Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 779 ｜ TikTok Is Spying on You： Here’s Why It Matters ｜ Guest： Kara Frederick

00:00:00.000 Congress and the Biden administration are considering banning TikTok.

00:00:05.740 Is this really a good move?

00:00:07.680 The bill that Congress has introduced to do so is being met with a lot of criticism from both sides of the aisle.

00:00:16.120 And yet TikTok still poses a threat to our privacy and national security.

00:00:21.720 Breaking this all down for us, explaining it to us like we are five, is Kara Frederick from the Heritage Foundation.

00:00:28.880 My mind was blown during this conversation.

00:00:31.240 I learned so much, and you will too.

00:00:33.200 This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.

00:00:36.520 Go to GoodRanchers.com.

00:00:37.680 Use promo code Allie at checkout. 1.00

00:00:39.000 That's GoodRanchers.com, code Allie.

00:00:45.720 All right, guys, before we get into the conversation, I just want to encourage you, if you haven't, go listen to yesterday's episode.

00:00:56.900 We talked about everything that happened in Nashville.

00:00:58.880 That story is developing.

00:01:00.380 I might talk about some more of it tomorrow.

00:01:02.880 I still want to get to the whole thing about Florida allegedly banning books like the fascists of the 20th century and to debunk a lot of the narratives that you've heard about that.

00:01:16.280 But after the Nashville tragedy happened, obviously, that overtook yesterday's episode.

00:01:21.340 And now I really wanted to get into what's happening in Congress with TikTok.

00:01:24.900 So we will get to that eventually.

00:01:27.360 There's always so much to cover.

00:01:28.780 People always ask me, how do you find something to talk about every day?

00:01:33.080 Do you ever run out of things to talk about?

00:01:34.620 I'm like, oh, my gosh, no.

00:01:36.280 I never get to everything that I want to get to.

00:01:39.300 So just understand that if there's something that you think is important that you wish I would talk about, I didn't get to.

00:01:43.760 It's not because I don't want to or because I don't care.

00:01:46.000 It's because I just don't have the time.

00:01:48.800 You know, these episodes are supposed to be like 30 minutes and they're almost always over an hour because there's so much to say.

00:01:54.720 There's so much to say.

00:01:56.600 Also, just a reminder, we've got new merch.

00:01:59.640 We've got awesome new merch.

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00:02:03.880 It just didn't feel right to point that out and encourage you to go buy it.

00:02:07.720 But we've got lots and lots of cute new stuff that I absolutely love.

00:02:12.840 A lot of my merch came in, which I'm so excited about.

00:02:16.180 But now I'm like, well, I just need one of everything because I love it so much.

00:02:19.540 So go to AllieMerch.com.

00:02:20.920 We'll link it in the description of this episode.

00:02:22.600 You can use code Allie10 for a 10% discount.

00:02:26.560 Remember, guys, remember Mother's Day is coming up.

00:02:32.100 Do not schedule golf that day.

00:02:34.520 I'm just going to go ahead and tell you that's not what your wife wants. 1.00

00:02:37.780 And if she tells you that she's fine with it, that's even worse.

00:02:42.040 She is already fuming. 1.00

00:02:43.780 But to make it up to her, to make up for the fact that you already planned a golf trip on Mother's Day weekend,

00:02:50.040 you should just get her a basket full of Relatable gear. 1.00

00:02:53.500 And regardless, you should be doing that anyway, because that's exactly what she wants.

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00:03:09.460 Okay.

00:03:09.880 I think those are the only points of order that I have before we actually get into all this TikTok stuff.

00:03:14.640 So without further ado, here's our new friend, Kara Frederick.

00:03:21.640 Kara, thanks so much for joining us.

00:03:23.700 Before we get started, can you tell everyone who you are and what you do?

00:03:27.300 Yeah.

00:03:27.800 So my name is Kara Frederick, and I'm the Director of Tech Policy at the Heritage Foundation,

00:03:33.820 the, I would say, the biggest, most influential conservative think tank that we have going in Washington, D.C.

00:03:39.540 And if you guys don't know what a think tank is, it's effectively a research organization.

00:03:44.540 So we're nonprofits that do a lot of studying, researching, and we try to figure out what are the best policy recommendations

00:03:52.240 for people on the Hill, for state legislatures to sort of enact what, frankly, the new conservatism should be propagating into the future.

00:04:00.800 Yeah.

00:04:01.800 You know, I mean, we could talk about the Heritage Foundation and how I think it's, I mean, it's always been conservative,

00:04:07.560 but I actually think that the phase that it's in now and the kind of conservative, conservative-ism that it is championing

00:04:15.200 is really exciting and new and right in line where I would like the right to go.

00:04:20.740 So I'm very thankful for that.

00:04:22.160 So we are talking specifically about what's going on with TikTok.

00:04:25.440 Now, we're hearing that the Biden administration, that people in Congress want to ban TikTok.

00:04:32.960 So if that is the case, let's just start there.

00:04:35.720 Would that mean that if Congress bans TikTok that no one would be able to download the app onto their phones?

00:04:43.700 That's what it should mean.

00:04:45.300 So right now we have a federal ban on government devices.

00:04:49.380 So any federal employee, if they have a government device, that their device should not be able to access TikTok.

00:04:57.260 And a ban would be on all devices.

00:05:00.140 So it would effectively be prohibiting TikTok from operating within the U.S. market.

00:05:05.180 What that would look like, there's degrees of gradation in terms of, you know, it's not going to wipe TikTok off your phone tomorrow.

00:05:11.520 But there would be a process in not effectively allowing Americans to access this app on their mobile operating systems and on their desktops.

00:05:21.560 So their digital platforms in general.

00:05:24.120 OK, and why are we even talking about this?

00:05:26.600 Because we remember Trump bringing this up a couple of years ago.

00:05:29.760 We need to ban TikTok.

00:05:31.400 Has something to do with the Chinese Communist Party.

00:05:34.620 What exactly is going on?

00:05:36.200 It's a little weird that the Biden administration would want to do something that Trump also wanted to do.

00:05:40.280 Yeah, which is, I think, a testament to the gravity of the situation and the depth of the links to the Chinese Communist Party that this digital platform TikTok has.

00:05:52.520 And I think the best way to explain it is TikTok is owned by a parent company called ByteDance.

00:05:58.820 That company is headquartered in Beijing and it is subject to the People's Republic of China's laws and policies.

00:06:05.960 And foremost among this is a 2017 national intelligence law, which effectively compels, quote unquote, private companies headquartered in China to do government work.

00:06:16.880 So if the state has a need, the state meaning the Chinese Communist Party, has a need for, say, the data that TikTok collects or the data that ByteDance collects through TikTok, then ByteDance is effectively compelled to fork over that data.

00:06:35.520 So every private entity in China has to abide by these laws and policies and they all have to work together to achieve the ends of the PRC or the Chinese Communist Party.

00:06:46.880 OK, gotcha. And is there evidence that this that this is happening?

00:06:53.260 Is there evidence that there is CCP interference within TikTok in a way that could damage the privacy of Americans and the security of the United States?

00:07:03.080 Oh, there are there are there are reams of evidence that point in this direction.

00:07:07.720 I would say specifically in concrete ways, ByteDance has a domestic subsidiary, which has three board seats.

00:07:15.400 One of those board seats is a card carrying member of the Chinese Communist Party.

00:07:20.200 We the other researchers have figured out through LinkedIn that over 300 LinkedIn profiles of four ByteDance and TikTok employees say that they either currently or used to work for Chinese state media.

00:07:35.020 And we know from leaked messaging docs, the PR strategy as recently updated as 2021 for TikTok was to downplay ByteDance, downplay the China connection and and not focus on the fact that they are intertwined.

00:07:51.500 And we also know there's an internal CCP apparatus within ByteDance, too, that has influence over the direction the platforms take.

00:08:00.040 And then, again, in terms of accessing data, TikTok has maintained and equivocated and misrepresented for years that none of that U.S. data is not easily accessed by Chinese engineers or by employees in China.

00:08:13.460 We know for a fact, given 80 leaked audio files for meetings, these are 80 meetings, that that's not true, that Chinese engineers have repeatedly accessed U.S. user data.

00:08:25.580 And more and more information keeps coming out where Senator Hawley has a whistleblower with intimate knowledge of TikTok's operations that basically says anyone in employees in China can switch between U.S. data and Chinese data like a light switch.

00:08:40.540 So over and over and over and over again, TikTok's defense is, oh, this is all hypothetical, but everything they say is not happening is actually happening.

00:08:48.340 And afterwards, when they're called on it, it's mea culpa, mea culpa.

00:08:50.980 But yeah, we've got a confluence of evidence that that pretty much says, yeah, the Chinese links are very, very deep here and we'll try our best to downplay them.

00:09:00.400 So I know this might sound like a crazy question, but I've I've heard this.

00:09:04.400 I've heard this from friends. Why should we care?

00:09:08.980 Now, I care. I've never downloaded TikTok. I've never had TikTok on my phone.

00:09:13.180 I've never opened a TikTok video. This is even before CCP.

00:09:17.460 I just didn't need anything else on my phone to distract me.

00:09:21.160 But then, of course, this is an added reason.

00:09:23.300 But some of my friends are like, why do I care if the CCP accesses my data?

00:09:28.840 I already give all of my data to Apple, to Twitter, to Facebook, to all these places.

00:09:35.400 You know, they would say, I live a boring life.

00:09:37.640 I don't really care if they know where I live or what I'm doing or that I like these cooking videos or whatever.

00:09:43.580 What are they going to do to me?

00:09:45.300 So what kind of data are you talking about?

00:09:47.340 And why should the everyday user care if another government entity just happens to know what they're doing and where they are?

00:09:54.880 Yeah, the short answer, it's the Chinese Communist Party, right?

00:09:57.780 They're an adversarial nation, and they frankly wish to do us harm. 0.76

00:10:01.300 We know that. They've said that in public spaces.

00:10:03.640 They've said repeatedly in the past few years that they're on a war footing, especially with the United States of America.

00:10:09.740 They aim to dominate us and become the dominant actor on the stage.

00:10:13.140 So that's one thing.

00:10:14.040 You know, when the Chinese Communist Party can have direct access to your data, that's a massive problem.

00:10:19.060 And then I hear this defense all the time.

00:10:20.740 OK, Facebook does this.

00:10:22.760 Google does this.

00:10:23.880 All American companies do this, too.

00:10:26.120 And yes, while there is a massive problem when it comes to privacy and data exploitation among these American companies, I do think we need a national data protection framework to contend with that.

00:10:36.320 It is much worse when the Chinese Communist Party can do it, because right now they still have a much different system than we do. 0.66

00:10:44.160 Again, I will admit that we are under pressure when it comes to an independent judiciary, a free press and an engaged citizenry.

00:10:52.740 We're definitely that that's a bulwark right now.

00:10:55.720 It's, you know, slightly crumbling, I would say.

00:10:58.480 But we still have that standing against what the Chinese system has. 0.99

00:11:02.440 And there's no debate.

00:11:03.820 There's no adjudication of privacy whatsoever.

00:11:06.640 What she says, what the party says goes.

00:11:09.220 And that's it.

00:11:09.880 And, you know, they happen to be conducting a genocide in the Uyghur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang.

00:11:14.680 So that's a problem, too.

00:11:16.380 So two things that have to do with China.

00:11:18.160 And then third, there's the data exploitation and collection issue.

00:11:21.880 That is I think it's much it's different when it comes to the the tick tock and other other private companies, because there have been studies that have been done by, you know, parties like a cybersecurity firm in Australia, which basically gave tick tock a score when they had their malware analysis tool review some of the data exploitation and collections practices.

00:11:46.840 It gave them one of the worst scores in industry.

00:11:49.580 It said tick tock effectively exists as a data collection platform.

00:11:54.520 And that's it.

00:11:55.540 The only other app that got even close to what tick tock is doing with your data and how it's collecting your data and how vulnerable your data is, given their systems is a Russian app called VK.

00:12:06.800 So that should give you pause.

00:12:08.660 And then we know and I can get into the technical details here.

00:12:11.340 Not sure your audience would be too interested in it, but I think we have to equip ourselves.

00:12:15.120 It really matters when they are taking something like the unique device identifiers of your phone.

00:12:23.180 Say, if you have an Android phone, you have something called a media access control address.

00:12:28.480 And that is very difficult to get rid of effectively, you know, or to disentangle yourself from.

00:12:34.040 So tick tock was exploiting a loophole in Google's policies because Google's policy says you shouldn't be able to do this.

00:12:40.780 It's so exploitative.

00:12:42.540 And yet tick tock was exploiting a loophole that allowed them to hoover up those media's access control addresses.

00:12:49.320 And they tried to cover it up.

00:12:51.280 And this is the Wall Street Journal reporting it.

00:12:52.860 So over a 15-month period, they were collecting those unique device identifiers.

00:12:58.940 And then when they were, you know, people started to make noise about it, they tried to cover it up.

00:13:03.600 And then another, I don't know, Australia, because they're so proximate to the China threat, they keep doing a lot of this research.

00:13:09.660 They also found that every time you open TikTok, it would copy any content from your clipboard.

00:13:16.260 So we store our passwords on our clipboard.

00:13:18.240 We store banking information on our clipboard.

00:13:20.180 TikTok was accessing it every time you open the device.

00:13:23.720 That is very concerning and not common practice among industry standards.

00:13:39.960 I think the point is, is that we don't exactly know what Beijing would do with all of this information, with all of this data.

00:13:48.320 What we do know is that the intentions are not pure, of course.

00:13:52.120 And they simply don't have the same views that we do on rights, on human rights, obviously on privacy.

00:13:59.980 But when it comes to the First Amendment, when it comes to human dignity, when it comes to the protection of human beings,

00:14:06.220 I mean, they just don't believe the same things that we do.

00:14:10.020 And if they do continue to rise to prominence as the world's global superpower and they already have access to and are then in charge of all of our data, all of our information, all of the most private parts of our lives, which a lot of us, you know, put on our phones, then we just don't know.

00:14:31.120 We don't exactly know what the threat is, but literally everything that you hold dear, whether it's your assets, your money, you know, photos of your children, passwords, credit card numbers.

00:14:43.400 If they have access to all of those things, like there really is no limitation to not just the power they will have over your life, but their ability to exploit that information.

00:14:55.460 And I can't say I know exactly what the tangible ramifications of that will be, but I know enough to say it's not good.

00:15:04.340 Yeah, you're exactly right. And I used to be an intelligence officer. So my job was to map the networks of our enemies, of our adversaries.

00:15:13.720 We effectively looked for needles and haystacks. If you are already giving them the information, they're not even going to have to look too hard to, number one, find you and number two, exploit you.

00:15:23.820 And, you know, we're both mothers. I have a daughter now. China is always playing the long game. 0.99

00:15:29.260 So if they have that dossier on our children, who knows how subject to blackmail they can be going forward?

00:15:36.980 I like to say that we're minting an Eric Swalwell with every person who uses TikTok over and over again.

00:15:43.040 You're effectively in the clutches of the CCP if you use this app.

00:15:47.540 And we also know that they've created dossiers on prominent American individuals, on prominent Australians like Natalie Imbruglia.

00:15:55.260 Remember the singer from the 90s? You probably don't. You're probably too young.

00:15:58.080 But they have these profiles of prominent individuals so they could, in their estimation, either spy on them or pull their strings if necessary.

00:16:07.840 So we know that they create these, again, these digital profiles.

00:16:12.120 And they've stolen so many data sets from American individuals in general, like with the Office of Personnel Management hack,

00:16:20.080 when they stole, you know, social security numbers from government employees, there was a Marriott hack linked to the Chinese state,

00:16:26.060 an Anthem Healthcare hack linked to the Chinese state, an Equifax financial hack linked to the Chinese state.

00:16:33.220 If they can integrate all of these data sets, use TikTok data to fill in the gaps, they've got us.

00:16:38.660 360-degree profiles, you name it, and we're in their pocket.

00:16:42.900 So it really, really matters what they can do in the future, especially when it comes to artificial intelligence,

00:16:48.560 which can aid them in this quest by parsing through large amounts of data to pull out patterns and identify anomalies.

00:16:55.000 And frankly, look for people that they can be effective of targets of espionage and blackmail.

00:17:00.920 Yeah, and wow.

00:17:02.720 And think about if they have these digital profiles and digital dossiers,

00:17:06.860 and if they continue to kind of expand their authority and power over people in different countries,

00:17:13.160 like think about the things that the CCP stands against that maybe you represent or you might be for.

00:17:18.480 Okay, so they know if you're a Christian, they know if you go to church just based on what you click on,

00:17:22.540 they know if you're a conservative or if you're a progressive.

00:17:24.900 And there's not any particular political ideology here in the United States that the CCP would say,

00:17:31.280 yes, I'm for this or I'm for this.

00:17:33.380 Really, they would be probably trying to figure out who is going to be a problem,

00:17:40.260 like who is going to pose some kind of threat to us, some kind of opposition.

00:17:45.000 And really, there are people on both sides of the political aisle and political spectrum here in the United States

00:17:49.840 that they would probably see as representative of some kind of threat to CCP power.

00:17:54.360 They're also very anti-LGBTQ, they're anti-Muslim, they're anti-Christian,

00:17:59.760 they're anti a lot of different belief systems that people represent in the United States.

00:18:04.100 So there's no one really that's off limit to these digital dossiers that the Chinese could be collecting 0.95

00:18:10.220 for whatever nefarious purposes to say, oh, yeah, we don't like that that person's a Muslim. 1.00

00:18:15.000 We don't like that that person thinks they're trans.

00:18:16.820 We don't like that that person's a Christian. 1.00

00:18:18.420 That person has too many kids.

00:18:19.740 Who even knows?

00:18:21.780 But they know all of these things about you, about your life, about your kids,

00:18:26.240 probably where your kids go to school, what time you pick them up.

00:18:29.560 I mean, and we are talking about the most powerful adversarial regime in the world.

00:18:35.340 We, as I said, just don't know how that is going to affect us personally and individually,

00:18:41.580 and then how that will affect us on a national scale.

00:18:44.720 And another question I want to ask you is, because what's interesting about the CCP,

00:18:49.320 and this is something they do a lot in different ways.

00:18:51.220 We actually talked about this a couple weeks ago.

00:18:53.380 There was this study that came out that said, oh, the conclusion stated,

00:18:59.080 oh, kids with two moms or two dads actually fare better in a lot of ways than kids of a mom and a dad.

00:19:05.620 And I looked into that and I was like, that's odd.

00:19:07.880 And it actually, the data didn't even support the state of conclusion, but it was funded by an organization that takes its funding from the CCP.

00:19:17.560 And what's interesting about that is that the CCP is very anti-LGBTQ.

00:19:22.480 And we went through all of the different policies that they have restricting that kind of behavior and representation on social media.

00:19:28.380 And so, and yet they kind of push that propaganda here, again, for whatever nefarious reasons.

00:19:35.020 And it seems to me, and you can tell me this is my question, it took me a long time to get to it,

00:19:40.060 but do you think it's possible that the CCP would be manipulating algorithms in order to push the kinds of values and ideologies

00:19:48.960 that it knows will make America weaker, make America less patriotic, make America, you know, less strong, whatever, whatever it is in a variety of ways,

00:19:59.140 even while it restricts that kind of stuff in its own country,

00:20:01.960 because they actually are very, very restrictive when it comes to children under the age of 18, even accessing TikTok.

00:20:10.340 They can only access it, I believe, during certain times of the day.

00:20:13.760 There are only certain kinds of videos that kids are allowed to watch.

00:20:17.940 There is no LGBTQ content that is even allowed to be represented on social media in China.

00:20:24.120 And yet that's like all kids in the United States are seeing.

00:20:28.780 They're getting sucked into these rabbit holes of gender ideology, very often of sexual grooming that is not tolerated by the CCP.

00:20:36.160 And I'm just wondering if the CCP has a hand in pushing the kind of algorithms and content

00:20:43.940 that is destroying youth in the United States, even as they restrict it for their own people.

00:20:50.120 Oh, it is 100 percent possible. And I think that you would be naive to think that it's not happening.

00:20:57.860 And we know this because ByteDance pushed divisive content during the 2022 midterm elections.

00:21:05.840 They were mostly targeting or saying that, you know, we were supporting Democrats.

00:21:11.620 They were mostly saying Republicans were bad.

00:21:14.840 They were, you know, fueling incendiary debates when it comes to things like abortion.

00:21:20.100 We also know that ByteDance pushed pro-CCP narratives to a U.S. user base.

00:21:26.900 There was a they had a U.S. now defunct news app called Top Buzz that or yeah, Top Buzz that basically served a U.S. audience.

00:21:36.880 And they put pro-China narratives on the top, basically.

00:21:40.840 So we know that they're they're absolutely capable of doing this.

00:21:44.540 Again, ByteDance is in the clutches of the CCP.

00:21:48.000 You have that one board member and their domestic subsidiary.

00:21:51.760 You have all of those Chinese state media employees that are working there.

00:21:55.700 So, again, super naive to think that they're not pushing this on the American people whatsoever.

00:22:02.040 And I think that's the biggest problem, the propaganda, the influence campaigns.

00:22:06.960 You have a lot of, frankly, enterprising journalists who have registered on TikTok as an experiment as 13 year olds, as 14 year olds.

00:22:14.760 And they find themselves absolutely inundated within minutes with eating disorder content, self-harm content, suicidal content, all of the above.

00:22:23.920 And this has happened again and again and again as these journalists are doing their own experiments, because, like you said, a lot of, you know, certain outlets are paid for by the by ByteDance, by the CCP, by TikTok.

00:22:35.940 And they're not going to do these studies.

00:22:37.920 So people are taking matters into their own hands and actually conducting them and finding that there is a veritable onslaught of what you said of gender dysphoria content and all sorts of material that's deleterious to the health of our next generation, the mental health of our next generation, the actual health of our mental or our next generation. 0.99

00:22:56.620 Like with the TikTok tics that pediatric hospitals are filled with now, massive problem. 1.00

00:23:02.980 You're naive if you don't think the CCP is, if not has a direct hand in this, then laughing about ByteDance doing it and TikTok as well.

00:23:10.220 Oh, yeah.

00:23:10.580 And in case people don't know, TikTok tics, I don't know if we've actually talked about that, but it's basically young people who believe that they've developed, they like have Tourette's or they have some kind of issue that they can't stop doing.

00:23:27.300 And it's actually not something that has developed organically in their mind or that they were born with.

00:23:33.140 It's something that they have developed from watching it on TikTok.

00:23:38.080 Oh, my gosh.

00:23:40.880 Oh, my gosh.

00:23:41.880 That is going to be studied for years to come.

00:23:45.580 I mean, we could get into like parents, please, please, please get your kids off TikTok.

00:23:51.660 But maybe you won't have to because maybe maybe we'll ban it.

00:23:54.300 So let's talk about that.

00:23:55.540 So all of this that we just explained is really just background to what is happening right now in Congress or what has been happening.

00:24:02.900 So on March 7th, 2023, U.S.

00:24:05.540 Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, introduced a bill called the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology.

00:24:17.060 Got to get it.

00:24:18.560 It stands or restrict is what it stands for all of that.

00:24:22.820 So I guess that's why it's so long.

00:24:24.220 They wanted to get to the word restrict.

00:24:25.500 So the Restrict Act, the bill requires federal actions to identify and mitigate foreign threats to information and communications, technology, products and services.

00:24:37.260 This is bipartisan.

00:24:39.260 You've got 11 Republicans, 10 Democrats.

00:24:40.900 Last week, March 20th through 24th, the House Committee on U.S. Competition with China heard from TikTok CEO Shuzi Chu and other TikTok officials and advocates just asking about some of the things that we were just talking about.

00:24:55.680 OK, tell us a little bit about this bill.

00:24:58.700 Do you think it's good?

00:24:59.560 Because I'm hearing quite a bit of disagreement about this.

00:25:04.340 You know, Ali, I think there are better bills.

00:25:07.480 It's not my favorite.

00:25:08.700 I don't think I think it's much too overreaching.

00:25:11.740 I think it's much too vague, much too broad.

00:25:13.760 I think it gives and I know it gives authority to the Commerce Department.

00:25:17.960 And you already have the head of the Commerce Department coming out and saying that if we ban TikTok, then we're going to lose every voter under 35 in the years to come.

00:25:27.580 That's a massive problem when the person charged with effectively banning TikTok, which this bill doesn't even mention TikTok to let you know that that's a big problem when she's thinking of it from a political angle.

00:25:39.060 And of course, she's a Biden administration employee.

00:25:42.640 So she you know, we do know that Biden likes to have a lot of his voters on TikTok and they have a natural allergy, frankly, to what Trump tried to do, especially with his executive order to ban TikTok.

00:25:54.900 So I think there are a lot of problems with that.

00:25:56.560 I think there are really interesting proposals that do this one thing.

00:26:00.560 And I'll get a little policy wonkish here if you're if you'll let me when it comes to the specific authorities that Trump attempted to use to try to ban TikTok.

00:26:11.700 And this was the emergency or the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which basically gives the president broad authorities to to sanction, to look very and scrutinize and look very seriously at international transactions.

00:26:26.380 And he attempted to apply these authorities, so sanctioning authorities effectively to TikTok and WeChat, another Chinese owned platform.

00:26:36.060 And in what happened was TikTok sued and Biden came into office and took away his executive order to begin with.

00:26:44.400 But when TikTok sued, they appealed to a specific amendment in what we call IEPA, that International Economic, International Emergency Economic Powers Act again.

00:26:54.080 And it's called collectively known as the Berman Amendment, which has a carve out for informational materials.

00:27:01.080 So when IEPA was updated, what Congress basically tried to do, this is in the 80s and 90s, it was updated twice.

00:27:09.260 They tried to say, OK, if there's a ostensibly hostile nation like Cuba and they want to send films and photographs to America, that shouldn't be sanctioned.

00:27:18.300 So there should be an informational material loophole to these authorities.

00:27:21.980 So TikTok relied on that. And a federal judge agreed with them when it came to stunting the implementation of Trump's EO.

00:27:30.260 So no TikTok ban because of this loophole. Now, some of these bills, they ask to amend this loophole and get rid of it.

00:27:37.800 So allow those IEPA authorities to be used.

00:27:41.440 I'm more in favor of those bills because it gets at a specific part of the problem.

00:27:46.040 And those bills name TikTok specifically for a ban.

00:27:49.580 They're not trying to slow walk something. They're not trying to weasel out of it.

00:27:52.840 So I think, you know, what Senator Rubio is trying to do, what Representative McCaul is trying to do, what Representative Gallagher.

00:27:59.720 And this is bipartisan, too. For some of them, downcrack Krishnamoorthy wants to work with Republican Representative Gallagher on this as well.

00:28:08.920 So there are better I think there are better alternatives out there that are going to get us to the place that we want to get,

00:28:14.820 which is prohibiting TikTok from operating in the U.S. market.

00:28:17.620 And we should, I think, lean more into those.

00:28:32.440 There are some conservative and Democrat opponents to it.

00:28:35.760 Now, there are more Democrats, I think, that are against banning in general, like AOC, for example.

00:28:42.520 She actually created a TikTok account and posted her first TikTok video, which I think it's crazy that Congress people are even allowed to have a TikTok.

00:28:53.060 I mean, based on everything that you just said, I feel like that should just be an easy one.

00:28:57.720 That if you are a public official, especially on the federal level, you should not be.

00:29:02.480 We already know that TikTok is not allowed on federal devices, right?

00:29:06.000 And so it's crazy that she just doesn't care about that at all.

00:29:09.780 She doesn't care about that at all.

00:29:11.120 So she said in her little video, which I'm so shocked that she has not had TikTok up until this point.

00:29:17.320 She said, do I believe TikTok should be banned?

00:29:20.100 No, the United States has never before banned a social media company from existence.

00:29:23.380 I don't see why that matters at all.

00:29:25.020 There's no social media company that we know that has gone to this extent to exploit American data from operating in our borders.

00:29:31.620 And this is an app that has over 150 million Americans on it.

00:29:34.500 Again, irrelevant to me.

00:29:36.020 That's even actually more scary or scarier.

00:29:40.380 Major social media companies are allowed to collect troves of deeply personal data about you.

00:29:44.560 And you don't know about that.

00:29:47.560 You don't know about with any really significant regulation whatsoever.

00:29:50.800 The United States is one of the only developed nations in the world that has no significant data or privacy protection laws on the books.

00:29:58.780 It just doesn't feel right to me.

00:30:01.260 OK, I want to know, one, is that true?

00:30:03.580 And you kind of did already address this argument at the beginning.

00:30:05.900 But like, what would you say?

00:30:07.400 If I'm AOC, like, how would you respond to that?

00:30:10.580 Number one, I'd say, what device are you using in Congress to do this?

00:30:16.240 Because now you've opened up what Wi-Fi are you connecting to?

00:30:18.960 Now you've opened up your compatriots and other U.S. officials to exploitation by the Chinese Communist Party.

00:30:25.400 So that's a big thing.

00:30:26.740 But the data vulnerability and exploitation issues that she just broke wide open for her colleagues.

00:30:32.540 Because if you connect to Wi-Fi, it does open up by being on the same network.

00:30:38.180 If you have TikTok downloaded on your phone and it connects to that Wi-Fi, you've potentially opened up other devices connected to the Wi-Fi to exploitation by TikTok and, frankly, by Tamsyn and thus the CCP.

00:30:49.480 So that's one.

00:30:50.300 Number two, I think, you know, these are TikTok talking points.

00:30:54.200 These are straight from TikTok lobbyists that they paid over $5 million in 2022 to stripes around the hall sort of parroting.

00:31:02.480 So they got to her.

00:31:03.900 That's sad.

00:31:04.760 And thirdly, I will concede that they're a national data protection framework.

00:31:09.560 We've advocated for it at the Heritage Foundation since February 2022.

00:31:13.360 I do think there are privacy considerations that are going to help, but they're not going to solve the TikTok problem whatsoever.

00:31:21.040 So we need it layered on top of a TikTok ban, and that'll be useful.

00:31:25.920 Because there is one data point that I think your audience should know is that U.S. user data can be sold to TikTok.

00:31:32.760 So even if there's a TikTok ban, TikTok and ByteDance, the CCP, can get the information from third parties, from other companies as well, just based off of the fact that, you know, there are trackers, there are software development kits that takes your data and sends it to other companies and whatnot.

00:31:49.360 So to confront, I think, that data collection and sharing, that's massive.

00:31:55.660 And we should do it for the United States.

00:31:57.180 I think everyone who is on these platforms deserves to understand clearly how their information is collected, stored, and shared.

00:32:04.120 And that's just baseline.

00:32:05.500 So sure, AOC, we can agree on that.

00:32:07.860 But when it comes to TikTok, you know, just that data privacy framework, that's not going to do anything for the TikTok problem in general.

00:32:15.840 And TikTok knows that.

00:32:17.340 So, yeah, I think she's parroting TikTok lobbyist talking points.

00:32:21.200 Yeah, right.

00:32:22.200 And Ilhan Omar, she said something similar.

00:32:24.940 She was like, we shouldn't ban an entire social media platform.

00:32:27.880 They don't give any good, they don't give any good reason, which isn't exactly surprising.

00:32:32.180 It's not like I've ever been stunned by the logical capabilities of AOC.

00:32:37.040 And, like, she knows her audience.

00:32:38.780 They're not looking for that.

00:32:39.960 And I think that really the reason is, is because they understand that they have been buoyed by the support of a lot of young people who consider themselves socialists.

00:32:49.220 And a lot of their young people, I mean, a lot of their young people, one, are on TikTok.

00:32:54.080 But I think they might understand, and I don't want to give them too much credit, but much of the progressive ideology that allows them to have the power that they do is being pushed on TikTok.

00:33:06.380 It really helps them support their narratives, support their ideology.

00:33:10.560 I think also young people that are distracted, whose minds are basically atrophying from overuse of social media, tend to vote.

00:33:20.660 I'm sorry, but tend to vote for people like AOC because they don't really think through things.

00:33:25.900 They don't really think through why is socialism bad.

00:33:27.980 So I understand why she would, just for her own personal gain, want to keep TikTok around.

00:33:35.640 So that makes sense.

00:33:37.060 Tucker Carlson, I thought this was interesting.

00:33:38.860 He is talking about the Restrict Act.

00:33:41.560 Now, from what I understand, from what I've seen of Tucker Carlson, he would probably be on the side of restricting TikTok.

00:33:48.100 But specific to this bill, he says, this bill isn't really about banning TikTok.

00:33:53.000 It's never about what they say it is.

00:33:54.760 Instead, this bill would give enormous and terrifying new powers to the federal government to punish American citizens and regulate how they communicate with one another.

00:34:02.300 For example, the bill would regulate certain transactions between persons in the United States and foreign adversaries.

00:34:07.120 Now, what's a foreign adversary and who gets to decide?

00:34:10.100 Well, the Secretary of Commerce and the Director of National Intelligence, not the Congress, get to decide what foreign adversaries are.

00:34:18.240 Well, that ought to trip a switch in your brain.

00:34:20.320 And then the transactions with foreign adversaries would include any acquisition, importation, transfer, installation, dealing in or use of any information and communications technology, product or service, including ongoing activities such as managed services, data transmission, software updates, repairs or the provision of data hosting services.

00:34:38.040 Well, that's pretty broad. So he thinks, like, ironically, that this bill is big brother.

00:34:44.260 Yeah. So, again, we've talked about it and we've put out public material where we do think this bill is very broad and very vague.

00:34:53.100 And I'm myself, you know, having worked in national security my entire career, you know, I looked at I was a counterterrorism analyst.

00:35:01.240 I looked at foreign Islamic terrorism, and I'm very concerned about the definition inflation of, you know, frankly, domestic extremists, terrorism, extremism, national security.

00:35:14.340 So we don't want to give the government any more power, especially this Biden administration, which we've seen when it comes to school board meetings and, you know, the FBI tagging parents who objected to CRT being taught in their classrooms as potential domestic terrorists.

00:35:30.680 You have a February bulletin from the Department of Homeland Security that said spreading misinformation, malinformation or disinformation about COVID was tantamount to terrorist activity.

00:35:43.280 So I'm very, very concerned about using the national security apparatus, which has, you know, definitions and words that are used very deliberately because they are able to designate specific authorities to those words, hence the invocation of terrorism when it comes to these things.

00:35:59.820 That comes that resources come with that. And again, authorities come with that. So I'm very concerned about that.

00:36:05.640 I think the American people are right to be concerned about that as well.

00:36:08.640 Yeah. So as you said earlier, there are better options.

00:36:11.480 You believe that TikTok should be banned. It should be restricted, but not in a way that gives the U.S. government, who, quite frankly, we also don't trust, not in the same way that we don't trust the CCP, but we don't want any government entities spying on us and regulating us and our interactions and our commerce in that way.

00:36:31.300 And so this bill is not. And so this bill is not it. And yet there are Republicans signing on to it.

00:36:40.480 Do you think it's going to pass?

00:36:42.020 You know, I think it does have that groundswell of bipartisan support. Joe Biden has, you know, thrown his weight behind it.

00:36:51.740 But what I also think is interesting, as we point out in our heritage publications through certain media outlets, that TikTok is pretty happy about this bill, too.

00:37:00.740 So I think that's worrisome to begin with. When if it's supposed to be a TikTok ban and TikTok likes it, I would be scratching my head.

00:37:08.820 You know, I don't know. Given Shochu's, the TikTok CEO's testimony in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, you know, I don't think he did a great job.

00:37:20.880 So I do think that there's still momentum when it comes to a potential TikTok ban.

00:37:25.400 You know, I think there's going to be another TikTok. So whatever bill goes forward, you have to think about sort of the next TikTok, the next Chinese entity that is emerging in the U.S. marketplace. 0.98

00:37:39.280 So frankly, you know, again, I'm an analyst, but I can't necessarily give predictions in terms of.

00:37:44.740 But I do think there's a growing momentum for a TikTok ban. And I think a TikTok ban is a good thing.

00:37:49.460 Yeah. No, I agree with you. I think it's going to face a TikTok ban.

00:37:54.120 Obviously, it's going to face a lot of opposition. There are people who make a lot of money from TikTok, you know, influencers, people who don't have any malintent or people who get recipes from it and, you know, things like that.

00:38:08.260 People have just kind of come to enjoy it as an app. And that's part of why it's so effective.

00:38:12.220 Like we wouldn't be talking about it if it didn't have algorithms that are addicting and that make people want to continue to log on to it.

00:38:20.140 We wouldn't be talking about it if it wasn't so popular. So that means it's going to be tough, I think, for some of these representatives, for some of these people in Congress to get behind any bill, no matter how common sense it is that bans TikTok, because a lot of the young constituents will be mad.

00:38:35.780 Now, I, it's easy for me to say, because I don't have to be elected. I'm like, I don't care. They don't know what's good for them. Of course, they're addicted to it. It doesn't matter. It compromises our national security and also your personal privacy.

00:38:47.580 Like, I'm sorry, 15 year old, your brain is not even developed. We're going to make this decision for you.

00:38:54.400 So, I mean, that's, that's where I stand. But of course, like you said, I also worry about a bill like this that the government would just use to give themselves more power to exploit our data.

00:39:03.300 So I meant to play this earlier. You mentioned the CEO of TikTok. And just to give the people an example of why you said he didn't do a good job and why he actually made us in Congress more frightened about what TikTok is doing.

00:39:19.960 Here's an interaction between Representative Pfluger, who is from the state of Texas, and he is asking, and I'm going to ask you a little bit about what he actually means by this.

00:39:28.440 He's asking about data manipulation. And here's what the CEO of TikTok had to say about that.

00:39:34.200 Do you disagree with FBI Director Wray and NSA Director Nekasone when they said that the CCP could have the capability to manipulate data and send it to the United States?

00:39:45.320 Do you disagree with their statement?

00:39:47.120 Their statement says could.

00:39:49.280 So do you disagree with that?

00:39:51.400 No, I don't disagree with that.

00:39:52.480 Okay, so it is possible that the CCP, under the auspices of ByteDance, which is your parent company, which you get paid from, has the ability to manipulate content that is being shared with 130 million Americans, yes?

00:40:07.640 Okay, so he just goes on basically saying the same thing that he tried to use as an answer at the beginning of that clip.

00:40:15.660 But what does that exactly mean?

00:40:18.740 Yeah, so this is really interesting. And Director Wray came out a few years ago, he was giving an address to a college, and he basically said that ByteDance, so the Chinese Communist Party controls ByteDance, and ByteDance has the ability to control the recommendation algorithm.

00:40:37.780 And I think, you know, that is something, we're not privy to, without our TSSCI clearances yet, but when you have Director Wray definitively coming out and saying that ByteDance, and thus the Chinese Communist Party, has the ability to control the recommendation algorithm, that's a problem.

00:40:54.880 And I think the most telling corroboration of that is, in 2020, when Trump was issuing that initial executive order to potentially ban TikTok, what China, Chinese representatives through ByteDance, what they came out and said was that China will never sell the source code for TikTok.

00:41:13.220 So China, and we know that Chinese government officials have instituted export controls that cover AI and algorithms.

00:41:21.180 So if China doesn't want to get rid of the algorithm behind TikTok, why?

00:41:26.460 Do they just want it because it's powerful and it's good, and they just want to tinker on it for fun to make more money?

00:41:31.260 Or because they can directly control it, like Christopher Wray said in some of those speeches, and he said it multiple times.

00:41:39.220 So I think that is very, very interesting.

00:41:41.820 And again, you look at TikTok executives and officials' history of misrepresentation, what they have said is Chinese engineers don't access U.S. user data.

00:41:50.780 That was a lie.

00:41:51.380 That was disproven.

00:41:52.060 What they have said is there are big firewalls between U.S. user data and, again, those Chinese employees. 0.99

00:42:00.640 That was a lie.

00:42:01.360 And we know that from leaked audio.

00:42:03.200 We also know that ByteDance approved this.

00:42:05.760 They attempted to use TikTok to surveil the physical locations of U.S. journalists.

00:42:11.280 That was reported.

00:42:12.180 That was proven as well.

00:42:13.580 So everything that TikTok and ByteDance effectively says later falls to the truth, and then they say, oh, yeah, sorry, well, that doesn't happen again.

00:42:21.220 Or we fired those guys, so everything's fine now.

00:42:23.680 So in my mind, okay, the algorithm is – that's a big, big question, and there's a pattern of behavior.

00:42:29.700 Let's go with a pattern of behavior.

00:42:31.320 When people show you who they are, believe them.

00:42:45.540 And tell us – he also talks about later in this clip, which we didn't play –

00:42:51.220 Representative Pflueger says, please rename your project.

00:42:55.180 And he's talking about the Texas project that TikTok has.

00:42:59.300 What is that?

00:43:01.140 Yeah, so that was – I alluded to that firewall that TikTok has basically promised to the American people where they say, we are going to protect your data.

00:43:12.040 And we're going to do that through Project Texas.

00:43:14.180 And what Project Texas does is they say it erects that firewall.

00:43:19.420 It makes it much more difficult, in their words, for Chinese employees, ByteDance employees, to access U.S. user data.

00:43:25.960 They say they're going to store the U.S. user data in the U.S. before they've – we know from reporting that they, at least for a period of time, actually did store it in China prior to 2019.

00:43:36.620 And, again, they misrepresented that until that was reported out in the open.

00:43:41.580 And now they store it in the U.S. and Singapore.

00:43:43.900 Again, it doesn't necessarily matter where you store the data if Chinese employees can access that data if it's stored here, if it's stored in Singapore.

00:43:52.600 So they say we're just going to store it in the U.S.

00:43:54.440 But, again, it doesn't necessarily matter where the data is stored.

00:43:57.660 That is a red herring because we know the systems can access the data.

00:44:01.420 And, frankly, the Chinese Communist Party has a lot of leverage over human beings with access to the data, too.

00:44:06.680 So they can, frankly, lean on your grandma back in China in the homeland. 0.81

00:44:10.900 And if you have an engineer who's working here for TikTok and they want to give up information.

00:44:16.080 So there are big holes in Project Texas.

00:44:17.980 They also say we have third-party oversight, U.S. company oversight, CFIUS, which is the big investigation that dragged on for two years about the national security issues run by, again, the Commerce Department.

00:44:31.280 So I think Janet Yellen was actually at the helm of she's the chair of CFIUS. 0.50

00:44:36.480 So this is the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S.

00:44:39.100 And they say, OK, they're going to have oversight over U.S. data, too.

00:44:43.060 But, again, we can't believe anything that TikTok says, given their history of misrepresentation and the fact that there are some technical issues with saying that Project Texas is going to solve all the problems.

00:44:57.100 Yeah. Wow. So interesting.

00:44:59.040 Are you pleasantly surprised that the Biden administration, at least ostensibly, is interested in banning TikTok?

00:45:07.640 I am, if, in fact, they are interested in banning TikTok.

00:45:12.340 So given the fact that they sort of, again, revoked Trump's initial executive order and put in place a framework that they really haven't seemed to implement yet, that's sort of a knock against them.

00:45:26.480 I think something in their favor is, yes, they've actually talked about this in a serious way.

00:45:31.500 I do think there are, you know, people within the administration who are still working hard.

00:45:35.680 They recognize that this is an actual problem and then it's a bipartisan problem at that.

00:45:40.420 So that is encouraging.

00:45:42.220 But whether or not they get this over the finish line, I'm worried that now they're starting to sort of pull back and realize with their leftist constituency among, you know, young people, this could be a problem.

00:45:53.240 I'm worried that those ideas might win the day.

00:45:56.760 But but yeah, if we can keep going, if people on the Democratic side, like Senator Mark Warner, can continue to raise the alarm about these issues, then I think that's a good thing.

00:46:06.900 Yeah, I think so, too.

00:46:07.980 I would also be surprised if he actually pushes this over the finish line, just some of the things that he has done that showed such a capitulation to China, such a weakness toward China, ending a lot of Trump era protections.

00:46:23.420 I mean, it's hard for me to believe that he would potentially sacrifice the votes of young people, which I mean, realistically, he wouldn't.

00:46:30.540 Those young people who are on the left are going to vote for the Democrat anyway, but he probably doesn't want to anger them.

00:46:37.540 So, like you said, I would be surprised, too.

00:46:40.320 But we can hope and hope that at least eventually these things don't happen overnight, but at least eventually someone can push it over the finish line.

00:46:48.640 Thank you so much.

00:46:49.600 You explained all of this so well.

00:46:51.240 There's a lot of other things I'm sure that you could get into for us.

00:46:55.400 But I think that this gives people a really good understanding of what's going on.

00:46:59.260 Is there anything else that you want people to know?

00:47:02.380 Is there anything that people can do if they care about this?

00:47:06.040 Yeah, I think you need to get it off your phones.

00:47:08.600 And, you know, sadly, given the fact that it exploits those unique device identifiers, deleting it off your phone may not.

00:47:16.020 You know, China has data points on you now.

00:47:18.200 They have metadata from you now.

00:47:19.660 So it's not going to solve the problem.

00:47:21.720 But the least you can do is start.

00:47:23.100 And then if your friends or, you know, all influencers are all over TikTok, I mean, in my mind, they got to take one for the team.

00:47:31.380 They have to understand that this is bigger than them.

00:47:34.420 This is bigger than their ability to, you know, buy another bag or something like that, that their TikTok income is giving them.

00:47:42.200 And they're being actively manipulated by a hostile power.

00:47:46.080 And that should give anyone pause.

00:47:48.460 Yeah, definitely.

00:47:49.700 Get your kids, especially your teens, off TikTok.

00:47:52.580 Even if CCP weren't a part of this, man, it's such a toxic, toxic place.

00:47:58.380 Thank you so much for taking the time to come on.

00:48:01.140 I really appreciate it.

00:48:02.560 Are you on Twitter, Instagram, not TikTok?

00:48:06.560 Yeah.

00:48:06.680 Unfortunately, well, I mean, you know, competitive platforms, that's what we're all about at Heritage Competition.

00:48:12.560 So I'm on Twitter as Cara A. Frederick, like Frederick the Great.

00:48:16.840 And on Instagram as Cara Fred with two Ds.

00:48:20.060 Okay, awesome.

00:48:20.880 Thank you so much, Cara.

00:48:21.780 I really appreciate it.

00:48:23.280 Thanks, Alibeth.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - March 29, 2023

Ep 779 ｜ TikTok Is Spying on You： Here’s Why It Matters ｜ Guest： Kara Frederick

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