Earlier this month the House overwhelmingly passed a bill that could force the sale of the social media platform TikTok. The bill, which garnered broad bipartisan support, would separate TikTok from its CCP-controlled parent company, ByteDance, cutting the platform off from a source of harmful propaganda and safeguarding the American public from America’s foremost national security threat.
The bill could not be more timely, or necessary. TikTok is now the fastest growing news and video content platform in the United States. Although data privacy concerns surrounding the app have been well documented, many Americans may not realize that TikTok is being used every day by the Chinese Communist Party as a means of information control and ideological warfare. Indeed, the Party has made clear that manipulating ideas and disseminating propaganda is a core part of its continuous and explicit campaign to diminish American influence, prosperity, and power.
Tik Tok is aptly described as the “fentanyl version” of the ByteDance application suite. Just like the Communist Party ships fentanyl to the United States to poison and kill Americans, so too do they ship the fentanyl version of this app to poison young American minds.
Just this fall, we witnessed a surge of content on TikTok sympathizing with Osama bin Laden and justifying the killing of nearly 3,000 American citizens on 9/11. TikTok has long disseminated jihadist propaganda and other harmful information, and as FBI Director Christopher Wray has warned, the CCP has the ability to control TikTok’s recommendation algorithm, giving it the power to manipulate and promote select content for influence operations. The Office of the Director for National Intelligence has similarly raised the alarm in a report released this month, noting that the CCP has deliberately employed TikTok accounts run by a PRC propaganda arm to target U.S. candidates from both political parties.
In no uncertain terms, the United States is now giving the Chinese Communist Party, which seeks to destroy America’s security and economic might, the ability to engage Americans directly and distort their views about our country and a myriad of other issues relevant to American health and safety. We are allowing an adversary direct, scaled access to our nation’s best resource: our young people. Tik Tok content is imbued with communist propaganda to stunt young Americans’ aspirations, intellectual growth, and mental health, all for the purpose of weakening our society.
The CCP has made its intentions in the information domain crystal clear. Chinese military textbooks quote Xi Jinping explicitly touting the importance of the “smokeless battlefield,” and the critical role of “mind control” and “total victory” in the ideological domain. Indeed, Xi Jinping argues that “the crumbling of a regime always starts in the realm of ideas.” That’s what he’s trying to do.
At a Communist Party National Propaganda Work Conference, Xi further identified the internet as the “main battlefield” against the West. State-run media outlets in China have specifically named TikTok has a vital platform to spread information sympathetic to the CCP.
And the ties between TikTok and the CCP run deep. In fact, according to a 2023 report submitted to the Australian Senate, ByteDance and the Chinese Communist Party are so closely linked that the company “can no longer be accurately described as a private enterprise.” The CCP has forced the company to ensure that party members serve as content editors. In fact, ByteDance’s editor-in-chief Zhang Fuping, who is the CCP’s party secretary for the company, is closely connected to high-ranking CCP party leadership and sits on a ByteDance subsidiary board with a CCP official who once said that he’d like to “cut off the dog head” of Chinese people who align with Western values.
TikTok is no ordinary social media platform; it poses a unique danger to our country. It allows the CCP to monitor and manipulate information through a mechanism it controls, and we can’t monitor. To be clear, guarding the American public against CCP influence in this case is not an abrogation of free speech rights. The legislation merely disconnects TikTok’s ties to the CCP, preventing China from implementing its stated goal of waging information warfare against our country through the app.
The organization I lead, State Armor, is part of a growing coalition speaking out against the dangers of TikTok. Last week, we launched a new campaign aimed at exposing the close ties between TikTok and the CCP by way of the platform’s parent company, ByteDance. Through a combination of digital and television ads, we are showcasing the fact that ByteDance uses TikTok as another tool in the Communist Party’s apparatus to shape opinions and influence populations.
The Chinese Communist Party has made clear that it seeks to wage information warfare over the internet to degrade and demoralize the United States, weakening it and dividing it from within so that it is unable or unwilling to oppose the expansionist designs of the Communist Party. TikTok, through its parent company ByteDance, is a tool for CCP information control and espionage. We must ensure that these ties are severed to protect our country, our values, and the free exchange of ideas essential to the flourishing of our democratic system.
Michael Lucci is the Founder and CEO of State Armor Action, a 501(c)(4) non-profit advocating for policy solutions to the global threats posed by the CCP.
Read Full Article »