TikTok Is A Pleasure-Weapon of Mass Destruction
The new age of psychological warfare is here... and maybe in your pocket.
This week’s recommended reading is “TikTok is a Time Bomb”, written by Gurwinder. He explains how this this little app on your phone may be the first pleasure-weapon of mass destruction — one that has been co-opted by the CCP to accelerate the deterioration of American minds.
That may seem hyperbolic, but he is probably more right than he is wrong.
This app is controlled by the CCP — the entity that operates a larger hacking program than that of every other major nation combined (not an exaggeration). The entity that the director of the FBI has called, “The biggest threat we face as a country from a counterintelligence perspective,” and the entity that “has stolen more of Americans’ personal and corporate data than every nation combined.”
Nice. But is it theft if you’re giving them permission to take it?
He’s talking more about corporate IP theft, but users of TikTok are handing over exorbitant amounts of their personal data to Bytedance, and therefore the Chinese Communist Party as well.
Here are some of the data that TikTok collects on its users, who provide consent to such collection when agreeing to the app’s privacy policy:
Biometric data like faceprints and voiceprints
Keystroke patterns
Keystroke rhythms
File names and types
App names and types
Audio settings (???)
IP address and network type
Data from other devices in your network (that may or may not use TikTok)
The app is collecting biometric data on your facial reaction to videos it serves you. It has access to what you type on your keyboard. And it extracts data from other devices on your network. This is absurd.
Everything discussed thus far has only dealt with cybersecurity — mostly as it relates to national security and the spying on American citizens.
That is newsworthy and interesting, but I personally find the potential psychological warfare part of the story more interesting. The direct weaponization of this hypnotic technology on an adversary is more interesting to me.
“TikTok brain” is a phenomenon that is popping up all over the internet. These are actual reports of people observing a decline in the mental faculties caused by chronic use of the app. And the thing has only existed for a few years. Imagine the damage that will have occurred when extrapolating out over many decades?
While the causes of digital dementia are multifactorial, and Western IQs have been falling since the 1970s, TikTok is the unquestionably the most damaging cause. Mostly because it requires effectively zero effort from the user to get exactly what he wants.
TikTok shrink the time from desire to reward to effectively zero. There is no searching or clicking or curation of content — it is a completely passive and hypnotic experience of zero-cost dopamine, the most dangerous kind.
Alright, that’s all cool and terrifying. Back to the weaponization of it all.
Understanding this part requires some understanding of how the CCP views America and the west more broadly. Their perspective is primarily influenced by the 1991 book America Against America, which was written by a man called Wang Huning, and who now is one of the most powerful members in the CCP.
The book basically says that America is a nation of contradictions that is blindly driven by market forces. It has several cultures, and therefore no culture at all, which makes it increasingly vulnerable to blind market forces that can sever a nation from its traditions and spiral it towards spiritual poverty.
Wang says Americans turn everything into products that can sold, which causes the population to turn to momentary pleasures like drugs, fast foods, and amusements — which drive the nation further into decadence and decay.
He says, "it is not the people who master the technology, but the technology that masters the people.” He wrote this 30 years ago. TikTok is the perfect combination of everything he is describing.
Short-term, momentary pleasure. Decadence. Severing a nation from its tradition. A technology that masters the people. Sounds a lot like TikTok.
Gurinder writes:
This is why TikTok could prove such a devastating geopolitical weapon. Slowly but steadily it could turn the West’s youth—its future—into perpetually distracted dopamine junkies ill-equipped to maintain the civilization built by their ancestors."
The CCP has the means and the motive to help the West defeat itself. Yes, there is no hard evidence of the CCP’s intentions. Only a set of indications. This is where understanding history, incentives, and game theory kicks in.
Intentions aside, TikTok is accelerating cognitive decline in the West. Who benefits most from that? Is it a coincidence that the entity that benefits most from such a decline in the West is also the entity that controls the tool that is significantly contributing to the decline?
The same entity that has the largest hacking program in the world? And the entity that the director of the FBI said has stolen more of Americans’ personal and corporate data than every other nation combined?
From Gurwinder again:
If TikTok is not a murder weapon, then it’s a suicide weapon. China has given the West the means to kill itself, but the death wish is wholly the West’s.
A ban of TikTok is a short-term solution, but still one worth taking in my opinion. It does not, however, solve the longer-term problem of a nation in cognitive decline.
Then again, I think these types of technologies make smart people smarter and dumb people dumber. I do not think losing a few IQ points on the average materializes into a national security risk because a nation does not rely on the average person to spark the scientific breakthroughs that pull it forward — the nation relies on the 1% of the 1%, who are less likely to passively fall victim to digital dementia.
The nation does however rely on the average person to physically defend it. And a population unable or unwilling to physically defend its nation is a national security risk. TikTok — and smartphone addiction more broadly — definitely contribute to the physical deterioration of a nation. But again, that’s a multi-factorial problem and there are likely bigger culprits.
There are no solutions to complex problems like this one, only trade-offs. And banning this psychological pleasure-weapon of mass destruction is a trade-off worth taking.