00:00:08.000Today on the Charlie Kirk show, I make the case that we should ban TikTok.
00:00:12.000And I also ask the question, is it good when 12 and 13 year olds are using their phones six or seven hours a day?
00:00:18.000It's time for a cultural conversation about it.
00:00:20.000I want to thank those of you that support us at CharlieKirk.com slash support.
00:00:23.000It allows us to speak freely about topics like this away from the threat of leftist attacks and campaigns that try to take this podcast down.
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00:01:20.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:32.000What if I told you that America's greatest enemy has infiltrated the teenagers of America's most personal devices?
00:01:43.000What if I told you America's greatest enemy was monitoring, cataloging, and borderline spying on the data and the behavior of America's youth?
00:01:59.000You might have heard some news about this in the last couple months, and you might have heard some 14 or 15-year-old act very excited about getting a lot of views or a lot of shares on an app called TikTok.
00:02:13.000Now, I first became aware of TikTok two and a half years ago, even before Benny Johnson was with us officially at Turning Point USA.
00:02:21.000Benny and I were enjoying a meal in Washington, D.C., and he said, Charlie, I got to tell you about the next big app.
00:03:09.000But TikTok is basically the go-to destination now for short-form mobile videos.
00:03:15.000The previous destination for those types of videos used to be an application called Vine, V-I-N-E, until they closed shop.
00:03:24.000They say their mission is to capture and present the world's creativity, knowledge, and precious life moments directly from the mobile phone.
00:03:32.000TikTok enables everyone to be a creator and encourages users to share their passion and creative expression through their videos.
00:03:40.000Their biggest competitors are, of course, Snapchat or Snap and Instagram, which of course is owned by Facebook.
00:03:48.000Now, mind you, TikTok is owned, operated, funded, and probably supported internally through military operations by the Chinese Communist Party.
00:04:00.000It's not just that it's a Chinese company.
00:04:15.000TikTok, I think, is even more dangerous. than those companies because TikTok, according to recent numbers that were published by the company itself, has been downloaded by almost half of the U.S. population, 165 million downloads.
00:04:33.000That's right, 165 million downloads in America.
00:04:40.000Just to put that in perspective, there's only 340 million people in America.
00:04:46.000And a lot of those 165 million downloads are people under the age of 30.
00:04:51.000So it's fair to say, just looking at basic numbers, an overwhelming majority, probably 70 to 80% of teenagers in America have either downloaded or used TikTok on a regular basis.
00:05:04.000And again, most all of the users are Generation Z. Just so you understand the 165 million downloads, that's the most of any app ever in a single quarter.
00:05:16.000The application has been downloaded over 2 billion times worldwide.
00:05:19.000The app has far surpassed the popularity of Facebook amongst Generation Z users.
00:05:32.000And while we've been sitting waiting for the left to destroy our country, our other enemy internationally, the Chinese Communist Party, they've been funding and supporting a social media application to spy on our nation's youth.
00:05:49.000So I can just tell you anecdotally, I had TikTok on my phone about nine months ago.
00:05:54.000And up until the moment I deleted it from my phone, my phone would be going haywire.
00:05:59.000In fact, one of the producers here on the Charlie Kirk show said he would be getting calls from China at like 3 a.m.
00:06:07.000His phone was acting funny until he deleted TikTok and got a new phone.
00:06:15.000And in fact, in a response to the new military intelligence that has been shared amongst U.S. allies and the United States, India is actually ahead of the United States.
00:06:26.000India, with over a billion people, they have now moved to ban almost 60 Chinese apps, including TikTok.
00:06:33.000Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was on Fox News with Laura Ingrid.
00:06:38.000And he says we're taking this very seriously and looking at it.
00:06:41.000He also talked about ZTE and Huawei, play tape.
00:06:44.000Finally, Mr. Secretary, the huge Chinese app, TikTok, has about 30 million users in the United States, but it's been banned now by India.
00:06:52.000And Australia is considering the same action, saying that TikTok was full of mass surveillance and propaganda, and also that the app had the ability to feed information straight to Beijing.
00:07:18.000We've worked on this very issue for a long time, whether it was the problems of having Huawei technology in your infrastructure.
00:07:24.000We've gone all over the world and we're making real progress getting that out.
00:07:28.000We declared ZTE a danger to American national security.
00:07:32.000We've done all of these things with respect to Chinese apps on people's cell phones.
00:07:36.000I can assure you, the United States will get this one right too.
00:07:38.000Laura, I don't want to get out and I don't want to get out in front of the president, but it's something we're looking at.
00:07:42.000Would you recommend that people download that up on their phones tonight, tomorrow, anytime currently?
00:07:48.000Only if you want your private information in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.
00:07:52.000Now, Americans should be very careful about using TikTok and having their private information fall in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.
00:08:19.000I couldn't care less about trying to pander for the liberty of the Chinese Communist Party to come into our country and data mine and harvest and spy on our country.
00:08:31.000There's nothing conservative about allowing our greatest enemy into the pockets of America's youth.
00:08:39.000In order to create a TikTok profile, they ask for personal information.
00:08:45.000And a lot of 13, 14, and 15-year-olds willingly give the CCP very intimate details.
00:08:52.000So now the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party, knows what your 15-year-old likes in music, food, where you're vacationing, what you're doing.
00:09:03.000And they might even be able to access through the back end of your phone that you're probably paying for if you're a parent listening to this and your 15-year-old is using to be able to listen to private conversations, access the microphone within the phone.
00:09:16.000We don't know how deep TikTok and the malware that is within the application goes into the device that you're using.
00:11:11.000Now, TikTok is, of course, owned by the Beijing-based Byte Dance.
00:11:18.000The company denies that it hands over the data to the Chinese Communist Party and says it wouldn't even do so if asked.
00:11:24.000Well, first of all, if we know anything about the Chinese Communist Party, lying is a feature of the CCP.
00:11:31.000The best liars in the world are the Chinese Communist Party, not the Chinese people.
00:11:35.000There's a distinction between the political movement of the Chinese Communist Party that dominates the political system of China and the 95 to 98% of the people in China that are being held hostage by the Marxist Chinese world-dominating, let's say, aspirational world-dominating communists of the CCP.
00:11:57.000By the way, the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party, they don't ask before they take data.
00:12:14.000I sure hope the money that you're getting is worth the borderline treason that you are being involved with.
00:12:20.000I sure hope, Kevin, that it's worth the extra vacation home in the islands for you to be able to disenfranchise our country to America's greatest enemy.
00:12:28.000Before I go further, it is incredible to me how America's ruling class is willing to sell out our country for a fat paycheck.
00:12:37.000It is amazing to me about how the elites of America are more than happy to just put America last so that they can go get an extra vacation home.
00:12:49.000This was not the phenomenon in the early 1900s.
00:12:51.000The ruling class of America in 1910 and 1920, despite all of the alleged monopolization that they engaged in, they loved their country.
00:13:17.000I'm sure there's plenty of good, useful, educated, I don't want to say idiots because that's too mean.
00:13:27.000But to use the Yuri Bezmanov example, which we did a previous episode on, they are being useful idiots.
00:13:32.000I'm not saying they're all idiots if you work at TikTok, but you understand what I'm saying.
00:13:36.000But for Kevin Mayer, the CEO of this company who used to work at Disney, he's perfectly fine with selling out our country so that your children can be hypnotized by a Chinese military asset.
00:13:49.000Now, I want to dive into more what Pompeo said, but you have to understand, TikTok kicked off live action from their platform run by Lila Rose, tremendous spokeswoman for the pro-life movement.
00:14:03.000They put forward and they propagandize the platform with far left-wing anti-American voices.
00:14:09.000So outside of the fact that the Chinese government is using this application to spy on our children and data mine our children, our children are becoming assets of the CCP so they can know what their parents are doing.
00:14:24.000Despite all that, it's also really bad for the country and the fabric of our country because the content that is being pushed on TikTok is Marxist, leftist garbage, and conservative voices are routinely kicked off TikTok, routinely.
00:14:38.000In response to Pompeo's remarks, a TikTok spokesperson said this, TikTok is led by an American CEO with hundreds of employees and key leaders across safety, security, product, and public policy here in the United States.
00:14:49.000We have no higher priority than promoting a safe and secure app experience for our users.
00:14:54.000We never have provided user data to the Chinese government, nor would we do so if we were asked, end quote.
00:15:00.000So to try to win goodwill in the Western community, TikTok has said that they're going to exit Hong Kong because of the introduction of a new security law by the Chinese communist government.
00:15:10.000On May 21st, China announced it was preparing to pass a controversial law, which is expected to criminalize access, sedition, secession, and subversion.
00:15:18.000This is directly in response to the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
00:15:22.000Other industry mainstays, including Google, Twitter, Facebook, and its messaging platform, WhatsApp, have said they are halting reviews of government requests for user data in Hong Kong.
00:15:32.000Now, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, again, blasted the national security law.
00:15:46.000The United States condemns Beijing's repeated failure to live up to its obligations under the Sinno-British Joint Declaration and these latest assaults on the rights of the freedoms of the people of Hong Kong.
00:17:17.000You're trying to pour into them to make, to develop them into human beings that can live independently in society, and you know what is best for them.
00:17:25.000And what is best for them is not having TikTok on their phone.
00:17:28.000First of all, spend some time on TikTok.
00:17:31.000It's just mountains of steaming garbage, basically.
00:17:53.000If you even spend some time on TikTok and your kid is using it, it should appall you.
00:17:57.000If you love America, if you happen to be a Christian, it should really appall you.
00:18:02.000TikTok is a propaganda arm of the CCP.
00:18:05.000Your child can function just fine in a social setting in high school without having to use an application that is fostered, supported, funded, and monitored by the military of the Chinese Communist Party.
00:18:50.000Just overly indulging America's youth in technology is not good for anyone.
00:18:55.000I go out to eat sometimes and I see entire families and the parents just hand iPads and phones to their kids and they don't talk at all throughout the entire meal.
00:19:04.000And look, I'm victim number one of using my phone all the time, mostly for work and for productive means, of course, to try to save the country.
00:19:13.000But mind you, when I was 11, 12, 13, 14 years old, when you went out to dinner, you looked your parents in the eye and you discussed ideas, you told them about your day.
00:19:22.000Now I feel as if there's just this digital world that most of our kids live in.
00:19:27.000And parents almost use technology as an excuse to keep them quiet.
00:19:33.000There's a lot of parents struggling with a lot of different things, so I don't want to paint too broad of a brush.
00:19:38.000I'm just making a general, I think, important societal observation here.
00:19:43.000Because if we just keep on allowing our kids to overly indulge in this form of Orwellian technology, we are not going to have a country.
00:19:50.000And by the way, this is coming from a 26-year-old, okay?
00:19:54.000I'm 26 years old telling you that what's happening right now with the amount of social media usage and technology that is overly, let's say, proselytized among America's youth is damaging.
00:20:09.000I'm in support of, of course, using tools for the betterment of freedom and the gospel and the kingdom and of our country.
00:20:16.000However, I think that now that we have eight-year-olds and 12-year-olds that are getting smartphones and it's as if it's connected to them at the hip, I think it stunts their development.
00:20:26.000I'm not going to say all of a sudden they're going to stop growing.
00:20:33.000We have 13-year-olds that are addicted to Chinese applications.
00:20:38.000We have children committing suicide because they're not getting enough social media likes on TikTok.
00:20:45.000If you're a parent out there, it's okay to take all your children's devices away and buy them a flip phone.
00:20:51.000They're going to be incredibly upset on the front end, and they might just have a happy childhood after that.
00:20:58.000I get on my hands and knees and thank God, I really do, quite often, that I grew up in an America where I didn't have this nonsense around me.
00:21:08.00010 years ago, none of this nonsense existed.
00:21:13.000Whether you're working from home or on your fitness, you want to know what you're listening to is actually what you want to be listening to.
00:21:18.000Like the Charlie Kirk show, not some person in the background watching the Rachel Maddow show.
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00:22:30.000So just take it for whatever it's worth.
00:22:32.000I'm a 26-year-old telling you that the over indulgence in technology is helping contribute to the downfall of America.
00:22:40.000So this entire issue of the Chinese Communist Party and its infiltration into the pockets of America's youth, and when I say the pockets, I mean that's where you keep your smartphone, has really been spearheaded by Senator Josh Hawley for months, and it's gaining serious momentum.
00:22:56.000Senator Hawley, he introduced a bill, also taking aim at Apple, by the way, but especially TikTok, the National Security and Personal Data Protection Act.
00:23:04.000Now, this bill would prohibit American companies from storing user data or encryption keys in China.
00:23:11.000As I mentioned before, Chinese law requires cloud services offered to its citizens to essentially be operated by Chinese companies and that Chinese customers' data be stored in the country.
00:23:32.000Apple chose to partner with a state-owned company.
00:23:35.000I'm going to mispronounce this, but it's Gaizhu Cloud Big Data Industry Company, LTD Limited, for its data center for Chinese users.
00:23:45.000But it has said that Apple alone controls the encryption keys.
00:23:49.000However, Senator Holly said this: quote: Chinese law allows the Communist Party to seize data from American companies operating in China whenever it wants and for whatever reason it wants.
00:23:58.000Let's just listen to some tape of Senator Holly at a Senate hearing talking about this issue: play tape.
00:24:05.000TikTok was the most downloaded app of 2019, more than any other app in the country.
00:24:12.000More teenagers are on TikTok now than use Facebook.
00:24:16.000It counts millions and millions and millions of Americans as users.
00:24:21.000But it is owned by a Chinese company that includes Chinese Communist Party members in leadership.
00:24:27.000And it is required under Chinese law to share user data with Beijing.
00:24:32.000And TikTok has admitted that it has sent user data to China.
00:24:37.000To put it bluntly, this is a major security risk for the American people.
00:24:42.000And what kind of data is TikTok collecting as it runs on our phones?
00:24:46.000A heck of a lot more than you would think.
00:25:08.000It stores all of this and maybe lots, lots more.
00:25:12.000And I can tell you, as the father of two small children who already have many of their friends on social media, even though they're quite young, I find this absolutely horrifying.
00:25:22.000And we know that it's a national security risk.
00:25:24.000Since our last hearing on this subject, the Pentagon, the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, and the TSA have all banned their employees and service members from using TikTok on government devices.
00:25:39.000In fact, the Pentagon even went so far as to say that employees should have their children uninstall TikTok from their personal devices.
00:25:48.000So the bill he's proposing would also rightly change merger rules when Chinese companies try to buy United States firms that possess large amounts of data, requiring the pre-approval from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.
00:26:01.000So this bill has some great things in it, but it does not go far enough.
00:27:53.000The Chinese coronavirus shows us that the Chinese Communist Party will do whatever it takes to protect their reputation and to lie to the rest of the world.
00:28:00.000Some people say that they created the virus.
00:28:03.000Some people say that they just released the virus.
00:28:04.000Some people say they didn't do enough to cover up the virus.
00:28:10.000The Chinese Communist Party lied about it.
00:28:13.000The Chinese Communist Party has lied about dumping products into our country, dumping steel, dumping solar panels.
00:28:20.000It wasn't until President Trump until we actually started to reverse course on a lot of these troubling trends, building Confucius Institutes all across the country.
00:28:30.000Now, mind you, Apple, just like TikTok, could be used for Chinese espionage in our country.
00:28:36.000We've seen that it's a real concern with drones that were made by the Chinese company DJI.
00:28:43.000In fact, Congressman Matt Gates was on Tucker Carlson talking about this.
00:28:47.000I want to play a short tape of Congressman Matt Gates talking about this play tape.
00:28:55.000China is massively expanding a Trojan horse spying operation in our country, and your local police department may be unknowingly helping them.
00:29:04.000The United States Army, the Department of Interior, they banned their use of these DJI drones, citing vulnerability and potential value for other countries.
00:29:14.000The Department of Homeland Security wrote a scathing report that said that China specifically goes after local law enforcement.
00:29:21.000They did so even before the coronavirus so that they can get key information, transmit it to the Chinese government.
00:29:27.000And then our own Department of Homeland Security wrote that this is precisely the type of information we're worried that China might sell to terrorists.
00:29:35.000So even before the coronavirus, Tucker, you had this company reducing their prices for drones by 70%.
00:29:43.000They drove U.S. manufacturers out of the market.
00:29:45.000And since coronavirus, DJI is openly bragging that they have just donated these Trojan horse gifts to over 22 states, to over 40 municipalities.
00:29:57.000And when I talk to these municipalities in my own investigation, they say, well, it's no big deal.
00:30:02.000We just fly them around the parks and tell people to disperse or we just make sure folks are social distancing.
00:30:07.000But the information that's being collected makes our nation more vulnerable.
00:30:11.000And I believe the Attorney General, under the existing authorities he has under the cybersecurity laws, should immediately ground the entire fleet of DJI drones used by U.S. law enforcement.
00:30:23.000We should not be spied on by our own government in giving the information then to a foreign government that's hostile.
00:30:29.000So Chinese espionage, spying, and praying in our country is nothing new.
00:30:35.000This is about the well-being of our children.
00:30:40.000And by the way, they could be blackmailed.
00:30:42.000If they do something regrettable on social media, which God knows every human being that has ever interacted on this planet has done something regrettable.
00:30:50.000But do you know what makes this generation different and even parts of my generation different with what they did on social media?
00:30:59.000Every person growing up makes mistakes.
00:31:01.000The problem is these mistakes are now permanent mistakes on social media.
00:31:08.000What if your kid says something regrettable on social media, on TikTok?
00:31:12.000What's to say the Chinese Communist Party won't leak it to a reporter here in America to try to go up against your child if that person ever comes to prominence and anything that dares speak against the Chinese Communist Party?
00:31:22.000You think I'm getting into something that won't happen?
00:31:25.000You do not know the Chinese Communist Party.
00:31:29.000America's ready to get back to work, but to win in the new economy, you need to take advantage to succeed.
00:31:35.000Smart companies run on NetSuite by Oracle, the world's number one cloud business system.
00:31:39.000With NetSuite, you'll have visibility and control of your financials, HR, inventory, e-commerce, and more.
00:31:59.000Who trusts NetSuite to make it happen?
00:32:01.000NetSuite surveyed hundreds of business leaders and assembled a playbook of the top strategies they're using as America reopens for business.
00:34:08.000It's just the truth of the matter: that this application just happens to hate Donald Trump and it promotes voices that hate Donald Trump.
00:34:16.000To close the episode, I want to just talk about what I said earlier even deeper.
00:34:20.000And for those of you, I encourage you to go to get involved at TurningPointUSA, tpusa.com, tpusa.com.
00:34:25.000Email me, freedom at charliekirk.com, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:34:28.000And if you guys want a signed copy of the MAGA doctrine, subscribe, five-star review, screenshot it, email us, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:34:35.000You might be one of the 20 people that we select to win a copy.
00:34:39.000But to end the episode, I want to say this: Steve Hilton wrote a book called More Human.
00:34:44.000I'm going to have him on our podcast to talk about this.
00:34:47.000But the more that I study about this technology, the more I use technology, the more social media followers I have, I'm not saying it's useless.
00:36:46.000Enjoy this beautiful country that we have.
00:36:50.000I am very fearful that the more time people spend on these devices and the less time they spend interacting with human beings, we will no longer have a country, but we will no longer have a species.