TikTok becomes political football, again

FBI director Christopher Wray said in a US Senate hearing on Wednesday that TikTok "is a tool that is ultimately within the control of the Chinese government — and it, to me, it screams out with national security concerns".

In the same hearing, the director of the US Central Intelligence Agency, William Burns, claimed that the agency's future will be defined by the United States' ongoing technology race with China.

The remarks followed the release of the Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community, which pointed to alleged Chinese cyber surveillance as the biggest national security threat.

There is no evidence TikTok is collecting the personal data of users for the Chinese government. Yet on March 5, US-based Business Insider reported that data collected by online pharmacies, as well as social media posts, and message and search logs, were being provided to prosecute women seeking abortions or abortion-inducing medication, a direct result of the overturning of the ruling in the Roe versus Wade case in June 2022. Guess where their data come from — not TikTok. It is Google and Facebook that are providing the data.

And it is not just the US spook establishment that sees a red menace in the popular video-sharing app. The White House backed a bill introduced on Tuesday by a dozen senators to give President Joe Biden's administration new powers to ban TikTok and other foreign-based technologies if they are considered to pose a national security threat.

The Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology (RESTRICT) Act is intended to "comprehensively address the ongoing threat posed by technology from foreign adversaries, such as TikTok", claim its sponsors.

To call TikTok an adversary is ridiculous. As is Wray's claim that TikTok could drive narratives to divide US people over the Taiwan question. As if that is something that concerns the majority of the US public. US society is certainly divided but that is because of wealth gaps, racism and other domestic blights, including the bitter feuding within Congress where TikTok and other alleged Chinese security threats are merely political footballs.

On Feb 28, commenting on the US government's ban on members of federal agencies having TikTok on their devices, the Foreign Ministry replied that the US government so lacks confidence that it even fears an app that young people like.

It should fear the ire of the public. As one comment posted in response to a Reuters tweet about the proposed ban on TikTok said, it is nothing but "politically motivated prejudice and discrimination" and millions of young American voters will teach the politicians a good lesson.