Millions of young Americans are upset because they may lose access to the popular Chinese espionage app known as TikTok.

A rap video supporting TikTok and praising Chinese President Xi Jinping recently went viral with more than 8 million views.

Why are so many young Americans oblivious to the dangers we face from an aggressive Chinese cyber-threat?

I know many people who love their TikTok. They don’t understand the fuss. What possible harm could come from viewing and posting videos online?

Plenty, it turns out.

TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese internet and technology company. Like all Chinese companies, it is required by law to share its data with the communist government upon demand.

And do not doubt me here – the Chinese government is very demanding.

TikTok is an electronic wolf in sheep’s clothing.  It’s a digital Trojan Horse, busily spying for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The intelligence value of personal data from its 170 million American users is off the charts.

Equally alarming is the influence that TikTok wields via push notifications. It functions as a marketing department for Chinese interests.

Its algorithms are designed to subtly push propaganda supporting the CCP’s policy objectives, while also sowing political discord and misinformation among us.

It’s one thing for us Americans to fuss and argue with each other. That’s just how we roll. It’s a freedom thing.

But it’s a horse of a different color when a hostile foreign group like the CCP stirs up our pot for its own benefit. We don’t need to play that game.

A GROWING CONSENSUS

Thankfully, both parties in Congress have awakened to the TikTok threat.

The bill to force the sale of TikTok is called the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.  It sailed unanimously through the House Energy and Commerce Committee in March 2024 by a vote of 50-0.

As reported by Sky News Australia at the time:

After the vote last Thursday, the Chinese-owned app displayed a message that prompted American users to call their lawmakers about the potential ban.

House Energy and Commerce Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers said on Friday, a day after the vote, that her office had been inundated with calls.

She told reporters on Capitol Hill, “We’ve been flooded with calls, record amounts of calls. Any member of the Energy and Commerce Committee that voted yesterday has been flooded. The co-sponsors have been flooded.”

“TikTok actually put up a notice where they blocked an individual to actually get on TikTok unless you called your member of Congress and told them not to vote for this legislation. But that’s just an example of how they can manipulate data and influence Americans for their agenda.”

Happily, this naked display of political meddling backfired on TikTok.  Later in the same article we read:

The lobbying efforts appear to have been counterproductive for ByteDance, and emboldened some lawmakers to vote for the ban.

“Quite frankly what TikTok did on Thursday, flooding my office and other offices with calls from kids who didn’t know why they were calling us shows the kind of control that they have,” Democrat Congresswoman Debbie Dingell told CNN.

“I want TikTok to continue. I don’t want the People’s Republic of China controlling the data, the access to the data and manipulating the data that they are doing. It is a threat to our national security.”

TIKTOK THREAT UNITES CONGRESS

In April 2024 the TikTok bill passed the full House 360-58 with strong bipartisan support. A few days later the Senate passed the bill 79-18. President Biden signed it as soon as it reached his desk.

The bill gave ByteDance one year to complete a sale to a non-hostile private owner. If ByteDance refuses to sell, then the ban goes into effect.

Variety reported in April 2024 on comments by Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee:

 “This is not an effort to take your voice away…  I would emphasize this is not a ban of the service you appreciate,” Warner said, addressing TikTok users. Regular Americans aren’t privy to classified briefings members of Congress have received about TikTok from intelligence services and the risks it poses as an entity “operating at the direction of a foreign adversary,” Warner said. “We hope that TikTok will continue under new ownership — American or otherwise. It could be bought by a group from Britain, Canada, Brazil, France. It just needs to no longer be controlled by an adversary that is defined as an adversary in U.S. law.”

With all the political bickering in America these days, isn’t it encouraging that Republicans and Democrats could unite to address a national security threat like TikTok?

Shouldn’t that tell you something about how serious this is?

Stop a moment and think about this: 170 million (mostly younger) Americans regularly use TikTok, an app owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company that shares its information with the Chinese government, which is controlled by the CCP.

This allows the CCP to vacuum up the data of 170 million Americans, and gives it a wide-open funnel for propaganda and disinformation.

For now, the CCP still enjoys unlimited opportunities to poison our political discourse, like a steady fentanyl drip into our public consciousness.

 A Chinese digital Trojan horse indeed!

HOW QUICKLY WE FORGET

Unsurprisingly, according to a Pew Research Center survey, only 32% of TikTok’s American users support the bipartisan legislation.

Since many Americans are dangerously ignorant of history these days, it’s no surprise young TikTok users are so blasé about the Chinese threat.

Perhaps we should remind ourselves just what kind of evil we are facing.

The sins of the CCP are many and awful. Let’s look at just a few highlights:

• Millions of Chinese who perished in Mao’s Cultural Revolution from 1966-1976
• Hundreds of student protesters massacred in 1989 at Tiananmen Square
• The “disappearances” of dissidents since the final 2020 takeover of Hong Kong
• Countless deaths of political prisoners due to live organ harvesting
• Imprisonment and persecution of Christians and other faith communities in China
• The COVID pandemic erupting from a lab in Wuhan that China denies to this day
• The 1 million-plus Muslim Uyghurs forced into concentration camps in western China

That’s right; another of the CCP’s gifts to humanity is a massive genocide rivaling Hitler’s “final solution.” Satellite imagery of the concentration camps is conclusive proof of the horror.

Yet, the CCP still denies it. And the rest of the world looks the other way.

Excuse me for sounding uncharitable, but Chi-Coms are not nice people. I’m not a fan.

Have our many cultural and business dealings with China blinded us to the evil essence of Chinese Communism?

Have we forgotten with whom we are dealing?

China is a beautiful country with an amazing culture. There are many wonderful people living there. Unfortunately, they are ruthlessly repressed by the totalitarian CCP. They endure lives regulated by the most powerful police surveillance state ever created.

That same ruthless police state currently controls TikTok.

Our government’s effort to wrest TikTok from CCP control should be applauded. It is long overdue.

And remember, this law would still allow TikTok to operate, but under new management.  Of course, China resists this. The CCP doesn’t want to sell its espionage and propaganda gold mine.

Our response to any Chinese objections should simply be, “Get over it. You’ve shafted us long enough. We’re done here.”

This is not censorship. This is simply self-defense against a hostile foreign power.

If you are a TikTok fan, I apologize for any inconvenience all this ruckus might cause you.

But seriously, I have to ask you once again, what part of “Chinese Communist Party is Evil” do you not understand?