Comment by unethical_ban

> If the problem is privacy, why don't we legislate privacy instead of banning apps and banning items?

Yes exactly. If some companies are doing things that you don't like, like misusing personal information and transferring it to other countries, it is much better to enact general laws that prevent that, as the EU is doing, rather than passing laws that ban individual Chinese companies.

It would be as if rather than regulating car safety, we had a situation where lots of cars by both US and foreign automakers had massive safety problems, but rather than fixing that in general, we simply chose to ban specific Chinese car brands on supposed national security grounds while ignoring that cars made by US companies had the exact same problems.

I'm with you here. It's not a D/R thing it's a top bottom divide.

Your questions are right, but the conspiracy theory is dreadfully wrong. If you want a motivating force for banning, but not actually competing by leveling the field, it’s ideology. The US government doesn’t do subsidies (except when they do).

The saddest thing about these decline of American manufacturing, and the fragility of supply chains is that all of this was predicted 30 years ago, but Wall Street and the billionaire management class did their typical shortsighted profits taking instead of sustainability, soured on by ideological capture of both parties.

I often think about how the world would be different if the people actual won the Battle of Seattle.