Ajit Pai, the former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission during Donald Trump’s first term, broke with his old boss and encouraged the The Supreme Court upheld the ban on TikTok to continue. According to Business InsiderPai and former Treasury Department official Thomas Feddo filed a brief last week urging judges to uphold legislation that would have banned TikTok’s operations within US borders despite Trump’s push to stop the ban.

Pai’s main argument is that there is existing legal precedent to support the legality of the law, which was passed by Congress last year that required TikTok’s parent company ByteDance to sell the platform or stop operations in the US. That precedent: Pai’s own crackdown on Chinese companies.

Back when Pai was the head of the FCC, he designated two companies headquartered in China as threats to national security. The agency has banned cellular providers from using government subsidies to buy telecom equipment from manufacturers Huawei and ZTE, because the companies could collaborate with the Chinese government to spy on Americans. — a concern that is at least in part supported by findings from reporters and the intelligence community.

Pai called the approach taken to restrict apps like TikTok in the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act “extremely similar” to his own efforts to deal with Chinese telecom equipment providers, saying “The Congress and the Executive Branch often identify by law or regulation specific companies under Chinese control that pose a particular risk to national security.

While Pai finds himself at odds with 2024 Donald Trump, who submitted his own brief asking the court for a delay the January 19 deadline for ByteDance to sell TikTok, he is still in line with the 2017-2021 Trump. Trump was the first to float the ban and tried to do it himself by executive order in 2020, which was ultimately blocked by a federal judge. Trump also supports rules restricting sales of equipment by companies like Huawei and ZTE in an attempt to cut off Chinese companies’ access to American technology.

But Trump had a change of heart in his attack on TikTok earlier this year after meeting with Jeff Yass, a major TikTok investor and—you won’t believe it!—a big Trump supporter who poured in nearly $100 million on conservative causes this past election cycle. His support for the app was further cemented after his victory in the 2024 presidential election, which he attributes at least in part to his popular on TikTok. It also comes as a big surprise but, TikTok started wooing Trump’s support and suddenly, in what must have been an unrelated coincidence, the app became is especially friendly to Trump-related content. Wild what happened.

However, there is no indication that Pai will return to the Trump administration (he seems happy to play a role at a busy private equity firm. buying telecom companies), so it was safe for him to stand against his former employer. If anything, Pai’s position is more principled than Trump’s, so credit where it’s due.