Our government should recognize the app for what it is — a threat to American democracy — and deal with it accordingly.
Our government should recognize the app for what it is — a threat to American democracy — and deal with it accordingly.
E nemy meddling in U.S. elections has worried American leaders since our founding, but the threat today is without historical peer. The internet’s reach ignores oceans and borders, and the most popular social-media apps hammer users with a barrage of content. Our adversaries — particularly Russia, China, and Iran — love this vulnerability. Given the ham-handed Russian efforts to push Donald Trump’s candidacy in 2016 and 2020, both the Biden administration and congressional Democrats are on high alert for foreign interference in our domestic politics. To wit, the White House just extended an emergency declaration on propaganda and disinformation on digital devices.
Why then are many elected officials sleeping on the Chinese app TikTok, perhaps the most profound propaganda threat ever faced by American voters?
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has a vise grip on Chinese tech firms through laws requiring them to cooperate with the government’s intelligence services. FBI director Christopher Wray testified before Congress this week that the CCP could coerce TikTok to feed it Americans’ data for information operations, gain access to software on millions of devices, support U.S. candidates it favored, and drive narratives with the app’s powerful algorithm to divide the public — all reasons it was banned on government devices last year. Most concerning of all, Wray confirmed that the U.S. government may not recognize the signs of CCP operations conducted via TikTok software.
The CCP has used fake accounts on U.S. social media to influence elections in the U.S. and abroad, and potentially scraped American data to launch cyberattacks against us. A potential CCP civil–military fusion with TikTok presents a more sinister problem not just because of Chinese security laws, but also because the CCP took an equity stake and board seat in parent company ByteDance and, unlike U.S. firms, can more easily control it.
Since 2020 and perhaps earlier, ByteDance has used TikTok to monitor journalists’ physical locations with their IP addresses. A 2023 report from Rutgers University and the Network Contagion Research Institute assessed that TikTok appears to promote content based on its alignment with CCP interests (unsurprising when even TikTok’s CEO had trouble calling Tiananmen Square a “massacre” this week). Recently, the app faced scrutiny for allowing videos supporting Osama Bin Laden to spread after October 7, and accusations by Jewish TikTok employees of rampant antisemitism on the platform.
TikTok’s potential to shape thoughts and opinions is apparent by its supercharged AI algorithm, which pinpoints user interests in as little as 40 minutes. One can imagine what the CCP could achieve with such a tool if it controlled it in a highly partisan election year.
If preventing foreign influence during elections is an emergency, then why has a Chinese-controlled app like TikTok not been completely banned or force-sold to U.S. firms by now? Because of weak national-security laws and the app’s explosive popularity. These factors provide TikTok with massive leverage over U.S. leaders who risk losing the political momentum they built against the app last March. Targeted legislation that strengthens national-security laws and pressures the president to act is needed now to guard against the type of interference Biden identified.
In 2020, the Trump administration used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a statute enabling the president to impose sanctions on foreign companies, to threaten a ban of TikTok. A few months later, courts halted the Trump plan, finding that the IEEPA prevents the president from sanctioning certain electronic personal communications or informational materials without congressional permission. Both cases remained in limbo in 2021.
The Biden administration immediately dropped the litigation and parts of the executive orders against TikTok to review the risks posed by foreign-owned social media. The administration’s reticence to ban TikTok has been partially due to the IEEPA’s weakness, but also because — ironically — Biden benefits from TikTok’s influence on youth voters. It’s no secret Biden’s White House and the Democratic Party lean heavily on TikTok influencers to reach the nearly 60 percent of Gen-Z adults who visit the app each day and lean left politically. While some democrats like Senators Mark Warner and Michael Bennet have ignored election-turnout concerns to go after TikTok, such courage is rare. Even some Republicans, beholden to big TikTok investors, are supporting the app.
TikTok’s popularity poses a deeper issue for lawmakers. TikTok’s American user base is now 170 million people. Over 30 percent of adults ages 18 to 29 use TikTok as a primary source of news, and more businesses are partnering with it to promote products. Meanwhile, TikTok’s aggressive public-relations strategy has swayed 13 percent of non-TikTok users to back the app after railing against it in 2023.
TikTok is digital fentanyl, and America’s addiction is growing. The app should be recognized for what it is — a threat to American democracy. Biden’s warnings about foreign election interference are not without merit. But how can they be considered credible if American leaders continue to grant TikTok amnesty?
John Noonan is a veteran of the United States Air Force and a former staffer of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees. Jimmy Byrn is an attorney and former Senate staffer who sits on the Advisory Board of Veterans on Duty.