If you believe TikTok boss Shou Zi Chew’s testimony Thursday, his platform isn’t just harmless but the best thing since sliced bread. In fact, lawmakers and security officials are dead right to see it as a dangerous threat.
At a five-hour House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing, Chew spelled out all the great things his company is doing: “We want TikTok to be a place where teenagers can come to learn,” he said, claiming its STEM videos have had more than 116 billion views.
The platform also offers tools to let parents guide their kids’ online experience.
Chew downplayed the company’s ties — and those of its parent, ByteDance — to China and claimed a “firewall” would keep US data from foreign access.
He vowed to prevent “manipulation for any government.
Yet when asked if he could say “with 100% certainty” that Beijing couldn’t use TikTok or ByteDance to snoop on Americans or shape content, Chew fell short, rightly prompting committee chair, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R.-Wash.), to “take that as a ‘no.’”
Smart move: Just hours earlier, Beijing said it would oppose TikTok’s sale — proving Rodgers’ point that China exerted worrisome influence over the company.
To drive that home further, she listed a slew of ByteDance officials who “work or are affiliated with” the Chinese Communist Party.
Recall, too, that when Team Trump urged the company to sell off its US operations, China quickly put algorithms on its export-control list; all foreign-party transfers of tech developed in China now need Beijing’s blessing.
Rodgers cited numerous TikTok lies — claiming, for example, that it didn’t share data with the CCP, when “leaked audio from within TikTok has proven otherwise.”
Nor can the platform be trusted with content: A TikTok video played at the hearing showed animated gunshots seeming to target Rodgers.
Though the company says it suppresses such content, the video had been up for 41 days. (After a short break, Chew confirmed that it had finally been taken down.)
There’s a good reason lawmakers on both sides of the aisle don’t trust a company with strong ties to China and a product capable of inflicting great harm on the nation.
There’s a good reason FBI Director Chris Wray has raised serious national-security concerns, why it’s got parents up in arms, why President Joe Biden is demanding ByteDance sell off the platform or see it banned and why he’s got most Americans behind him.
TikTok simply can’t be trusted any more than Beijing itself.
The sooner it’s sold or banned, the better.
