NEWNow you can listen to Fox News articles!
To be or not to be, that’s the question for the social network giant TikTokfuture in the United States.
The fate of an app controlled by the Chinese Communist Party is one of the few issues that seems to divide Americans on both sides of our most basic ideological divides, which roughly speaking: pro-Donald Trump and against Donald Trump.
This is a pretty good sign that there are legitimate competing interests in shutting down the app and allowing it to flourish in the US. Those in favor of the short video platform see themselves as champions of free speech; those opponents as guardians of national security. Both can make sense.
THE CEO OF TIKTOK WILL ATTEND THE INAUGURATION IN THE FIRST ROW AT TRUMP’S INVITATION
For the decision on TikTok to be considered and fair, one must fully understand and acknowledge how much damage this Chinese espionage and propaganda operation has already done.
The fact that Chinese owner ByteDance refuses to sell TikTok is a kind of confirmation that it was a CCP operation all along. It wasn’t started by a Chinese entrepreneur looking to make a buck or accept a $50 billion bid — especially when it’s either that or bust in the United States.
President-elect Trump is shown in front of the TikTok logo. (Getty Images)
No, the real value of TikTok to the CCP has always been an informational attack on the US with the intention of stealing our private data, including the data of millions of our children, and promoting an anti-American ideology. Remember the “Osama Bin Laden wasn’t that bad” TikTok craze?
Information is serious national security business. According to the Department of Defense, America’s levers of international power are described by the DIME paradigm as diplomatic, informational, military, and economic.
In three of them, the USA is dominant. But thanks to our First Amendment and the free nature of our society, we are always at a disadvantage to our authoritarian foreign enemies when it comes to using information as a weapon.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testifies before the House Energy and Commerce Committee at the Rayburn House on Capitol Hill on March 23, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
(Getty Images)
This is not a two-way social media street with China. As Elon Musk, owner of rival platform X, noted this week: “The current situation where TikTok is allowed to work in America but X is not allowed to work in China is unbalanced. Something needs to change.”
No one should be holding their breath waiting for China to liberalize its internal social media censorship, but Musk’s point is well taken. This is asymmetric information warfare.
All of this is why the ban on TikTok, if Bytedance continues to refuse to sell, was passed by a large bipartisan majority, and why Trump was on the sidelines at the time. Now, when TikTok decided to go black on Sunday in the US, the rubber hit the road.
Of course, there are plenty of Americans who use TikTok in completely harmless ways to run their business, maintain a hobby, or just for pointless fun, and understandably, they don’t want it to go away.
For his part, Trump has come to believe that TikTok played a significant role in securing his election victory. There isn’t much hard evidence to back this up, but there are those in Trump’s inner circle, like Kellyanne Conway, who have lobbied for TikTok in Congress.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINIONS
If Trump can strike a deal that saves TikTok in America by eliminating the national security threat it poses, then great. That would be a double win. But although these conflicting interests are legitimate, they are not equal and the defense of our country must clearly come first.
For his part, Trump seems to understand this, announcing on Truth Social on Sunday that he wants “the United States to have a 50% ownership position in the joint venture. By doing this, we save TikTok, keep it in good hands and allow it to stay awake without approval USA, no TikTok.”
Deal or not, whether TikTok survives or not, you have to turn to Communist China for one of the most effective information operations ever conducted against the United States. Endless bytes of stolen data, millions of hours of propaganda poured into the eyes and ears of our children.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
It took our government years to figure out what TikTok actually does, longer to act, and now, even after acting decisively, we just can’t turn off the listening device. And one potential solution is to give China more than $50 billion for its problems.
Trump wants 90 days to make a deal, and no one does it better. But after that, either CCP gets out of business with TikTok or TikTok has to be out of the US. The third option doesn’t really exist.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE DAVID MARCUS
