Comment by gorlami
4 days ago
In the US government's view, as expressed in its brief in the Supreme Court:
"Because of the authoritarian structures and laws of the PRC regime, Chinese companies lack meaningful independence from the PRC’s agenda and objectives. As a result, even putatively ‘private’ companies based in China do not operate with independence from the government. Indeed, “the PRC maintains a powerful Chinese Communist Party committee ‘embedded in ByteDance’ through which it can ‘exert its will on the company.’ ... the committee includes “at least 138 employees,” including ByteDance’s “chief editor”
...
"Even assuming that the law would recognize Zhang as a bona fide domiciliary of Singapore and not the PRC, ByteDance would nevertheless qualify as being “controlled by a foreign adversary” under one or more of the other statutory criteria. For instance, ByteDance is “headquartered in” China, which is sufficient on its own.... ByteDance also is “subject to the direction or control of ” Chinese persons domiciled in China (in particular, Chinese Communist Party officials), which likewise is sufficient on its own."
http://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24/24-656/336144/20241...
The saddest part of this to me was watching congressional representatives try to wrestle with the Singapore thing and fail in hearings. It really made me feel like they thought they had some kind of gotcha when in reality all they did was publicly demonstrate how little they actually grasp the real national security threat at play.