#WTH is TikTok so dangerous?
It gives the Chinese Communist Party your Location. Passwords. Life. That's why.
AEI’s Klon Kitchen joined us to talk TikTok this week. Three things from our pod:
Delete the app.
Make your kids delete it.
More than one third of America is in the Chinese Community Party’s databases. Don’t care? You will.
We all know the look: Doomscrolling for hours on end, laughing, sharing; it feels like every American under 30 is on TikTok, looking at all the digital catnip TikTok’s algorithms feed you. German Shepherds? Yes ma’am. French lessons? Bien sur. German Shepherd training videos in French? Mais oui. It’s brilliant. What won’t you find? Anything about anti-regime demonstrations in China. Anything about Uyghur concentration camps. Anything about Xi Jinping that isn’t flattering. Not your vibe? Well, it is someone’s vibe, but clips posted to TikTok on topics the Chinese Communist Party doesn’t want you to see are filtered out. You think you posted it; you may even think it’s gone viral. But no one else will see it because the CCP has suppressed it.
But there’s more. It’s your every movement. Your shopping. Your keystrokes. Your bank passwords. Everything about you, filed away for a moment when the Chinese government wants to use it. Access to you at a time of the Chinese government’s choosing. Don’t care? You should. If you join the military, they’ve got leverage against you. Join a company, they may want proprietary information. Join the government, they know your every move.
We’ve all become reconciled to a certain loss of privacy in the online world. But even if you don’t care that Walmart or Google or Apple knows you feed your dog Alpo, or that you’re nervous about dandruff, or that you check your wife’s geolocation every five minutes, it’s one thing for them to know and another for the government of a hostile nation to know. And for that foreign government to use every detail of your life as a way to leverage public opinion, blackmail Americans, or other exert undue influence over more than one hundred million users.
Think they don’t do it? You’re wrong. Around the world, the Chinese Communist Party uses its own nationals, ethnic Chinese, and untold numbers of others to influence the direction of public opinion and government policy. Sometimes their agents are willing; sometimes they’re not. It’s time to stop giving them the access they use against us. It’s time to ban TikTok in the United States.
HIGHLIGHTS
So what’s the big deal?
KK: I understand TikTok as a social media app is very engaging. It is the fastest growing, number one downloaded social media app in the United States. There's currently 140 million monthly users, US users of TikTok …However, there are very real concerns associated with TikTok that most Americans aren't thinking about
TikTok is not unique in the fact that it collects a lot of information about its users. Other social media apps do the same thing. TikTok is peculiar in how much data it collects. I mean, it hoovers up a ton of data and it's been broken down by a number of different cybersecurity and other folks to show that not only does it hoover up data, but interestingly, if you look at the backend code, there are aspects of the way the app works that change if you try to enact greater security. So it's really peculiar. We're starting to learn more about that.
Why does Bytedance (TikTok’s owner) share its data with the Chinese government?
KK: What they've done is they have passed a series of cybersecurity and national security laws that require every bit and byte of data that is collected, that is stored, that transits, or that in any other way touches a Chinese network to at least be made available to the Chinese government. There's no getting out of that. There's no resisting that.
But what do I care?
KK: So from an individual standpoint, it's not just your dance videos, it's all of your contacts. It's your GPS location. It's your online viewing and shopping habits. It's even your keyboard swipes and your off app, online habits. So for example, TikTok knows what other websites you go to in your web browser, not just in TikTok but then it's also tracking the key swipes when you're on those other websites. So for example, if you log into, say, your bank website and it is able to track your keyboard swipes when you're on that website, what do they know? Well, they know your username and they know your password, and they know texting content. So they don't actually have to intercept the text. So even if the text itself is end to end encrypted, the fact that they are able to monitor keyboard swipes means that they can actually put together the content of a message.
There's also what we call pattern of life knowledge that comes from this. So, if I just know your GPS, just your GPS, it takes me about 24 hours to figure out where do you live, where do you work, where do you congregate, what's your favorite coffee shop, that kind of thing. Now, again, your daughter may say, "Well, okay, that's kind of creepy, but who cares?" All right. Well, one, you may care one day and that's a real challenge for you that you may not be thinking about anticipating in the future. Two, it helps them understand precisely how they want to target and influence you and everyone like you.
But what if I still don’t care?
KK: Then there's moving beyond the individual. There's what the Chinese government ultimately is able to learn about more than a third of the US population. So they're able to collect this volume, as I said, from approximately 140 million Americans and that gives them deep, deep insight into how a third of the country thinks, how they operate, what they're economically engaged in, and ultimately how to influence that group. Now, if you can move or shape in some form or fashion, a third of the US population, that is a tool that is incredibly attractive to a government that we know engages in strategic influence operations in the West
So what should we do?
KK: As much as I would like the normal American to think better about all this, and I think they can and should, at the end of the day, national security is fundamentally the US government's job. We cannot be relying on 140 million Americans all making the same right choice every single time. That's just never going to work. And that's why I think there's plenty of legitimate justification, national security justification for the US government to take action against TikTok. The underlying rationale that we have used for Huawei and ZTE and a host of other Chinese companies is the exact same rationale that we would use under TikTok. And so I think it's time.
Does Bytedance admit to all this?
KK: So they'll say things like, "The Chinese government has never asked us for access to US persons information." No. We're just required to build our networks in such a way as where the Chinese government has access. They don't have to ask us. And then also they'll say, "But if they ever did ask us, we would say no." Well, one by Chinese law, it's actually written to law, they actually have to deny cooperation with the Chinese government. But even so, assume that they don't want to lie, the way they massage that is they say, "Well, we would say no, but that doesn't actually mean that the government wouldn't get it. They would just say no, and then it would continue afoot."
Why hasn’t the US banned TikTok already?
KK: For a long time, Dany, to answer your question directly, one of the things that slowed us down was the undeniable economic intermingling between the United States and China. It's true. It's real. And if we were to address the problem that we've been discussing comprehensively, there's no avoiding very real disruption and pain, there just is. That is a problem. And you'll remember in the last administration, there was always these, we'll call them tensions between the national security folks and the treasury folks about how we were going to deal with China. Well, that's continued into this administration. But the idea that something has to be done is now largely settled. And now it's a conversation about, well, okay, how far how fast? I think that one of the best things that's helped that conversation has been Xi Jinping. His unrelenting aggressiveness, his inability, frankly, to manage the situation to what I would say would be his own advantage has actually allowed us to clarify the situation and has caused fence sitters to have to kind of move. And I think we're in the middle of that right now.
But aren’t US consumers savvy enough to resist TikTok?
KK: Well, the danger is being shaped by the Chinese Communist Party. Your understanding of the world, the issues that are at stake, how those issues play off of one another, and what you think is actually true or not is all being, in the case of TikTok, dictated to you by the Chinese Communist Party. That's the thing. And again, I mentioned I used to do influence [operations for the USG]. TikTok, and all of social media, they do not exist so that we can see cat videos. These are not social media companies in that sense.
Their purpose for existing is to capture and move audiences. That's why they make billions and billions and billions of dollars. Now, in one sense, I'm good with that, particularly in the American context. Okay. We're all making this choice and it does serve us a purpose. But when we talk about the Chinese government, we just have to understand that we're dealing with, unfortunately, an inherently hostile foreign government who seeks to move our population in directions that are inevitably against our own interests and toward theirs. That's it. That's the summation of the problem. And again, I know I mentioned in one sense, that's a rational choice by the CCP. Of course, I would use this capability. I want to amass and wield geopolitical influence. This is potentially the most powerful platform for geopolitical influence ever built, and it's mine. Yes, I'm going to use it. I'm going to leverage it. We have, as a society, and particularly policymakers, we have to understand that this is the world we live in; it's not going to change. This is where we are. And we either get sophisticated, or we're handing ourselves over to an enemy without even a fight
Draw a picture of the danger for individuals? Say you’re joining the intel community?
KK: They're going to know, not just about you, but they're going to know about every individual member of the IC, the intelligence community, which doesn't just give them insight into that community, but it then gives them insight into how to build the perfect spy. They understand, "Okay, what's the legend that has a 90% application success rate into the IC? Okay, now I know how to build that. Okay, what is the life that fits into the IC and gets elevated up into the senior ranks? I can build that, I can use that, I can manipulate that."
As a guy like me, I think about, I'm not going to burn this source. What I'm going to do is I'm going to keep building that portfolio. I'm going to help in every way that I can to make sure that person becomes the director of the China Center. And if I can move them with an invisible hand, I'll do that. But if it comes down to it and they become the National Security Advisor to the president one day, well then one day, when we're at some kind of a diplomatic meeting, I'm going to have a one-off conversation and just give them a peek at the portfolio, and let them know that they now work for me.
So what next?
KK: Now, I want to be careful. I don't want to build them up to be 10 feet tall and bulletproof. Some of your listeners, most of your listeners will rightly kind of throw up with their hands and say, "Look, I'm not on TikTok. I'm doing what I can. There's not much I can do more." Fine, but this is where my point about the US government really comes in, is that this is so clearly a concern. This is so completely within the government's constitutional duties to provide for the common defense that we're now on the line, in my view, of professional negligence, if we don't take this action.
Full transcript here.
SHOWNOTES
Quotes
● Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA): "Well, I think Donald Trump was right. I mean, TikTok is an enormous threat. So, if you're a parent, and you've got a kid on TikTok, I would be very, very concerned. All of that data that your child is inputting and receiving is being stored somewhere in Beijing."
● Secretary Mike Pompeo: “Here’s what I hope that the American people will come to recognize – these Chinese software companies doing business the United States, whether it’s TikTok or WeChat, there are countless more … are feeding data directly to the Chinese Communist Party, their national security apparatus – could be their facial recognition pattern, it could be information about their residence, their phone numbers, their friends, who they’re connected to”
● Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL): “The Biden Administration can no longer pretend that TikTok is not beholden to the Chinese Communist Party. Even before today, it was clear that TikTok represented a serious threat to personal privacy and U.S. national security. Beijing’s aggressiveness makes clear that the regime sees TikTok as an extension of the party-state, and the U.S. needs to treat it that way.”
● Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI): "Enough is enough. It has been clear to anyone paying attention that TikTok is not only destroying our children's brains, but also poses an unacceptable threat to our national security. It is long past time to ban its operation in the United States.”
TikTok and Chinese Influence
TikTok found spying on the location of specific Americans (Techstory, November 25, 2022)s
FCC Commissioner says government should bad TikTok (Axios, November 1, 2022)
As Washington wavers on TikTok, Beijing exerts control (Washington Post, October 30, 2022)
Inside Democrats’ elaborate attempt to woo TikTok influencers (Washington Post, October 27, 2022)
TikTok’s Beijing roots fuel censorship suspicion as it builds a huge U.S. audience (Washington Post, September 15, 2019)
Revealed: how TikTok censors videos that do not please Beijing (The Guardian, September 25, 2019)
TikTok Denies Censoring A Teen Who Criticized China's Concentration Camps — They Said They Banned Her After A Joke About Osama Bin Laden Thirst (Buzzfeed News, November 26, 2019)
TikTok and Privacy
Incoming House Committee Chairs Accuse TikTok of Lying to Congress (National Review, November 22, 2022)
TikTok Parent ByteDance Planned To Use TikTok To Monitor The Physical Location Of Specific American Citizens (Forbes, October 20, 2022)
Troops’ use of TikTok may be national security threat, FCC commissioner says (Military Times, July 14, 2022
Leaked Audio From 80 Internal TikTok Meetings Shows That US User Data Has Been Repeatedly Accessed From China (Buzzfeed News, June 17, 2022)
TikTok insiders say social media company is tightly controlled by Chinese parent ByteDance (CNBC, June 25, 2021)
The U.S. government fined the app now known as TikTok $5.7 million for illegally collecting children’s data (Washington Post, February 27, 2019)
TikTok and Scrolling Addiction
Douyin, Chinese version of TikTok, adds time limit for kids under 14 and bans nighttime use
Of relevance: Huawei
US bans imports of Chinese tech from Huawei, ZTE (CBS News, November 25, 2022)
Counterpoints: Opposition to banning TikTok
Nice Video Streaming Business You Got There… (Cato Institute, August 5, 2020)
The Lesson of TikTok (Cato Institute, August 7, 2020)
Don't Ban TikTok and WeChat (ACLU, August 14, 2020)
Klon Kitchen work: