Op-Ed: National Security

President Trump has recently announced that he will ban the popular TikTok app, which is owned by the Chinese tech giant ByteDance, citing national security, unless its American operations is bought by an American company. China is also implementing a national security law in Hong Kong that aims to prevent any form of sedition or secession from its relationship with mainland China.

In a global world where technology has taken over commerce and trade, the internet has become a tool for many reasons. For one, it made people's lives easier. Most work is now done in front of a computer, all forms of entertainment are now conveniently streamed anywhere, and content creators are amassing money out of internet advertisements.

But the internet economy does not come without a cost. Algorithms are interacting with the features of our smartphones that help collect data to match our interests with the advertisements that is aimed to target us. Sometimes, it intrudes in our privacy when it asks permission to have access on our photos, text messages, and emails, to name a few.

The United States, as a leader in the Digital Economy, knows it too well that spying on private Americans can lead to "stolen ideas" that will help China to rival this position. President Trump's administration has been focused on pressuring China to play the fair game. And sometimes, American interests come on top in this process.

Ultimately, algorithms can collect information useful to national security. The face recognition features, fingerprint sensors, and voice detectors, can be used to match the user to known criminal records. In a way, tech companies earn massive income out of this information that it helps criminal investigations in solving crime scenes.

America may be paranoid, too, by virtue of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City and the Pentagon that killed thousands of innocent lives. It has every right to defend its national security by collecting information necessary for it.

China's reputation of keeping its territorial integrity by its hard line policy on One China now applies to Hong Kong. It is not known whether protests will constitute violation of national security by interpreting it to mean advocating secession from mainland China.

The battle for the protection of national interests continues to fuel adverse policies in established diplomatic relationships and the world may be caring too much.

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The Op-Ed is sponsored by FILA.