Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

Employees everywhere are worried. There's a crippling recession, furloughs, and job cuts

to come. One thing not to worry too much about, though, is more automation. Robots and

software taking jobs. Turns out the pandemic might actually slow that transition.

And since his time as a COVID-19 patient, Britain's Prime Minister has taken an unusual interest

in matters of obesity. It's a known risk factor. But at the same time, his government is giving

away cash for people to dine out. Guess we'll eat and run.

But first, as the heads of Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook, and Apple were being berated

in Congress last month. How many competitors did Facebook end up copying?

We called it Amazon Heroine. Why does Google steal content from honest businesses?

TikTok, the goofy, funny video sharing app, was having an altogether better time of it.

We're looking at TikTok. We may be banning TikTok. On Thursday, the Trump administration

issued a deadline of September 20th for ending all American transactions with bite dance,

TikTok's parent company, as well as with WeChat, which is owned by China's second most

valuable tech company, Tencent.

China's government called the executive orders a negatively hegemonic act. Bite dance

is now looking for a fire sale buyer for some of its international TikTok operations,

and it seems Microsoft is checking its pockets. But the administration's zeal is likely

to harm America's interests as well as the Chinese tech champions.

We knew that a ban was in the offing, but it still took everyone by surprise.

Tamsen Booth is the economist's technology and business editor.

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