Eli Lake, Columnist

Australia Offers a Surprising Dissent on TikTok

The U.S. campaign against the Chinese social media app fails to win over a staunch ally.

August 5, 2020 at 9:00 PM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

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In America’s tech cold war against China, no country has been a better ally than Australia. In August 2018, when most of Europe was flirting with the idea of allowing the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei to participate in building 5G wireless networks, Australia banned the company.

So it’s surprising that Canberra is not going along with the U.S. campaign against TikTok, the addictive Chinese-owned video social media app.