On August 7, Donald Trump issued an executive order that would ban TikTok in the U.S., effective September 15, if its Chinese parent did not sell it to an American company. The stated reason is to combat any Chinese spying that might be facilitated by the app’s data collection practices and, more ludicrously, to address the app’s censorship of pro-minority protests and prevent the spread of conspiracy theories and disinformation about Covid-19 — things Trump is manifestly unconcerned about domestically. China certainly could be gathering TikTok’s data, as this piece by tech analyst Ben Thompson details. “That, though, is not the primary risk,” he writes. “What should truly concern Americans is the algorithm.”