It's the great TikTok panic – and it could accelerate the end of the internet as we know it

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. The US hearings took place as the UK extended its ban of TikTok to the parliamentary estate, after initially banning the app from central government officials' work phones. Canada, the…