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Are US Big Tech firms threatened by China’s TikTok?

In this file photo taken on December 18, 2020, an illustration picture taken in London shows the logos of Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft displayed on a mobile phone and a laptop screen. (AFP photo)

US tech giant Alphabet Inc.’s Google has retained its global dominance despite its tendency to violate the privacy of its users; however, China’s TikTok - under the pretext of security threat - is being banned by Washington and its allies in the West. 

In the past few days, various theories have been popping up in media worldwide about the West's true motive behind the US-led ban on the popular video-sharing Chinese app.

One postulation, which was promoted by the London-based Reuters news agency, was that some Western leaders, Canada's leader in particular, wanted to curb the influence of their rivals on the social media platform and to achieve this task TikTok was banned.

Another is that Chinese-owned TikTok could expose sensitive user data and spread information harmful to the West despite its limited scope in comparison to the impact Google enjoys as the biggest of the five main US  tech companies, namely, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta (Facebook), and Microsoft. These companies are referred to as the Big Five.

The third postulation is that the ban on TikTok serves to demonize China in furtherance of the US-led Western campaign against Beijing aimed to bring China down.

A fourth postulation is that the move is part and parcel of an all-out imperialistic effort by the US to achieve worldwide hegemony.

In the meantime, experts say that in reality, it is the United States that is posing a threat to China, and the rest of the world, as it continues its fierce strategy aimed to bring down its rivals so it can regain its demising global dominance.

"The banking families that founded Israel run the financial system of the United States -- they have a monopoly on money creation and governments," said  American writer and analyst Walt Peretto.

"Google is no exception. They will gladly place their propaganda at the top of a search while burying or censoring factual information. They also view China as a way to divert attention from Israel and the financial system to China," he stated.

"So US President Joe Biden's Zionist handlers will vilify Tik Tok simply because it's Chinese," he added.

"Russia and China are still independent and the West wants to weaken them so they fully submit to the one world government -- this is why they took over Ukraine in 2014 to encroach on Russia so they would fight back," he explained. "Now the Western media vilifies Russia and China also get blamed for many things."

“Big tech companies such as Facebook (now Meta), Twitter, and platforms like YouTube have engaged in pogroms of censorship and suppression of free speech by utilizing thought-police algorithms and so-called ‘fact-checkers,'” Peretto said.

“Big tech companies like Facebook and Twitter have been utilizing the excuse that they are private companies and can make their own rules concerning public use of their products. In reality, these companies are under intense pressure from globalist manipulators via organizations like the the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the intelligence community, pharmaceutical giants, and various other forums and foundations, to develop methods of censorship and the suppression of free speech online,” he said.  

Meanwhile, US media reports say the Big Five are collaborating with the US government in censoring news on social media platforms.

Despite selling its users’ data to advertisers who want to target customers based on their analytics, Google has global dominance while TikTok, which in comparison is small, is not allowed to operate as US lawmakers call on Biden to ban it and other Chinese businesses.

The US government is now trying to ban Chinese video sharing and social networking services.

Washington has given federal agencies an ultimatum to remove and disallow the installation of the app on devices operated by their staff. The deadline is set to comply with an order issued by Congress.

About a decade ago, American whistleblower Edward Snowden exposed the US spying activities targeting friends and foes alike, including millions of Americans and foreign nationals as well as political leaders from around the world.

Likewise, China accuses the US government of unethical use of the data harvested from its users, as well as illegal cyber activities.

The United States is the “empire of hacking and theft of secrets,” and the "biggest threat to global cybersecurity,” according to Chinese Ministry of National Defense spokesman Senior Colonel Wu Qian.

He said the US has conducted mass-scale cyber espionage, surveillance and attacks on foreign governments, companies and individuals for years.

The top brass has called on the international community to push back against US cyberbullying and to urge that Washington explain its spying operations.

Now the question is, given the scope and reach of the Big Five, coupled with their unethical imperial notions, including a partnership with the Israeli military, is it safe to conclude that the threat linked to TikTok is false expectations made to appear real in furtherance of the US-led Western campaign staged against China.

In the meantime, China is in fact heading towards global dominance, according to the Pentagon's former software chief.

The US Defense Department's top expert in this field told the Financial Times in 2021 that China's progress was due to its technological advances in machines, not spying.

Nicolas Chaillan linked China’s global dominance to its advances in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and cyber capabilities.

"We have no competing fighting chance against China in 15 to 20 years. Right now, it’s already a done deal; it is already over in my opinion," he said.

Experts say the rivalry between the US-led West and China is not limited to the field of technology and it spreads into a range of political, economic, social and technological areas.

They say the rivalry has intensified and become fiercer in recent years as Beijing’s international clout is rapidly growing, turning the global economic powerhouse into an emerging counterweight to the US.


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