In a letter obtained exclusively by NR, Republicans request a briefing from the intelligence community on TikTok’s new ‘elections center.’
In a letter obtained exclusively by NR, Republicans request a briefing from the intelligence community on TikTok’s new ‘elections center.’
R epublican lawmakers are requesting an intelligence briefing about TikTok’s new “elections center,” voicing concerns that the initiative could allow the Chinese Communist Party to interfere in U.S. elections and collect sensitive data on U.S. political activity, including voter-registration information. The group, led by Representatives Jim Banks and Michael Waltz, explained the concerns in a letter sent this week to Jeffrey Wichman, the U.S. intelligence community’s top official on foreign political interference.
“TikTok, an overseas subsidiary of Chinese company ByteDance, which has members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on its board, will be policing American political discourse and owning the data of potentially millions of voters,” wrote the lawmakers, in the letter obtained exclusively by National Review. “This new Elections Center could provide an unprecedented political surveillance and election interference tool for the Chinese Communist Party, our foremost foreign adversary.”
The lawmakers additionally requested that Wichman brief the Republican Study Committee (RSC) on how TikTok’s Elections Center might allow the Chinese government to interfere in U.S. elections and involve CCP surveillance efforts. The letter’s 14 other signatories included Representatives Lisa McClain, Claudia Tenney, and Joe Wilson, in addition to other RSC members.
The CCP-linked social-media company unveiled its new elections initiative on August 17, in a press release titled, “our commitment to election integrity.” The effort is a collaboration with several nonprofits, including the National Association of Secretaries of State and organizations focused on political participation among the deaf community, college students, and convicts.
“Providing access to authoritative information is an important part of our overall strategy to counter election misinformation. That’s why we’re rolling out an Elections Center to connect people who engage with election content to authoritative information and sources in more than 45 languages, including English and Spanish,” wrote Eric Han, TikTok’s head of U.S. safety.
TikTok will also add labels identifying political content that’s related to the upcoming November midterm elections, including content associated with candidates and officials, allowing users to directly access the Elections Center. In addition, the company said that it will continue to enforce its policies banning “election misinformation,” harassment, and “hateful behavior,” in tandem with “accredited fact checking organizations.”
Notably, TikTok said that it would also provide information to help people register to vote, though it would direct users away from TikTok, and the app would not “have access to any of that off-platform data or activity.”
Still, the lawmakers, who cited a recent report that TikTok has the ability to log its users’ keystrokes, are not convinced. “This means that TikTok will have voting profiles on American users who use the Elections Center.”
Starting in June, TikTok has faced an increased level of scrutiny regarding its parent company’s extensive ties to the Chinese Communist Party. That month, BuzzFeed News published an exposé detailing that ByteDance engineers in Beijing could access the data of American users, a revelation that contradicted TikTok’s previous public assertions. Since then, Senators Mark Warner and Marco Rubio, the chairman and vice chairman, respectively, of the Senate Intelligence Committee, have requested a counterintelligence briefing on TikTok, accusing its leadership of misleading Congress. A slew of other lawmakers have expressed similar concerns about the data collection by the app.
Although much of Washington’s alarm about TikTok centers on the potential transfer of data to Chinese government entities, there’s reason to believe that the company manipulates content to fit CCP narratives. TikTok has previously been accused of censoring content that runs afoul of Beijing’s political sensitivities, charges that it has strenuously denied.
And while TikTok has attempted to downplay its CCP ties, ByteDance has collaborated with security bureaus in Xinjiang to cover up Beijing’s mass atrocities targeting minorities, including the Uyghurs. In addition, a ByteDance board member, Neil Shen, has a seat on the body that convenes the CCP’s united-front political-influence network.
Wichman was tapped earlier this year to head the foreign-malign-influence response center at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). The center is a new cell tasked with countering political-interference efforts by governments that have interests adverse to America. The GOP lawmakers told Wichman that the app’s growing popularity should be especially worrying in light of Beijing’s overarching surveillance and interference efforts.
“According solely to disclosed data in foreign agent filings, the Chinese government foreign agent spending in the US has increased massively from $10 million in 2016 to $64 million in 2020. According to Intelligence Community Assessment released by the Director of National Intelligence, ‘China probably continued longstanding efforts to gather information on American voters and public opinion, political parties, candidates and their staffs and senior government officials’ during the last election,” the lawmakers wrote.
A spokesperson for ODNI declined to comment on the possibility that TikTok’s election activities may boost CCP surveillance and political-interference activities. TikTok has not responded to NR’s request for comment.