@doobeedoo2 All of what you say might be right, but it still doesn't make a targeted ban of these two services make sense. Certainly they do not comprise the main levers of dependency that enables Chinese coercion of Western companies to remain silently complicit in abuses. If we want 1/
@doobeedoo2 to address that, we have to decouple broadly. If we want to address particular atrocities — China's treatment of Uighurs, repression in Hong Kong, China's various tools for internal discrimination, surveillance — then 1) you wouldn't choose two companies; and 2) you HAVE to 2/
@doobeedoo2 condition the sanctions on the policies you mean to change. Punishing unconditionally is a like a Full Nelson in wrestling — justly banned because it hurts without offering submission as an out. You need the Half Nelson, which punishes but simultaneously offers a path to 3/
@doobeedoo2 punishment's withdrawal. The only justification offered for targeting these two, and only these two, firms has to do with their potential for CCP surveilance and information warfare. Which might be legit! But to the degree it is legit, we are wide open to that from all kinds 4/
@doobeedoo2 of bad actors so long as Apple and Google fail to police it. If you think because CCP is bad, we should take whatever actions against China that are politically possible, however pretextual the justification, I'd caution against that. There are economic interests bound up in 5/
@doobeedoo2 these conflicts. It's hard to take a moral high-ground over the long-term when your policy doesn't make sense as means of supporting your high-minded ideals, but does have the immediate effect of giving Facebook stock a big lift, or getting Microsoft a popular social media 6/
@doobeedoo2 property on the cheap. If US is going to sanction China on human and political rights grounds (which I would broadly support by the way), or if it's going to decouple sufficiently to restore American supply chain resilience and economic independence (again, I'd support), it 7/
@doobeedoo2 needs to pursue some policy framework visibly tailored to those objectives. Otherwise, it just looks like a smash-and-grab, and undermines our future capacity to apply coherent pressure if we ever have an administration that actually gives a fuck about misery and atrocity. /fin
