Father Coughlin's periodical Social Justice was denied a mailing permit during World War II for airing pro-Nazi material (such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion) under the authority of the Espionage Act of 1917, which limited its distribution to news stands in the Boston area. I don't think America has faced a political rival like China since the Soviet Union; not sure if there were any restrictions on the distribution of Soviet software in the late 80s.
> I don't think America has faced a political rival like China since the Soviet Union; not sure if there were any restrictions on the distribution of Soviet software in the late 80s.
I doubt there were, because it would have been moot: the Soviets were so far behind on computer technology that they didn't really make anything anyone would want.
But more generally, the US was a lot smarter about trade with adversaries during the Cold War. There were significant restrictions on trade with the Communist Bloc that limited the kinds of entanglements we now have with China. The US got really stupid and overconfident after the Cold War ended, and that's only slowly starting to change (and this TikTok "ban" is a welcome part of that).
I think they were too busy ripping off VMS and mainframe software to send anything the other direction except Tetris