So ketamine is a dangerous drug. Alright, but what about alcohol? So TikTok is a national security threat. Alright, what about Meta? The declaration that one thing is unreconcilably bad and the other good or at least substantially less bad is based on little to no data. In the congressional hearings about TikTok, most complaints from the U.S. ruling class apply to all social media platforms. The main complaints also apply to all major internet companies monetized from collecting consumer data. The claims of TikTok being a national security threat are much the same arbitrary arguments as what drugs are made illegal. Ketamine, is an order of magnitude less harmful than alcohol. If you want to argue that fact, first check with any emergency medicine doctor or read the analyses of the Drug harms in the U.K paper, but I digress. My claim for TikTok is that it’s pretty much the same U.S. national security risk as Facebook and Google. That TikTok is a Chinese company may pose some security risks to U.S. interests not posed by other popular apps. Shoshana Wodinsky created a list of all the unique crimes the company was accused of committing during the, to use a line from Reason Magazine, masturbatory display of political theater. Very few accusations are unique to TikTok. But, to the extent that members of congress know about data brokers, I assume they feel the U.S. data brokers’ selling lists of all the closeted gay people, with cancer, taking anti depressants in Kentucky…TikTok, Drugs, Congress, and Monopoly