Do you remember the very clever Doll Song from Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann?

Olympia, the wind-up doll, doesn’t really sing TikTok, but it sounds like she does, and that’s good enough for me. And just like the Chinese TikTok, she winds down and looks like she is done. But then someone winds her back up and she sings on. That someone is Donald Trump.

Now, why I wrote this, I am not really sure. But I think it’s only because that’s what I thought of last night when I thought of TikTok, and it’s such a cute piece that I wanted to share it.

But let’s recap a bit. TikTok is owned by a company which is owned and/or controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. Our national intelligence officials have been very worried that the Chinese could mine all sorts of data from the almost 200 million American TikTok users and create all sorts of mischief, including some serious mischief, whenever they wanted to. Congress became very concerned and passed a law banning TikTok in the US on January 19, unless the President extended it for up to 90 days because the company was under contract to sale to an American entity, and the sale was moving along.

January 19 came, President Biden did not extend TikTok because he could not, and it went dark. On the very next day, DJ was inaugurated, and, as his first illegal act (technical or otherwise), he simply issued an order extending TikTok’s life, and it again became available. Since then, DJ has said that, notwithstanding the conclusions of the national intelligence world, he doesn’t think any more that TikTok creates a national security problem. Why he reaches this conclusion, I don’t know, but he seems so clear about it that he suggests that maybe there should be a 50-50 joint venture, half Chinese and half American, running TikTok.

What will happen to TikTok is unclear.

And now, there is DeepSeek, a new Chinese AI app, suddenly available to the American populace. It’s apparently an app that can do all sorts of things. And it is free.

Now the introduction of DeepSeek was a big, big, big surprise to everyone, it seems. And the stock market went into eclipse, especially those shares of companies in the AI business, the data center business, and the chip business. This is not because it was available, or flexible, and free. Rather it is because DeepSeek apparently demonstrates that this new Chinese company has come up with a way to create AI platforms using many fewer chips and much less energy, throwing into chaos America’s short term future plan to retain and expand whatever AI dominance it thought it had.

At least this is what I read Monday as the stock market was falling, and I thought I understood the problem. But maybe not. Last night, I watched Kevin O’Leary talking to Erin Burnett on CNN, and I learned something more. I learned that the introduction of DeepSeek at the time when TikTok may be about to disappear was probably not a coincidence, but instead was carefully planned to give China a way to steal Americans’ information, if they could not continue to receive it through TikTok.

Of course, yesterday there was much more of importance than this. I can think of two you might be concerned about: (1) a freeze on all government payments and grants (recipients be damned, literally), and (2) a buy-out plan for all (sorry, I am ALL) government employees. It just means, if these don’t get stopped by Congress or the courts, we will just have no federal government in the United States. Is that okay?

Well, it looks like it is a possibility, doesn’t it? Oh, yes, unless the courts stop it. But, guess what? Why do you think that the DJ government will pay any attention to what the courts say? (I have been saying this for several days. I head Tim Walz say it tonight.) And if they decide to ignore the courts, just like they have already ignored laws passed by Congress, who is there to stop them?