ByteDance, the Chinese developer of TikTok,"can no longer be accurately described as a private enterprise" and is instead intertwined with China's government, according to aThe report, by a quartet of researchers, wasas"the most comprehensive exploration yet of the CCP's ties to TikTok" by Brendan Carr, commissioner of the United States' Federal Communications Commission. India's IT minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar retweeted Carr's remarks.
ByteDance has since become a publisher of state propaganda and built surveillance and analytics capabilities that make both Douyin and TikTok a tool China could use to profile individuals. In the words of the report's authors, this leaves ByteDance as"a 'hybrid' state-private entity." While those decisions were not binding, Japan was sufficiently offended by them to remove South Korea from its list of preferential trading partners – a decision that slowed the flow of chemicals needed to manufacture semiconductors.That's gone down very badly at home, but Japan welcomed the move. It led to a hastily-convened summit meeting between South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol and Japan's prime minster Fumio Kishida.
"With looming economic uncertainty and geopolitical instability, it would be natural for Asia/Pacific organizations to turtle-up on their security spending. Yet, IDC still sees increased security budgets and growth over the next few years to address the more prevalent sophisticated attacks and constantly metamorphosizing threat landscape.
Australia is under the thumb of the CCP pretending to be concerned