On the menu today: President Biden signed legislation that could ban TikTok if it isn’t sold to a non-Chinese company, but his campaign will remain on the platform through Election Day; some terrorists in the Gaza Strip get some target practice, getting ready for the arrival of the American-made pier; and contemplating a much-needed country song about the antisemitic campus protests.
Biden Signs Law That Could Ban TikTok, but Keeps Campaign Account
This week, President Joe Biden signed into law legislation that forces TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to either sell the app to a neutral third party within 270 days, or have the app blocked in the American market.
Also this week, the Biden reelection campaign announced that it would keep its TikTok account active for the duration of the campaign. (There are 192 days until Election Day.)
Rob Flaherty, who ran the White House’s Office of Digital Strategy and now is deputy manager of Biden’s reelection campaign, contends that the notion that the president should stop using TikTok is “silly.”
No, Rob, you’re silly for trying to gaslight us into believing that it’s perfectly normal for the president of the United States to continue using an app that has been labeled a threat by every major figure in his own administration who has responsibility for national security.
FBI director Christopher Wray:
The parent company is, for all intents and purposes, beholden to the [Chinese Communist Party]. . . . The kind of influence operation, or the different kinds of influence operations you’re describing, are extraordinarily difficult to detect, which is part of what makes the national-security concerns represented by TikTok so significant. . . . This is a tool that is ultimately within the control of the Chinese government — and it, to me, it screams out with national security concerns.”
John F. Plumb, assistant secretary of defense, and the principal cyber adviser to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin:
I would say that when we think about TikTok as a potential threat vector, the things that come to mind are, one, the scale. I mean, just a tremendous number of people in the United States use TikTok. And, two, the control that China may have to be able to direct information through it, [serve] as a misinformation platform. And then, of course, the data that it can collect. So, it is the scale of it I think that is problematic really for us.
U.S. National Security Agency director Paul Nakasone:
If you consider one-third of the adult population receives their news from this app; one-sixth of our children are saying they are constantly on this app; if you consider that there is 150 million people every single day that are, obviously, touching this app, this provides, you know, a foreign nation a platform for information operations, a platform for surveillance, and a concern we have with regards to who controls that data. The Department has already, as you know, banned the use of that application on our phones.
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif.: Is it fair to say you view that TikTok has a different order of threat than an American company on social media?
General Nakasone: I do. I mean, if you consider the fact that the difference between an American company and our government, there is a clear separation in terms of what goes on there. If you take a look at an application like this that a nation has already said that they are going to be able to touch the data at any time they want to touch this data, this concerns–this concerns me, and certainly concerns most people as they look at this.
Heck, take it from White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre:
We’re talking about national security. We’re talking about making sure we’re protecting Americans’ privacy, and that’s what this is about. And we are not talking about Americans using TikTok. That’s not what we’re — we’re looking at here.
We want to make sure that there’s a divestment, that, you know, TikTok should not be owned — or Americans should not be — should not be having to worry about using a platform that is owned by — you know, by a country that’s trying to harm us. That’s the national security concern here.
They’re openly saying it’s a national-security concern, and yet the same app that is banned from all government phones because it’s such a national-security risk is on the phones used by the president’s campaign staff, recording him.
Nobody expects an 81-year-old man to be fully versed in the ins and outs of cybersecurity. But this is where the vulnerabilities of an octogenarian president, who is at the mercy of what he is told by his advisers, become painfully obvious. The message from the national-security professionals is clear: Nobody should be on this, it’s spyware and an influence tool of the regime in Beijing. And the message from the campaign professionals is clear: There are a lot of dancing, Hamas-loving, Osama bin Laden-sympathizing young Americans getting their worldview shaped by this app, so we have to be on it.
And Biden’s answer is to say “yes” to both.
I’ve argued for a ban on TikTok for a long while. Way back in March 2023, I asked:
General Nakasone: If you don’t think that TikTok has done anything bad enough to warrant a total ban — the national-security implications, the ties to the Chinese military’s surveillance programs, the data-privacy violations, the company’s constant lying about the privacy violations, the spying on journalists, the apologetics for ongoing genocide, running “the digital equivalent of going down the street to a strip club filled with 15-year-olds,” the harmful effects on teen girls’ mental health, the algorithm steering teenagers towards explicit and inappropriate material . . . what would TikTok have to do in order for you to believe it deserved a ban? Or is there nothing that the company could do that would make you believe the app should be banned in the U.S.?
(Yes, NR had a TikTok account, briefly. You’ll notice we don’t have one anymore.)
As for the Republican side, my colleague Jay Nordlinger observes:
Funny things are happening in the TikTok debate. Funny shifts, funny swings — funny turns on dimes. In the last year of his presidency, Trump said, “As far as TikTok is concerned, we’re banning them from the United States.” This week, he said, “Just so everyone knows, especially the young people, Crooked Joe Biden is responsible for banning TikTok.”
Then there is Charlie Kirk, the young Republican leader. Last November, he said, “It’s way past time to ban TikTok. It is a cancer on America.” And now: “Joe Biden is likely to ban TikTok, an app he doesn’t like, because he’s owned and promoted by Big Tech, a massive in-kind political donation that should be investigated.”
Certain people have no fixed beliefs or principles; they will just believe whatever they have to believe to have the easiest path to get through the day. Alas, two of those people are the two major-party nominees this year.
Palestinians Get Some Early Target Practice for the Forthcoming Gaza Pier
Earlier this week, this newsletter noted the quiet admission that no construction had been started on that Gaza pier that President Biden announced during his State of the Union Address, seven weeks ago.
Yesterday, the Pentagon held a briefing with an unnamed “senior military official” who announced, “Earlier today, the at-sea assembly of key pieces of the temporary pier began off the coast of Gaza. We are on track to begin delivery of humanitarian assistance to Gaza from the sea in early May”:
SENIOR MILITARY OFFICIAL: No U.S. vessels will touch the shore. That — the pier, as I described, is several hundred meters long. So let me just recreate, you know, the visual for you of a large commercial vessel with humanitarian assistance coming from Cyprus, dropping off humanitarian assistance commodity onto Army LSVs and LCUs at the large floating platform several miles off the coast. Those vessels getting loaded with 15 — five to 15 trucks worth of commodity, and then traveling a short distance, several miles, to the actual pier that’s affixed to Gaza, and driving right off the — that LSV onto the causeway, all the way down onto the sand, into a — a facility where we — we turn it over to distribution partners. I hope that helps.
Q: So U.S. troops will be several hundred meters from the shore?
SENIOR MILITARY OFFICIAL: Yes.
Also, in a separate briefing, the Pentagon press secretary, Air Force Major General Pat Ryder, said:
We’re aware of reports that a small number of mortars landed in the vicinity of the marshalling yard area for humanitarian assistance that will eventually be the delivery site that this pier will support. It’s important also to highlight that this occurred before any U.S. forces, you know, have started moving anything. There’ll be no U.S. forces on the ground.
The Americans working to move this pier into place will have a giant bullseye on their backs the entire time. If, God forbid, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or some other terrorist group decides to attempt to kill Americans, it will be arguably the most predictable terrorist attack of all time:
While U.S. troops will not be deployed inside Gaza, U.S. officials say, security analysts have raised concerns about an array of threats, including speedboats packed with explosives, divers swimming in with mines and incoming rockets. They also have warned that if bottlenecks occur distributing aid flowing from the pier, it could upend the entire process.
We can see the cliff’s edge ahead. But the president won’t turn the wheel.
ADDENDUM: Yesterday, Christopher Scalia joked, “If you need me I’ll be writing my new country song, ‘Try That at a Large Public University in a Red State.’”
Here’s my attempt to flesh out this much-needed song, to the tune of “Blue Suede Shoes”:
I like mah jeans well-worn and mah beer ice cold, this ‘river to the sea’ crap is gettin’ real old.
Yah can hold your signs but yah can’t trespass, any good provost will expel your ass.
Not buyin’ your line that you’re mad about the news, yah say you’re anti-Zion but yah hassle all the Jews.
Your excuses for Hamas are nothin’ but crap; got mah doubts you could even find Gaza on a map.
Another hopeless young man is all yah are to me; best keep away from the S-E-C.