So This Is What Moscow's First Big Mac Tasted Like
TikTok, DeepSeek, and a dose of our own soft power medicine
Welcome back to the This Day In Esoteric Political History newsletter. Each week, a member of our team (or a friend of the show) gathers together bits of America’s past and attempts to find a throughline that might add a little understanding to our current moment.
Here’s what happened over the week ahead in American political history…
January 30
1798: The first fight on the floor of the U.S. House occurs following a spitting incident
1835: A gunman attempts to assassinate President Andrew Jackson, marking the first attempted assassination of a U.S. President
1968: The Tet Offensive begins as North Vietnamese forces launch a massive surprise attack, changing the public perception of the war in the U.S.
January 31
1865: Congress passes the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery throughout the United States
1877: An electoral commission is formed to resolve the disputed presidential election between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden
1976: Jimmy Carter is coming out of Iowa having rocketed to the top of the Democratic nomination field. This is in large part because he was the first to recognize the particular way in which the Iowa caucus system favored a certain kind of politics
1990: The very first McDonald’s opened in Moscow, after 14 years of negotiations and a moment where the USSR was softening its economic policy — and heading towards its eventual collapse.
February 1
1960: Four black students stage the first of the Greensboro sit-ins at a lunch counter in North Carolina
1978: Harriet Tubman becomes the first African American woman to appear on a U.S. postage stamp
1996: The Communications Decency Act is passed by Congress, the first notable attempt to regulate online pornography and the introduction of Section 230 protections for online service providers, who would not be held liable for content posted by others.
February 2
1848: The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is signed, ending the war between the United States and Mexico
1887: Groundhog Day is celebrated for the first time in Punxsutawney, Pa.
1920: Senator Warren G Harding proposes to resign in a letter to his mistress.
1929: Laddie Boy, the first celebrity presidential pet, dies and the country mourns
1993: First Lady Hillary Clinton bans smoking in the White House
2007: A U.N.-sponsored study concludes in a report that human activity is to blame for climate change
February 3
1870: The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, guaranteeing voting rights to male citizens regardless of race
1913: The Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, authorizing the Federal government to impose and collect an income tax
1986: The town of Austin, Minnesota is being torn apart by an ongoing strike at the Hormel meat-packing plant
1998: A U.S. Marine jet clips a cable car wire in a northern Italian ski resort, killing 20 people
February 4
1789: George Washington is unanimously elected as the first President of the United States
1861: Delegates from six break-away U.S. states meet and form the Confederate States of America
1933: Louisiana Senator Huey Long invents a holiday out of whole cloth in order to close banks and prevent a bank run
1973: President Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act
1999: Unarmed West African immigrant 23-year old Amadou Diallo is shot at 41 times by four plainclothes New York City police officers and dies
2004: Facebook is founded by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg as The Facebook
February 5
1917: Congress passes the Immigration Act of 1917 over President Woodrow Wilson's veto
1937: President Franklin Roosevelt announces a plan to expand the Supreme Court to as many as 15 judges
2004: Colin Powell accuses the Saddam Hussein regime of deceiving U.N. weapons inspectors and having ties with the al-Qaeda terrorist network
2020: Donald Trump is acquitted by the United States Senate in his impeachment trial for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress
In which we take the above collection of events and find themes, throughlines, rabbit holes and more. This week it’s Jacob Feldman’s turn at the typewriter.
“Everything is so clean and bright.”
"It's very beautiful.”
These are not the words of people stepping out of Plato’s allegorical cave to observe the real world for the first time.
They are instead reviews from the earliest customers at Moscow’s first McDonald’s branch in 1990. The USSR was crumbling, and American corporations were pushing through the cracks. Locals couldn’t get enough, although a few did complain about the prices.
Welcome to capitalism, comrades.
I couldn’t help but think of those scenes while observing the debate over TikTok’s very brief U.S. ban last week. If app addicts could have queued in freezing temperatures to restore account access, how many would have?
It wasn’t supposed to play out this way.
The U.S. was prepared to roll out a Golden Arches-esque persuasion campaign with China too. Back in March 2000, President Bill Clinton spoke about the power of economic freedom there. “When individuals have the power, not just to dream, but to realize their dreams, they will demand a greater say,” he said. And on the topic of the web, he added, “There's no question China has been trying to crack down on the Internet. Good luck!”
The CCP, however, has been more successful than anyone imagined in maintaining its own version of the internet, nearly free of large-scale dissent. And with a national user base of 1.4 billion, the country has also been able to incubate massive tech companies that are now competing with American-made services—and winning.
Just this week, several U.S. stocks dropped in response to news that a Chinese-based AI company, DeepSeek, had developed more efficient generative models than the likes of OpenAI. The app rocketed to the top of iOS App Store (where TikTok is still unavailable, by the way). Government officials are already looking at ways to restrict its access to American technology and consumers. Here we go again…
We already know how impactful these kinds of cultural imports can be, beyond any national security concerns. It’s why America spent decades promoting its food, fashion, and entertainers around the world. But keeping Chinese apps out will be harder than banning their phones or drones, as we’ve done in the past. We just tried to ban TikTok, after all, and look how that went.
Currently, Donald Trump’s administration is hoping to make a TikTok deal, with an American business—or maybe America herself?—taking ownership. China has shown no official interest in going along with that plan, though. They might as well repeat Bill Clinton’s words back to today’s POTUS.
Good luck!
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