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Tiktok or whackamole?

One of the earliest computer games was based on a Japanese arcade console called Whackamole.

The concept of this game was that a small mole-like creature would randomly appear in one of several holes on the front of the machine and players would have to try and use a hammer to "whack" it before it disappeared.

I fondly recall that there were many microcomputer-based versions of whackamole back around 1980 or so, mostly using the primitive graphics of the day.

So it's fair to say that there has been a long-standing connection between this game and home computers over the decades.

Well now there's a new connection and it all centres around the US government's plans to ban Tiktok.

Right now, Tiktok is in the sights of regulators and politicians. They see it as a threat to US security due to the proliferation of the app and the huge number of Americans who spend countless hours doomscrolling through its endless list of videos.

The response has been to whack the Tiktok mole with a ban-hammer.

However... as all whackamole players know, you have to be quick and no sooner do you drop your hammer than the tricky little mole raises its head elsewhere.

And so it is with the Chinese app threat.

Right now, across the USA, legions of Tiktok users are anticipating the ban by flocking to yet another Chinese-run platform called Xiaohongshu, according to media reports.

It would appear that even if the US government does successfully ban Tiktok, it will be a pyrrhic victory.

The next step would, of course, be to also ban the Xiaohongshu app but we all know what will happen then.

Bans are a brutally coarse tool for dealing with problems and when it comes to the internet they're ultimately ineffective. It has long been said that the internet will route around damage and a ban constitutes damage to the fabric of that net -- so there will always be a way around it.

The hyper-paranoid US government is also moving forward with bans on the tech associated with Chinese cars, bans on Chinese-made drones and probably a growing list of other things that they fear as a threat to national security. Combine this with the tariffs that Trump has announced on a swathe of countries and one really has to wonder just how the USA will survive as the world's most isolated and insulated economy.

Perhaps the USA does have sufficient critical mass, raw materials and talent to function in a stand-alone capacity but I suspect they've forgotten a few things.

For instance if the USA wants to keep making high-density semiconductors (perhaps having burnt its bridges with Taiwan by then) they'll need the high-density UV photolithography technology that ASML in the Netherlands seems to have a monopoly on.

I also suspect that legions of US residents will be up in arms (second amendment etc) when domestic prices for a raft of imported goods soars beyond reach thanks to the government-imposed levies and taxes that are about to drop.

Paranoia can be a nasty thing.

Carpe Diem folks!

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