The writer is a fellow at Schmidt Futures focused on the geopolitical impact of the rising Chinese tech ecosystem
The US effort to force the sale of Chinese-owned short-video app TikTok has accelerated debate around the Balkanisation of the internet. In the midst of geopolitical competition with China, the US government is poised to reshape the architecture of the digital world in perhaps the most significant way since the dawn of the internet itself as an American research project.
TikTok is an early battleground for these debates, but it will not be the last. The next skirmish lies in the video game industry: only last week, Donald Trump’s administration indicated it was worried about the security of personal data held by games.