Hello everybody and thank you for tuning into the weekly report. The Restrict Act restricts more

than TikTok. Supporters of expanding the federal police state have found a new boogie man to

scare the people into surrendering their liberty. TikTok is a social media platform that allows

users to upload their own videos. It is used by tens of millions of Americans and is one of the

most popular websites in the world. TikTok's popularity and the fact that it is owned by a

Beijing based company, bite dance has led to the spread of a claim that the site is controlled

by the Chinese government. Thus the claim the Chinese government is using TikTok to collect data

on US citizens. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner introduced last month the

restricting the emergence of security threats that risk information and communications technology

act. The bill is being marketed as a way to protect Americans from foreign governments that use

social media to spy on Americans. The Restrict Act makes no mention of TikTok or bite dance.

The Chinese government is mentioned only once in the bill when it is designated as a foreign

adversary along with five other governments. What the bill does do is give the Secretary of Commerce

power to identify, deter, disrupt, prevent, prohibit, investigate, or otherwise mitigate any

risk arising from any covered transaction by any person or with respect to any property

that the Secretary of Commerce determines poses an undue or unacceptable risk in a laundry list

of areas. Among those areas are a course of criminal activities by a foreign adversary that are

designed to undermine democratic processes and institutions or steer policy and regulatory decisions

in favor of the strategic objectives of a foreign adversary to the detriment of the national

security of the United States. So the US should shut down an American social media company based on

the Secretary of Commerce's determination that a website while not actually doing anything to

weaken America poses an unacceptable risk that it will. The TikTok controversy has taken

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