The possibility of China's communist government using the treasure trove of data gathered from the Chinese-owned app TikTok against the United States in a world conflict is "absolutely terrifying," a witness told a Senate committee Wednesday.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, called attention during a hearing on countering China's malign influence operations in the United States to TikTok's ability to "collect massive amounts of data."
He asked how valuable that data could be should China seek to influence Americans against an adversary before an "impending conflict," such as with the Philippines.
"The scenario you describe is the type we think a lot about and it's absolutely terrifying," said Dr. Glenn Tiffert, a distinguished research fellow at the Hoover Institution who is a specialist on the political and legal history of the People's Republic of China. "Because I think that it is possible and it's conceivable that in the event of a conflict, an intense conflict, with China, they would deploy those algorithms in ways that would seek to undermine our resolve. Absolutely."
Tiffert said he is not aware of another comparable set of data and said "what is arresting" is that over the last several years, China has adopted data security legislation that allows it to ingest all the world's data — "as much as it can" — and not leak any of it out.
"China, and [leader] Xi Jinping in particular, is trying to create the largest repository of data in the world so that it is available for whatever purpose the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] would like to use it for," Tiffert said. "We need to be alert to that."
The U.S. is among many nations that have prohibited TikTok from being used on official devices, and other states have followed suit, even though TikTok's owner ByteDance maintains it has not and would never share data with China's government.
Former President Donald Trump tried to ban new downloads of the app in 2020, but a series of court decisions blocked his efforts.
"As painful as it is for me to say, if Donald Trump was right and we could've taken action then, that'd have been a heck of a lot easier than trying to take action [now]," Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., chair of the Select Committee on Intelligence, said in December.
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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