It’s the great TikTok panic – and it could accelerate the end of the internet as we know it | Emily Taylor

Democracies should be maturely debating online safety and data, not making kneejerk responses that risk an idea we all cherish

TikTok's chief executive, Shou Zi Chew, discovered during his five-hour grilling by US Congress what Huawei could have told him all along: being owned by a Chinese company is bad for business.

In fact, the panic over TikTok is a lot like like Huawei and 5G all over again. The security and privacy risks are plausible, but largely without evidence. What this is really about is trust, trade and geopolitics.

Emily Taylor is an associate fellow in the International Security Programme, Chatham House, CEO of Oxford Information Labs and editor of the Journal of Cyber Policy