Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

TikTok: The Aftermath

TikTok: The Aftermath
File:TikTok app.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

When Congress passed PAFACA (Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications), they should have considered the consequences. They apparently didn’t.

With approximately 170 million users, what did politicians think would happen when TikTok actually went dark? Did Congress consider the aftermath? President Trump is trying hard to find a way to keep TikTok from going dark permanently, but he likely won’t succeed.


Given that PAFACA demands applications (Apps) owned/controlled by foreign adversaries be banned, there’s nothing short of ByteDance selling its interest in TikTok to satisfy the current law. There are no halfway measures. According to the law, countries like China cannot hold ownership of apps doing business in the American market.

The question: Will ByteDance sell TikTok? Why should they? Moreover, did Congress think the Chinese would acquiesce to PAFACA? It is worth pointing out: The nexus for PAFACA came from the CIA.

Testifying before Congress, the Central Intelligence Agency warned politicians that companies such as TikTok, which are owned by foreign adversaries, pose a threat to national security. Congress bought it hook-line and sinker.

Still, given the number of users who would be adversely impacted by a shutdown of TikTok—one must ask: What was Congress thinking? Was it all about anti-Chinese sentiment and the coming election?

The seminal question: What if politicians voted against anti-Chinese legislation? Effectively, those politicians would have faced massive criticism as being Chinese sympathizers, possibly costing them their respective elections.

So, the safe vote was to support anti-Chinese legislation—and damn any future consequences. For those politicians, the future consequences are now at hand. It was inevitable that PAFACA would eventually take effect. However, at the time of the vote, there weren’t any real-world consequences, at least not until TikTok went dark on January 19th.

Oddly, President Trump, who has access to the same CIA threat assessment, has pitched a joint Chinese/American ownership proposal. The President doesn’t see Chinese ownership as the threat the CIA does.

Once TikTok went dark, even temporarily—PAFACA became REAL. There’s no going back. Politicians must now face the aftermath of their anti-Chinese vote.

Dan Butterfield is the author of 11 E-books written under Occam’s Razor by Dan Butterfield. A list of publications: “Cultural Revolution,” “Prosecutorial Misconduct,” “Benghazi—The Cover-Up,” “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming,” “Treason,” “11 Days,” “First Premise,” “GOP’s Power Grab,” “Guilty,” “Comey’s Deceit,” and “False Narratives.”

Read More

An illustration of AI chat boxes.

An illustration of AI chat boxes.

Getty Images, Andriy Onufriyenko

In Defense of ‘AI Mark’

Earlier this week, a member of the UK Parliament—Mark Sewards—released an AI tool (named “AI Mark”) to assist with constituent inquiries. The public response was rapid and rage-filled. Some people demanded that the member of Parliament (MP) forfeit part of his salary—he's doing less work, right? Others called for his resignation—they didn't vote for AI; they voted for him! Many more simply questioned his thinking—why on earth did he think outsourcing such sensitive tasks to AI would be greeted with applause?

He's not the only elected official under fire for AI use. The Prime Minister of Sweden, Ulf Kristersson, recently admitted to using AI to study various proposals before casting votes. Swedes, like the Brits, have bombarded Kristersson with howls of outrage.

Keep ReadingShow less
shallow focus photography of computer codes
Shahadat Rahman on Unsplash

When Rules Can Be Code, They Should Be!

Ninety years ago this month, the Federal Register Act was signed into law in a bid to shine a light on the rules driving President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal—using the best tools of the time to make government more transparent and accountable. But what began as a bold step toward clarity has since collapsed under its own weight: over 100,000 pages, a million rules, and a public lost in a regulatory haystack. Today, the Trump administration’s sweeping push to cut red tape—including using AI to hunt obsolete rules—raises a deeper challenge: how do we prevent bureaucracy from rebuilding itself?

What’s needed is a new approach: rewriting the rule book itself as machine-executable code that can be analyzed, implemented, or streamlined at scale. Businesses could simply download and execute the latest regulations on their systems, with no need for costly legal analysis and compliance work. Individuals could use apps or online tools to quickly figure out how rules affect them.

Keep ReadingShow less
Microchip labeled "AI"
Preparing for an inevitable AI emergency
Eugene Mymrin/Getty Images

Nvidia and AMD’s China Chip Deal Sets Dangerous Precedent in U.S. Industrial Policy

This morning’s announcement that Nvidia and AMD will resume selling AI chips to China on the condition that they surrender 15% of their revenue from those sales to the U.S. government marks a jarring inflection point in American industrial policy.

This is not just a transaction workaround for a particular situation. This is a major philosophical government policy shift.

Keep ReadingShow less
Doctor using AI technology
Akarapong Chairean/Getty Images

Generative AI Can Save Lives: Two Diverging Paths In Medicine

Generative AI is advancing at breakneck speed. Already, it’s outperforming doctors on national medical exams and in making difficult diagnoses. Microsoft recently reported that its latest AI system correctly diagnosed complex medical cases 85.5% of the time, compared to just 20% for physicians. OpenAI’s newly released GPT-5 model goes further still, delivering its most accurate and responsive performance yet on health-related queries.

As GenAI tools double in power annually, two distinct approaches are emerging for how they might help patients.

Keep ReadingShow less