No, that's not acceptable either. Elon should never have been allowed to get full control of Twitter/X. But that is a separate battle. And it doesn't make the issue with TikTok being under CCP control any less of a problem (unless you're China and trying to shift the narrative with "what about Elon", and if you are that basically proves the point that you can't have a foreign adversary in a position to be able to heavily, while subtly, influence public opinion through an algorithm.)

From a geopolitics standpoint, the effective question here is “whose guns are the owners of the company worried about?” Elon is a bit of an outlier here because he’s effectively bought the government now, but in theory, if the US government decides to arrest Elon and seize his assets, that’s a big problem for Elon, whereas if China does, that’s a lesser problem for him (yes, Tesla, I know). It’s the same reason the US banned Huawei from US telecoms: the US government can’t threaten Huawei like they can Cisco.

None of this is a normative statement - I’m not saying that this is good or bad, but if you want to know why the US government thinks Elon is better than ByteDance, it’s because they can shoot Elon tomorrow if they decide to, but they can’t shoot Zhang Yiming without causing an international incident.

No making decisions by a committee of individuals doing their best in an open and transparent way is the correct method.

Basically what Twitter was before Elon bought it.

That incessant whataboutism is the only recourse of those who oppose the ban really helps the cause of those who are for it.

Elon Musk doesn't have a military hostile to the US, nor are his companies controlled by any, so for the purposes of this concern, yes.

[dead]