The Problem with Vibes
And the danger of running a democracy on them
Background, Part I: Last week, Axios published an article titled “Why the White House has a "vibe-rarian".”
The mostly light-hearted article centered on Council of Economic Advisors chair Jared Bernstein, who has a young staffer update him on the vibes from TikTok.
This shouldn’t be a surprise: the vibes aren’t good. If Americans are getting their vibes on how the economy is going from TikTok, and politicians are now responding to those vibes, we should probably know what and who is shaping those vibes.
Background, Part II. This morning, NYT podcast The Daily covered what we know about cyberattacks on the US election.
Russia wants to help Trump. Iran wants to hurt Trump. What about China?
The podcast was unclear, but the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is not: The Chinese Communist Party "aims to sow doubts about U.S. leadership, undermine democracy, and extend Beijing's influence."
Connecting the Dots: If you are the CCP, and you want to accomplish those goals, it would be espionage malpractice not to weaponize TikTok for those purposes.
Tune your algorithm to highlight inflation, the Israel-Hamas war, and questions about the upcoming election, and you’ve got the US at its own throat, instead of considering how to handle the biggest shift in geopolitical power since the release of the original Twister.
Go Deeper: For more on Chinese information operations, see this NPR article from April.
