Biden is signaling to Americans that they shouldn’t listen to the severe alarm expressed by top national-security officials serving in his administration.
President Biden’s 2024 campaign joined TikTok last night, dropping its first video there, about the Super Bowl, during the game.
TikTok is banned from U.S. federal government devices. FBI director Chris Wray has testified that it’s a Chinese government-controlled tool that “screams out with national security concerns.”
Last March, Paul Nakasone, the general who until last week served as National Security Agency director and Cyber Command commander, told Congress that it’s a “loaded gun.” He was even more explicit during a subsequent conversation with Dartmouth College students last November: “TikTok is a loaded gun at our nation’s head,” he said, commenting on the high number of Americans who get their news from the app.
Despite this, the president’s campaign just endorsed TikTok as one of the primary avenues through which it will get its political messaging through to Americans.
Obviously, the biggest reason for a political leader to get onto TikTok is the fact that it’s where millions of Americans go for entertainment and, yes, despite claims by the company to the contrary, news, every day. The political reason is compelling.
But there are certainly data-security issues implicated in using TikTok. The Justice Department, which is led by Attorney General Merrick Garland — a Biden appointee — has reportedly investigated the fact that Beijing-based employees of TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, tracked U.S. journalists’ locations.
The other concern is that ByteDance — which has collaborated with Chinese government entities on setting up an artificial-intelligence institute in Beijing — could manipulate algorithms to favor pro-Beijing content. TikTok has already suspended numerous Chinese Communist Party opponents from the app, restoring them only after public outcry. The State Department recently presented declassified intelligence indicating that ByteDance has maintained blacklists of CCP critics to ban from its apps.
But the signal that Biden’s team is sending might be even more damaging than any of these other threats. It’s creating a permission structure for other officials to get on the app. The president, via his campaign, is signaling to Americans that they shouldn’t listen to the severe alarm expressed by top national-security officials serving in his administration.