America This Week, March 15, 2024: “A Circle of Censorious Friends”

Now, I've never driven a Tesla, but my eyes, you know, like sort of Bugs Bunny go, ka-ching, you know, it's either a Mazda or a Tesla. So, thinking that Tesla must be drivable by any guy who just wanders in to Hertz's garage, I get in it and I get out of the garage and I realized something that you probably don't know. and people who don't drive Tesla don't know, they don't really have mirrors, Matt.

Did you know that?

I wonder, as I am about to enter freeway traffic. I have no idea, because the Tesla dashboard doesn't exist. It's just a giant tablet computer screen with all of these icons on it, none of which look like rear view mirror adjustments.

Since they're so small anyway, I figure they won't help much. And if I can crouch down in my seat, I can sort of see into them at an angle that will show me the traffic behind me. I've given up completely on navigating the tablet, but hunting around trying to find out what the icons mean while I'm going 60, no, because by now I am going 60.. It's then that I discover, once I get into traffic, that the way you navigate a Tesla is by watching a video of yourself with the cars that are actually around you represented as shapes.

Did you understand that?

It's more convenient, but you would like to have actually full control over that whole thing. The transmission, things like that, right? That was just more, okay, now, whenever anything breaks, you got to bring it to the garage.

and you're going to pay more because this is inaccessible to you. But what you're describing actually makes driving far more dangerous.

And that's a strange feeling that you're no longer connected by your own senses, but by this extra step. Because, you know, the mirror isn't going to become unreliable suddenly, but my sense of computers is that they can get unreliable. And when they're representing other cars that might hit me at 70 miles an hour, I really hope they stay functional.

You should try to be as sensually in touch with the driving experience as possible, because your life is on the line every second. This is crazy.

So there weren't many turns and so on. When I finally stopped the car, I was in a panic that I can't quite describe. I felt like I'd survived this unexpected, life-threatening experience. And the last thing I wanted to do is sit there and learn the screen for next time I drive. I just wanted to get out of the car and get into bed and, you know, cry.

So I still don't understand the car. In order to get back to the airport, I'm going to have to, like, sit down for 20 minutes and explore the, you know, the interface. And see if one of those damn buttons can make the mirror, you know, tilt up enough that I can actually see cars out of it, even though it's the size of a coffee cup lid.

And then finally, he, like, he, hits an extra dimensional wall at the end. And I won't spoil for you what happens. But basically, it's this American dream of just hopping into a simple, too powerful machine, and just driving way too fast and blowing and violating every rule along the way. But that's exactly the opposite of a machine. that's, you know, telling you a million things.

And you know, you have to learn and obey.

I didn't want to test that.

I basically got in a car. And you didn't have much time to decide, because when you come out of the rental car, you're on the strange one-way service road. You know, you go over barriers. And then there you are at the freeway. And you realize this is going to be your Tesla learning experience.

Um, we are remarkably chipper, uh, this morning when, uh, maybe we shouldn't be, because something really bad has just happened. It's something we've been talking about, and it just suddenly happened with no warning. It's a huge story, poorly understood. Uh, and it's, it's, it's the, it's, it's the story that I think we even might've predicted this, uh, at some point last year, basically, it's this, the, the bill to ban TikTok has been, has passed in the house. But the scary part is that it's very likely to pass in the Senate.

And then Joe Biden is going to sign it. And then it is going to become law. And everything that we've been talking about, you know, opposing censorship will become moot, including perhaps next week's landmark Supreme court case. Uh, you know, the Missouri V Biden, which oral arguments started on Monday. Um, Walter, when did you hear about this story?

keep a secret because of some of the things he said to me, which I won't keep secret. Hey, can you believe they're going to ban TikTok? I've got all these friends who work at TikTok, uh, they're, they're terrified, but more than that, uh, the young people of America, uh, love this thing. And it's going to be the pretext for perhaps banning any website or, or, or, or service that deemed, uh, a threat. And this young person, who is not at all involved in these issues, Matt, not at all has shown no awareness of them suddenly was shocked and quite informed as to the implications and angry.

And this is a Democrat I spoke to, um, you know, somebody who presumably would have voted for Biden, this upset them enough that they would reconsider that.

I thought it might've been. And from talking to people, including my own children, who use it, I softened on the thing. Uh, it's kind of, it's fairly creative. It's, uh,

heterodox, full of views and experiences and everything. Uh, it's, it's not some kind of monologue from CCP, but in any case, I don't want to have to bend TikTok, the TikTok user experience or the TikTok algorithm in order to be very concerned by this bill. I mean, as concerned as I've been about any bill for a long time, because this seems to be the opening for almost dictatorial information, uh, direction from the top.

So we had a flirtation with a similar bill last year, called the restrict deck, and you and I talked about that bill at the time. Um, and there was, you know, kerfuffle and a brouhaha about it. Republicans balked. This thing was never going to pass in the house. And then something happened.

Uh, Gaza happened, basically. Right. And now the national security state has a way, uh, of arguing for speech controls that Republicans will support. And, and so, so now we have a bipartisan national security consensus, uh, that is going to pass this thing overwhelmingly. And let's be clear about what's, what's in this bill.

All right. Now, if you've read the reporting about the TikTok ban, you've probably been told that the company has been given a deadline by which it must divest itself. Uh, uh, you know, of, you know, a certain percentage of, of its ownership. Um, the bill itself is, is called, let's see what's called the protecting Americans from foreign adversary controlled applications act. Uh, and I think it's a hundred and day, 180 days is the deadline, uh, by which they have to divest and it's being pitched.

as, you know, we have a problem with a foreign adversary nation collecting, uh, you know, personal information about our citizens, which, by the way, it does suck. It is horrible. Right. It is a problem. Um, however, most people have not read the entire bill and they don't understand the implications of it.

Uh, and so we should show people, um, an example of what's in this thing.

This is down, uh, I guess entry number three in the bill, foreign adversary controlled application. And here, here's where they define what, uh, a company that may be regulated under, under this bill, is, uh, the term foreign adversary control applications means a website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application that is operated directly or indirectly, including through a parent company, subsidiary, subsidiary or website, by any of right. So now, and now it lists the specific, um, villains that have been pitched in the media, bite, dance, tick, tock, a subsidiary or a successor to any, to an entity identified in clause one or two, blah, blah, blah. But then there's the second part.

All right. So the, the foreign adversary controlled application is a website app, uh, or immersive technology application that is either owned by Tic-Tac or Tic-Tac or a covered company, that one is controlled by a foreign adversary. And two, that is determined by the president to present a significant threat to the national security of the United States following the issuance of a public notice. In other words, uh, they have a tick tock or anything we want tick tock or anything we want. Right.

Um, and the designation is controlled by the president. So basically, the president is going to be able to, to strike or, or kill any platform, app or website that is deemed a national security threat. Right now, when you get into the weeds of this thing, you will find that they, as always, they have loosely defined what it means to be controlled by a foreign adversary. Uh, and so this thing, control doesn't mean owned. Right.

Exactly. Uh, and I I've seen it, um, I've seen it described as also influenced by now the text says controlled. There was a, there was a Montana bill that was very similar, that that was overturned, but used language that was even fuzzier. Um, but was interpreted in an even fuzzier way for the brief, um, moment that it was law. Right.

But, Walter, this is, this is the ultimate nightmare situation. We lived through this whole thing, where, you know, for years, culminating in the Twitter files, where there was this huge national controversy about censorship and, my God, like at least the Republicans are balking on this. Uh, but then came the Israel conflict. And apparently one of the, one of the moments where things crossed the Rubicon was when the Bin Laden fatwa became, went viral and the Washington post did a big story about this. Uh, it was, uh, I I'm not exactly sure.

The post story was in November. Well, we should show this, because this is, this is an example of what, um, people are.

I feel, uh, a little bit just confused. Like I have entered into another timeline. What is this?

Uh, there, I could go and get my comp off the, uh, shelf at a bookstore. Um, but for some reason we have to take, seize control of the internet, because a letter from a dead terrorist who's been dead for 12 years somehow got to TikTokers and people like her, whoever the hell she is, pretended to find it interesting.

Under settler colonialism, any kind of resistance is branded as terrorist, because the only acceptable violence is violence by the occupier.

that is the root of terrorism. It doesn't make sense. They just hate your fucking nation. But reading this letter, it becomes apparent to me that the actions of 9-11..

I'm sorry. Walter, you've read the fatwa, right? You've read the letter to America.

But it happened to spread, propagate there. So it's like food poisoning. Let's close the restaurant because the hamburger was bad.

And then they go hang out by the pool. It's like somebody went to one of those houses and said, hey, kids, come down here.

Listen, we've got a job today. We've got $10,000 for the house. And everybody's got to have an existential crisis. after reading, it's pronounced fat law, the bin Laden fat law. So go, act like it's the coolest thing you've ever done.

Make sure you use these couple of buzzwords and send me the videos.

If those are authentic, I'll be shocked. But furthermore, what a cynical thing. Those could have been produced by AI, for all we know. They could have been text to video. I'm not saying they are, but this is the basis on which the president's going to take control of the internet.

If it is real, if those people are real, and if there's a lot of them, yeah.

The speeches have been, on both sides, incredibly enthusiastic. Maybe we should listen to just a little bit of Nancy Pelosi to give you a flavor of how.

Schumer is being coy about that, but Johnson is acting like he's got absolute, he's absolutely hot to have this bill passed.

But here's a Democrat, a Democratic leader on the Hill, Nancy Pelosi, and here's what she said in her speech.