Chris Wray, director of the FBI, said on Friday that the Chinese government, which “doesn’t share our values,” controls the popular video-sharing app TikTok, raising worries about national security.
The capacity of the Chinese to manage the app’s recommendation system, according to Wray, “allows them to manipulate material and, if they want to, use it for influence operations,” something the FBI was concerned about. He further claimed that China could use the app to gather user data that could be applied to conventional espionage activities.
“All of these things are under the control of a government that does not share our beliefs and whose goals are fundamentally different from those of the United States. That ought to worry us “Wray explained to a crowd at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan.
Those worries are the same ones he voiced last month when he appeared before Congress and the subject came up. And they are being expressed in the ongoing discussion about the app in Washington.
In 2020, the Trump government threatened to impose a domestic ban on TikTok and put pressure on ByteDance to sell the app to a U.S. corporation out of concern over China’s influence over the platform. American officials and the firm are currently in negotiations about a potential deal that would allay American security worries. According to Wray, this process is being carried out by various U.S. government agencies.
In a statement sent via email, TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter said: “As Director Wray has previously stated, the FBI’s input is being considered as part of our ongoing negotiations with the U.S. Government.” “We are confident that we are on a path to fully satisfy all reasonable U.S. national security concerns and have already made significant progress toward implementing those solutions,” the statement reads.
ByteDance, a company located in Beijing, owns TikTok. ByteDance is a privately held firm, according to the TikTok statement from Friday, and “TikTok Inc., which provides the TikTok service in the United States, is a U.S. company bound by U.S. laws.”
In response to inquiries from senators from both parties in September, TikTok Chief Operating Officer Vanessa Pappas stated that the company protects all data from American users and that Chinese government officials do not have access to it.
“We will never share data, end of the story,”, said Pappas.
