in part due to free speech concerns. The EFF general counsel, Kurt Opsahl, said a total ban is a violation of free speech and while Rubio’s bill and similar proposed laws to ban TikTok purportedly “protect America from China’s authoritarian government”, they actually adopt “one of the hallmarks of the Chinese internet strategy”.“A government is within its rights to set rules and restrictions on use of official devices it owns, but trying to ban TikTok from public use is something else entirely,” Opsahl said.“TikTok’s security, privacy and its relationship with the Chinese government is indeed concerning, but a total ban is not the answer,” he continued. “A total ban is not narrowly tailored to the least restrictive means to address the security and privacy concerns, and instead lays a censorial blow against the speech of millions of ordinary Americans.”TopicsTikTokUS CongressChinaInternetAppsAsia PacificUS politicsexplainersReuse this content More