US proposes a five-part “Clean Network” plan to curb potential national security risks from China, including banning “untrusted” Chinese apps from US app stores
This announcement converts weeks of improvisation into a formal program. Secretary Pompeo first said in July the US was "looking at" banning TikTok and other Chinese social media apps ([[a:955433]]), then signaled on August 3 that action against more Chinese software companies was coming within days. The five-part Clean Network is that promise made policy — extending trust-based exclusion from individual apps to carriers, app stores, cloud services, and undersea cables.
The move also hardens what had been bilateral friction into a competing standards contest: Beijing answered within roughly a month with its own global data security initiative explicitly framed against the Clean Network, and the underlying logic was later written into statute when senators proposed the bipartisan RESTRICT Act to give Commerce standing power over foreign-linked apps and hardware.
First-order effects
Chinese consumer apps — with TikTok the named example from Pompeo's earlier remarks — face delisting or removal from US app stores and networks, shifting their US distribution from commercial decisions by Apple and Google to explicit government vetting.
US carriers and cloud providers become enforcement points, required to exclude "untrusted" Chinese vendors across five infrastructure layers rather than case-by-case procurement reviews.
Second-order effects
Beijing's response reframes the fight internationally rather than bilaterally: its data security initiative urges countries to oppose what it calls mass surveillance against other states, recruiting third countries into choosing between two governance frameworks.
Chinese authorities tightened the outbound side in parallel, moving toward rules that would block companies holding large volumes of sensitive consumer data from listing in the US — reducing American investors' exposure to exactly the data assets Washington cites as risks.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, network layers themselves become jurisdictional borders: app store access, carrier equipment, cloud tenancy, and cable landing rights all turn on government trust designations, fragmenting what was a single internet market into aligned blocs.
Executive-branch ad hoc bans get legislated — the RESTRICT Act's attempt to give Commerce a standing mechanism suggests each country is building permanent legal machinery for technology exclusion rather than relying on one-off orders.
The trend: US-China technology competition is shifting from case-by-case enforcement against single apps to standing, multi-layer trust programs on both sides, with market access conditioned on government-defined security judgments.
U.S. sort-of-firewall goes up. Chinese telcos, cloud providers are blocked. Chinese apps are kicked out of app stores. Submarine data traffic will get a look. U.S. app makers are instructed not to put apps on Huawei's store. 1/2 https://www.state.gov/...
So did the US just announce it is building a great firewall? Announcing the Expansion of the Clean Network to Safeguard America's Assets - United States Department of State https://www.state.gov/...
Wincing at the choice of language here. did we really need to use ‘clean,’ redolent as it is w/years of slurs against Chinese people as being dirty & diseased? https://twitter.com/...
I am looking forward to new billboards around Washington: “Resolutely support the “5 cleans”! Comprehensively deepen Internet management! https://twitter.com/...
China censors the Internet, so the U.S. wants to censor the Internet: https://www.cnbc.com/... Chinese companies copy popular apps, and Facebook just copied the world's most popular Chinese-owned app: https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...
Even the language used by the US mirrors that of Beijing, which has implemented multiple “internet cleanup campaigns” to crack down on vulgar, pornographic, or politically sensitive content. Pompeo used the phrase “five cleans” to explain the areas covered by the initiative. http…
There is a difference between a nation that decides what one can and can't see vs. the US preventing the other nation from seeing whatever it wants to see. https://twitter.com/...
Mike Pompeo says “untrusted” Chinese apps like TikTok and Wechat should be removed from US app stores. & would prevent data access from cloud-based systems run by Chinese co.s. So what does this mean for future of Alibababa/Baidu/Tencent etc. in the U.S.? https://www.reuters.com/…
US @SecPompeo expands “Clean Path”- an initiative to target allegedly “untrusted” #China tech in telecoms, data, apps, cloud, cable. (Think now would be time to show evidence to address suspicions move is unfair & political distraction to avoid backfiring.)https://www.cnbc.com/ .…
There we go. The USA at long last has the framework of an Industrial Policy, long a forbidden phrase in Washington. It started with the 5G strategy but now it has grown from a tactical response to a strategic one. And perfect timing too! It matches my @BlackHatEvents welcome. htt…
Announcing Expansion of Clean Network to Safeguard America's Asset -US Dett of State https://www.state.gov/... huh “Clean Store: To remove untrusted applications from U.S. mobile app stores.PRC apps threaten our privacy, proliferate viruses, and spread propaganda and disinformati…
The @StateDept announcement aims to respond to long-standing threats PRC apps, telcos and cloud services pose to data security. (The US was also previously recommended to reject an undersea cable section linking HK to the US on national security grounds.) https://www.state.gov/..…
I'm just catching up on news after too many hours driving today, and my initial reaction to this announcement is exhaustion—and a certain degree of confusion about what exactly “clean” is intended to convey in this context. https://www.state.gov/...
There's a fascinating fracturing of the internet going on. I have no illusions that the EU will be a player in this - we're likely going to let ourselves get fucked over by the US, but it's anybody's guess: maybe the EU'll allow everyone to fuck us over. https://www.state.gov/...
Don't know what's happening at State right now, but this is at least the third major thing to come out of it tonight. A major step toward further balkanizing our internet from China. https://www.state.gov/...
America creating a semblance of China's great Firewall in order to make a stand against about how terrible China's great Firewall is You can't make this shit up https://twitter.com/...
I recall reading this piece by Chris Demchak and @PeterDombrowsk6 on the rise of a “cybered Westphalian age” with skepticism in 2011, but in retrospect, their argument was prescient. We're seeing unprecedented fragmentation of the Internet as we knew it. https://www.airuniversity…
This is all fairly high level and so I want to understand it better, but the direction we are heading is troubling imho. And this framing justifies just about any action by the USG. https://www.state.gov/...
Yes. Absolutely. But it's simple game theory and realpolitik. Once the tech cos of a country with “cyber sovereignty” go global, other countries have little choice but to implement their own “cyber sovereignty,” as a market access and security issue. https://twitter.com/...
US wants Chinese apps removed from app stores Pompeo: “Apps like TikTok and WeChat and others, are significant threats to personal data of American citizens, not to mention tools for Chinese Communist Party content censorship” https://www.cnbc.com/...