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What is really behind the TikTok wars? According to Arnaud Bertrand, our guest this week, it’s less about Palestine content and more about good, old-fashioned American colonialism and hypocrisy.
Bertrand, a French entrepreneur and political analyst based in Malaysia, who lived in China for eight years and has debated China with the likes of Adrian Zenz, reflects on the hypocrisy of the American government, which claims to respect the free market, but actually intervenes in business in order to ban a company for simply being Chinese:
“This is the kind of stuff that Cuba would get accused of,” he explains, “talking about the evils of communism, like appropriating enterprises. It’s ironic that the United States government, which presents itself as this bastion of entrepreneurship, free market, where the government doesn't meddle, is doing exactly that.”
“If [the Tik Tok ban] goes through, it sets a very worrying precedent because basically what it's saying is that, if as a non-American tech company, you make it big, then basically we're going to try to colonize you. It's digital colonialism.”
The fairness of the free market, Arnaud explains, is reserved only for American companies. Beyond that, the government steps in for control.
“It completely destroys the incentive for any country. It's already so hard to succeed given the odds on how dominated the landscape is by American VCs and American tech companies. If you're one of the lucky few that finally make it, then you're forced to sell to the Americans. It's definitely not right and that's a precedent that I don't think should be set.”
The irony is that the crackdown on TikTok has brought Chinese people and American people together as Americans are migrating to the Chinese platform Red Note.
Subscribe to hear the full interview with Arnaud Bertrand on the myths the West tells about Chinese culture, China’s roll in the Ukraine-Russian War, and the claim that China is engaging in a genocide against the Uyghurs.
00:00 Intro
00:55 Fmr CIA Director is still lying about Hunter's laptop
06:14 Elise Stefanik goes biblical on Israel
10:10 Trump wants Gaza's real estate
12:29 The ADL loves Elon's N*zi salute
22:35 Israeli throws a kitten off a roof
27:00 Arnaud Bertrand interview
27:40 The TikTok War
34:55 DeepSeek and OpenAI
37:36 Israeli censorship on TikTok
39:57 Digital Colonialism
45:14 Neocolonialism
47:23 Trump's new tariffs
54:07 China's role in the Ukraine/Russian War