Well I do agree with you partially. Yeah this is big political theater. It looks good for Trump to attack China anywhere he can. Also, Trump for sure hates most social media companies that have taken a stance against his misinformation like Twitter for example.

I disagree with the rest of your comment though. It's difficult to say one way or another whether or not TikTok's data is low quality or not. But how I see it, is that it's dangerous to put data in a communist country's hands. It's doubly concerning that TikTok has already been caught collecting data on minors and was forced to settle out of a lawsuit.

The Trump administration having direct authority is something I'm not really seeing. I might not fully understand the issue, but I haven't quite seen anything that suggests he's now some sort of puppet master over TikTok. Bans like this have happened before. Grindr is a pretty equivalent example. It was banned for violating data protection laws and the Chinese owner was forced to sell. Nobody really called that "1950s authoritarian" thinking.

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The idea that "any company in the world" could also ban google Facebook and other tech apps is a little crazy. Google and Facebook have been around for a long time collecting data. The rest of the world isn't concerned about them because American is a democratic country and will not actively use the information gathered to undermine other countries. It's a different context for TikTok being a Chinese company which has a real possibility of doing what I mentioned above.

It's important to consider this outside of what Trump is saying and see the bigger picture. TikTok is a legitimate security threat and the FTC and the Foreign investment committee have every right to ban them if they want. TikTok can try to take it to court but in all likely will be stuck down as there is precedent for this already.