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Good evening. It's Thursday, February 1.
Tonight: the U.S. Congress, as it so often does, summoned executives of leading social media platforms to be interrogated and grilled publicly about the content they allow to be posted on their platforms. This time, it was the Senate Judiciary Committee's turn. And, among other lowlights in the hearing, Senator Tom Cotton, the Republican from Arkansas, repeatedly demanded to know whether TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew was a member of the Chinese Communist Party, seemingly without realizing that Shou, whose wife and children are American citizens, is and always has been a citizen of only one country, Singapore, which is a separate country from China and not only separate but is a close U.S. military and financial partner of the United States. Then, there was the attempt by members of both parties to demand that CEO Mark Zuckerberg accept responsibility for harm that was allegedly caused by content that Facebook allowed to be posted, including having Josh Hawley, the Republican from Missouri, demand that Zuckerberg stand in the middle of the hearing, turn around and look at the families of various people who have died and apologize to them, which Zuckerberg obediently proceeded to do.
I know that many people, including many in our audience, view China the way that Democrats view Russia: as a grave threat that we must constantly combat as they try to undermine and subvert our precious democracy. But even if you think that—and I know many of you do—it is vital—and we'll attempt to demonstrate this—that it is precisely this fear of China that the Biden White House and both parties in Congress are attempting to exploit with the real goal, not of fighting China, but of gaining more power to control what can and cannot be said on social media, all under the guise of fighting the “evil influence” of TikTok.
I know that the Biden White House, Republican senators and most media outlets have convinced many Americans that TikTok is a sinister tool of the Chinese Communist Party that censors at their behest and that is here to corrupt our nation's youth. So much of what is claimed about TikTok, as we'll show you, is demonstrably untrue. But even if you're not convinced of that, whenever state officials start trying to increase the fear that the population has about some threat, foreign or domestic, it's always in the way of insisting that they need more power to protect you from that threat that they've gotten you to fear. That is precisely when skepticism should be at its highest point since that's always the tactic that states use to gain more authoritarian power—putting the population in fear of some threat and then telling them that only greater powers in the part of the state can protect you from that threat. That is precisely what is happening here. With TikTok performing the role of Iraqi WMDs or Kremlin disinformation, or Trump's insurrection. And so, no matter your views on China, the same skepticism we've all come to realize we should have applied to those other fear-mongering campaigns are needed here as well.
Then: with the U.S. Congress albeit refusing to approve Joe Biden's requested aid package of $60 billion more for Ukraine, the EU is attempting to do something they so rarely do: step up and actually pay themselves for the things and the wars that they claim are important, rather than letting the U.S. and American taxpayers pay for it. For months, Hungary, under its president Viktor Orban, has been blocking new EU aid packages to Ukraine. He simply does not believe that Ukraine has a chance to win that war nor does he believe that Russia poses an actual threat to Europe more broadly. Over the last several weeks, the EU elites in Brussels have been explicitly threatening to sabotage Hungary's economy unless Orban relents and agrees to this package. And yesterday, Hungary did precisely that, which means that $50 billion in EU funding is now on its way to Kiev. Who knows where that's going? But the ostensible goal is to keep this war flowing and fueled for at least a while longer. We'll examine the implications of all of this.
And then finally: three American soldiers were killed last week when a drone attacked an American military base in Jordan. On Tuesday, we examined what happened, and again, we asked, why we have so many military bases throughout the Middle East still and how much harm cost and attacks is the United States willing to incur as a price for arming and supporting Israel's destruction of Gaza. That's exactly what these attacks are. In retaliation against the U.S. funding and support for Israel and its attack on Gaza. It is a cost of that policy. Earlier today, President Biden called the family members of one of the troops who lost her life. And it was a very bizarre conversation in many ways. We will show you exactly how and why.
For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.