TikTok & New Wars

The internet security has become one of the main focus of those working at national security services, and for the interests of armies, and defense departments, which put plans and strategies to protect the security of its electronic networks, and thus its domestic security. It becomes important too for the issue of sovereignty and protecting the state from espionage operations.

We remember that during President Obama's era, it was unprecedented that the American judiciary set a trial for five Chinese soldiers because of electronic piracy and economic espionage ... and the soldiers, as stated in some American strategic reports, are members of a unit called "Unit 61398 of the third apparatus of the National Liberation Army." 

These five soldiers were accused that from 2006 to 2014, they stole trade secrets of giant American companies working in the field of nuclear and renewable energy and others. In this regard, the public accusations addressed by senior American officials and the involvement of the American judiciary proved the clear danger of a new war that humanity has not known before.

Espionage is an ancient issue, as old as classic diplomacy, but this time, espionage networks use modern tools and technologies that are difficult to track, and are located in unimaginable areas ... The presence of Unit 61398 was discovered by the American security company Mandiant, the advisory arm of the American government, which was able, after a big effort, to track the unit and identify its location in a twelve-storey building in Shanghai, where thousands of spies work ... Mandiant explained that the American economy is losing between 24 billion and 120 billion dollars annually due to Chinese electronic piracy.

A few days ago, we heard the statement of the US President, who announced, onboard the presidential plane, that he would prohibit the use of the "TikTok" application in the United States, where the authorities suspect that espionage operations could take place on behalf of Chinese intelligence.

Trump said that he would take measures, using his authority, for economic emergencies or by executive order.

Worth mentioning that American officials and legislators have recently expressed their concern that Beijing is using the platform, which is owned by the Chinese group "ByteDance" and is very popular, for bad ends. This decision also comes after a review conducted by the "Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States" that reviews contracts that affect US national security. The Committee has also the power to cancel an acquisition that was approved in the past, which already did, for example, in 2019 at the application of "Grender" after it was purchased by a Chinese company.

And the application "TikTok" is very popular with young people, especially thanks to the funny video clips it wires which are largely centered on dance and music. And the number of its users is about one billion people in the world.

The popularity of the application has risen after the "ByteDance" acquired the US-based "Musical.ly" application in 2017 and merged it with its own video service.

If the US President's accusations against "TikTok" are proved to be true, then this falls within the current determinants of the type of espionage and wars that have begun to radically change from what was understood and what senior traditional or classical strategists of wars saw. Among those latest are the ancient Chinese Sun Tzu or the Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz who described ‘War’ as a duel on the widest scale and compared it to a conflict between two contestants, to conclude that "war is an act of violence aimed at coercing the opponent to impose a certain will."

Violence is the means, and the goal is imposing the will on the opponent ..... As for today, the electronic espionage operations or electronic attacks, transcend our tradition understanding of the conflicts and can cause loss of victims and serious casualties, ike what embodied in the fourth part of the Die Hard 4 series, or as known in North America Live free or Die Hard, where we see policeman John MacLean (Bruce Willis) is in a fierce war with a new type of electronic attack that begins with obstructing traffic lights, causing terrible traffic, before attacking the network of systems that control the infrastructure of the United States of America, and thus placed the whole country, and then the world, into a complete state of paralysis.