NEW DELHI: “While a lot of people in the U.S. have been whispering about a TikTok ban, there is a lot of fear of actually going there. The Indian government did it and the sky didn’t fall,” says Jacob Helberg, Senior Advisor at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Centre. It should serve as a reminder to democracies that they have every reason to do what’s right for their country without having to be constantly afraid of what repercussions they might face from Beijing, he told StratNews Global Associate Editor Amitabh P. Revi. Speaking from Silicon Valley, he pointed out that the Coronavirus has accelerated trends already in motion and the public and governments around the world are now more “hawkish” about the “comprehensive threats posed by China’s communist party (CCP)” and are acting against them. The Indian government, Helberg says, “has led the way with very bold policy measures and the more the tension with China grows, the deeper the incentive for policy makers in India, the U.S. and Europe to draw a line in the sand and ask companies to choose which side they’re going to be on”.
