Hey everybody, Nathan Rich here again.
Today, I want to talk to you a little bit more about the banning of WeChat in
the United States. WeChat
! Probably the best app in the world.
That sounds a little bit ridiculous, but it's not just an app for chatting.
There's been endless amounts of videos about how good WeChat is, and it's
really hard to sort of explain why it's so good to people who aren't in
China. But basically, it's not just a chat app.
It's also a framework that you can build other apps into.
And these apps are very lightweight and very effective.
So, for example, if I want to go into a building here and maybe I work at
that building, I can have a little app and I just press a button, a QR code
comes up and I can scan through the gate with that.
So now my WeChat has let me into the building.
And then I have Wi-Fi there.
I don't need a password or anything.
I just connect and then in WeChat I can just verify it.
This type of thing. You can pay for taxis and restaurants and everything,
basically. There's a few paying apps, but WeChat is pretty amazing in its
simplicity and it's "lightweightness," if you will.
All those things are really cool, but they're mostly useful in China.
The one thing that WeChat is very good for outside of China, especially if
you're Chinese, is connecting to your families and friends here in China.
That's really the main use for it outside of China.
WeChat is so crazy, advanced compared to the other products that when I go to
America, I get a similar feeling as like when you go from one place that's
using 5G to a place that's using 4G.
You know what I mean? Oh, if you're American, you probably don't know what I
mean. OK, let me try to explain it in a way that Americans will understand,
since you don't have 5G.
Imagine going to a country in which everybody is using Nokia phones.
Oh, hang on. I've got to send a text message the word "hello." four four
three three five five five five five five six six six.
OK?
So this is what all the people in this country are doing.
You try to explain to these people like, "Well, where I'm from, we have this
thing called an iPhone," or whatever phone you use, "and it can do all this
wonderful stuff and you should really start using it." And they go, "Oh,
multimedia?
My Nokia does that.
Look, I can send a thirty two by thirty two pixel image to somebody.
It only takes fourteen minutes for the upload." And you just kind of go
"OK... I mean aren't you supposed to be like an advanced country or..."
Anyway, that's kind of what it feels like to go to America for me because
instead of just using an app for literally everything, now when I'm in
America I have to dig around for coins and dirty cash, all these bills,
pennies and stuff.
Some places only take credit cards and then there's debit cards and credit
cards and you have to go pay money at a ATM to get cash out if the place only
takes cash. It's just this confusing, horrible nightmare.
Whereas here, if you use WeChat it's just beep!
Done. OK, gym membership - beep!
Rent, you know, it's just very, very simple.
Now, admittedly, WeChat really sucks to set up in the United States.
Their verification process is really obnoxious and sort of error prone.
But I have managed to get a few of my overseas friends onto WeChat so I can
communicate with them. But it seems my efforts will have been in vain as the
US government moves towards socialism and shutting down the capitalist dream.
Which is fine, I support their right to do so.
Now, when Trump first announced that he was going to start controlling the
economy and getting rid of capitalism by blocking ByteDance and TikTck and
then later added Tencent and WeChat, to me these were not similar because
while, yes, it is a very strong move towards socialism in a very aggressive
way to start shutting out companies that haven't violated any laws, a video
app to me is a little bit different than a communications app, because if
you're a Chinese person in the United States and you want to communicate with
your family, you're not using TikTok - you're using WeChat.
The United States will now be blocking that.
So we know the government is trying to have Microsoft potentially purchase
TikTok from ByteDance.
And we also know that US government officials use very, very antiquated,
ancient old, like 15 years ago technology like WhatsApp.
And WhatsApp, of course, is Facebook.
Now, remember, the reason that this is happening, according to them, is that
China could be spying on our communications.
OK, so we know that Facebook and Microsoft might be able to take over these
spaces soon. So what do Microsoft and Facebook both have in common when it
comes to communications?
Well, we know for an absolute fact that not only does the NSA have ways to
hack these products, they have access directly to the servers of both
Microsoft and Facebook.
But don't take my word for it - take the NSA's word for it.
So while this may be a political move, and maybe it's a financial move, but
it's also possible that this is actually an espionage move because the United
States may very well be trying to gain control
and access to the communications of 80 million Americans using TikTok and
access to all the Chinese Americans and all the Chinese in America who are
trying to communicate with their families and friends.
So this is kind of an interesting theory that I don't really have direct
proof for. So I'm not going to say that this is true.
But it is interesting thought that maybe it's actually not about anything
that anyone's saying it's about.
Maybe it's about another thing of, "Hey, we want access to those
communications." People who communicate on servers by Microsoft and Facebook,
the government has just open access to, by their own admission.
So maybe they're trying to get this communication onto those servers as well.
So this is the type of thought that I have when I examine news.
It's not to say that I necessarily believe these things, but I do want to
share these ideas because it's very fascinating to me.
It's very interesting to think about what really motivates these governments
to make these types of changes.
It often seems that it's not exactly what they're saying is true.
I'm sure there's a lot more that's going to happen with this subject so stay
tuned. Thanks, everybody.
Xiexie.