President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump may have conducted their presidencies quite differently, but they shared the same skepticism of TikTok.
TikTok, the widely used social media platform owned by Chinese company ByteDance, has received mounting criticism in recent years from American public officials for its connections with the Communist Party of China.
President Trump signed an executive order to force TikTok to separate from ByteDance. The move was ultimately blocked by a U.S. federal judge in 2020. But this year, President Biden signed a “TikTok Ban Bill,” which requires ByteDance to sell TikTok to an American company or face expulsion from U.S. app stores.
Mike Solana, founder of Pirate Wires and chief marketing officer at Founders Fund, joined James Poulos to share why he thinks TikTok poses a serious national security threat:
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Despite spending no more than 10 minutes on TikTok a day, Solana said he grew concerned with a potent, recurring feature on the app. No matter what, it served him an ad displaying an image of an impoverished Gaza. "It comes back relentlessly, the exact same ad, every single day. You're forced to look at it.” Who determines which images are selected to bombard American viewers? “I think that's something that our government should care about," Solana said.
Social media changes the way people think, he continued. “It shapes your sense of what is the perspective you're supposed to have,” much as advertising forces you to “look around subconsciously for cues on what to believe. ... The more people who are doing something, the more you feel that's what you should do and/or how you should feel even if you are fiercely independent.”
To hear more of what Mike Solana had to say about AI, social media, Bitcoin, and more, watch the full episode of "Zero Hour" with James Poulos.
America was convinced tech would complete our mastery of the world. Instead, we got catastrophe — constant crises from politics and the economy down to the spiritual fiber of our being. Time’s up for the era we grew up in. How do we pick ourselves up and begin again? To find out, visionary author and media theorist James Poulos cracks open the minds — and hearts — of today’s top figures in politics, tech, ideas, and culture on "Zero Hour" on BlazeTV.
Through purchases of Chinese-made military equipment by state-owned manufacturers, North American consumers may be providing feedback to the communist nation on how to better their technology.
Argus Night Vision is reportedly a Chinese night vision housing and image intensifier tube manufacturer based in Tianjin, China, that sells products in the United States and Canada.
The company has received preferential treatment from the Chinese government, including preferential tax policies, special government financial incentives, staff settlement bonuses, and policy benefits such as office space or wage support.
Vermilion China also reported that through the sales of night vision goggles to Western markets, the Chinese manufacturers benefit from feedback to improve the quality of their equipment.
According to their confidential sources, the outlet said that Argus has contacted Americans who are affiliated with the military and offered to have them travel to China for training on night vision equipment and to provide product feedback.
While the outlet could not corroborate such information with Argus, it was however able to confirm that Canadian companies that sell Argus products are indeed facilitating the product development through feedback.
According to HCC Tactical, a U.S. firm that has a government contract and sells Argus products, its "sister company in Canada (Opfor Night Solutions) has worked directly with Argus to improve and evaluate the BNVD-1431 series of products."
"Their feedback and recommendations led directly to many of the improvements made to this housing for the MK II. Their weatherproofing service is no longer necessary as all changes have been made at the factory, and the OPFPR Night Solutions upgrade screw kit has been supplied to the factory so all units come with them as standard."
In a video posted to the Kinetic Consulting YouTube channel, the host described being in a class with the OpFor Night Solutions owner, who then sent the host a pair of night-vision goggles. The host went on to describe how Argus took the owner of the Canadian company's suggestions and then made them standard for the product.
"I originally got [the goggles] from OpFor Night Vision in Canada, they offered to send them to me after we were spending time in the class — the owner and I were in a class together down here in Miami and we had a great time," the YouTube presenter recalled. "He was offering up some cool night vision or housings that were optimized by him originally, and then Argus started taking in all his optimizations and making them standard for that Mark II system."
During an interview with what was described as an industry representative, Vermilion China was told that "individuals and companies involved in distributing Chinese thermal devices in the U.S. help guide their development and production efforts."
At least four U.S. companies were listed as selling the Chinese products, without mentioning their origins.
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