You can't have this take without acknowledging the US is currently in a technological cold war with China. It's not old school at all, they've been hacking our infrastructure and stealing proprietary data from corporations for years (and vice versa, no doubt).
Having a direct adversary control what young people consume for hours a day with a black-box algorithm is very dangerous.
Also note that TikTok has been banned in Hong Kong for years now.
I also think it's dangerous for domestic companies to do this, but obviously the US gov't is going to prioritize China because politicians can take bribes (in the form of lobbying) domestically.
US was doing the same thing to its own citizens. refer Zuck's podcast with Joe Rogan. The DeepState used carrot and stick approach to make Zuck kneel. They would have destroyed Meta if Zuck didn't succumb to their demands.
Yep definitely, the US does it all the time... but there's a big difference between doing it to yourself vs having your enemy do it to you.