The All-American Myth of the TikTok Spy | WIRED 09 August 2023

Espionage was once considered antithetical to American individualism. The term invoked imperial European courts—the word spy originated from Old French, espie—and British secret agents, symbols of an old world that the young republic was trying to break away and distinguish itself from. The carnage of World War II shattered America’s isolationist proposition. Joining its newly founded clandestine services was lauded as patriotic. In the long shadows of the Cold War, the enemy agent in the popular imagination was someone hiding a Russian accent. Three decades after the fall of the Soviet Union, as China emerges as a new superpower and contests US hegemony, the face of foreign espionage in the West has become Chinese.

Each time an objectionable act becomes racialized, such as how “crime” is coded as Black and “terrorism” as Muslim after 9/11, the problem is not that every individual from the minority group is innocent but that the collective is regarded as uniquely guilty, and anyone who shares the identity is implicated by association. 

YANGYANG CHENG

IDEAS

AUG 9, 2023 6:00 AM

The All-American Myth of the TikTok Spy

The TikTok hearings made clear that the American imagination of foreign espionage has become Chinese. Who stands to benefit? Data-hungry US companies and military.

"...It’s not just that Chinese students and scientists are routinely depicted as puppets of Beijing and conduits of intellectual property theft. The tint of racialized suspicion has seeped into anything “made in China.” Communications equipment from Huawei and ZTE are lurking in the airwaves. TikTok is “the spy in Americans’ pockets.” US authorities deem Chinese-manufactured cargo cranes a possible national security threat; in the words of a former head of counterintelligence, “cranes can be the new Huawei.” The acquisition of American farmlands by Chinese firms has also been met with alarm: The properties could be used as a “perch for spying,” so the argument goes. When a Chinese high-altitude surveillance balloon flew across parts of the US before it was shot down over the Atlantic, the mass hysteria had less to do with the balloon itself—even the Pentagon acknowledged it posed minimal risk—and more to do with the state of the national psyche. The floating object was the materialization of a constant dread, the embodiment of an alien intrusion. . .

The ethnicization of espionage in the US as a distinctly Chinese threat is rooted in centuries-old Orientalism and reinforces racial stereotypes. The rhetoric is weaponized to expand state power and advance special interests. The illusion of protection by discriminatory means obscures fundamental questions about our relationships with technology and the state, as well as how to navigate between our intimate and communal selves. In a world of privatized commons and militarized borders, who sees or cannot be seen? For whose benefit, and to what end?

A PROMINENT 19TH-CENTURY science manual instructs that a person’s “faculty of Secretiveness” can be measured by how much the shape of the nostrils resembles that of a Chinese nose. Published in New York in 1849, the book asserts that the people of China “are the most remarkable people in the world for secretiveness.” This view, widely held at the time, was echoed by the American diplomat and travel writer Bayard Taylor, who claimed that “the Chinese are, morally, the most debased people on the face of the earth,” whose “character cannot even be hinted.” . . [  ]

The projection of one’s insecurities onto the other is always riddled with contradictions. 

• In the West, the Chinese people are portrayed as both primitive—so they need to steal technology—and scientifically advanced, with superior spying capabilities. The Middle Kingdom is either hopelessly stuck in the past or already inhabiting the future, where an ancient wisdom bestows startling foresight. The only consistency in these conflicting prejudices is an othering stance. 
• The people of China are regarded as so radically different they’re relegated to a different temporal plane, while the present belongs to the West.

. . .This February, during the first hearing by the newly established House Select Committee on China, former national security adviser H. R. McMaster described the pervasiveness of Chinese industrial espionage in graphic terms: “If you bolt your front door, they’re coming through the window. If you bolt your windows and put up screens, they’re going to tunnel under your house.” According to the retired general, the “many vectors of attack” demanded “a holistic approach.” . .

...Washington’s hardened response helps fuel racial bias, which can easily mistake targets of transnational repression as its suspected perpetrators. The emphasis on legal status and political allegiance in immigrant communities normalizes the nation and its borders, and reinforces a Cold War binarism where China and the US stand as polar opposites. . .

...TikTok is not a product of communism but of surveillance capitalism. 

• As China moves from the margins to the center of global capitalism, the panic over Chinese espionage is inseparable from the apprehension about the West in decline. 
• History repeats itself as Florida and several other states pass or propose legislation restricting Chinese citizens from purchasing property, citing security concerns. 
• Similar excuses were used for the “alien land laws” in the early 1900s that barred Chinese and Japanese immigrants from land ownership. 
• The spying allegations against TikTok and other Chinese products are often hypothetical: It’s not so much about what the companies have done or even what they can do; China is used as a foil to project American fears and desires. 
• After all, the US military and intelligence agencies are pioneers in surveillance technology and foreign interference. 
• As it was in the aftermath of 9/11, a perceived threat is used to justify massive expansions of executive power, which also include the ability to monitor and manipulate, both at home and abroad. 
• The Senate bill to ban TikTok has been aptly called a “Patriot Act for the internet.”

...TO CONTINUE OPERATING in the US under ByteDance ownership, TikTok has proposed to store American user data exclusively on US-based servers run by Oracle. The plan, Project Texas, is named after the state Oracle is headquartered in. The software giant, proudly American, boasts clients that include “all four branches of the US military,” the CIA, and local law enforcement. It has also marketed surveillance tools to Chinese police. Without universal data protection standards, the mere imposition of a national border around data does little to mitigate risk or reduce harm; instead, the border only helps determine who has the right to exploit the data and commit harm.

Oracle is one of the largest data brokers in the world. In a report released in June, the US Intelligence Community acknowledged that commercially available information, which “includes information on nearly everyone,” has reached a scale and sophistication on par with targeted, more intrusive surveillance techniques. The private data market is loosely regulated and open to all. US spy agencies are among its countless clients.

“Everyone is being surveilled constantly, but it’s always ‘Shoot the balloon!’ and never ‘Unplug Alexa.’” This line, delivered by comedian Bowen Yang on Saturday Night Live, encapsulates the quotidian reality of mass surveillance and the hypocrisy in official responses. After capitalism has commodified just about everything that sustains life—land, water, health care, to name a few, its latest site of extraction is life itself: our time, attention, movements, and presence. All can be captured, converted into data, and traded as commerce.. .

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