The United States is considering banning the popular China-owned social media app TikTok amid national security concerns that the company is sharing user data with the Chinese Communist Party.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made the revelation Monday night during an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, noting the U.S. has taken steps to push back against Chinese telecom giants Huawei and ZTE and might do the same with TikTok.
“Your viewers should know we’re taking this very seriously — we’re certainly looking at it,” Pompeo said. “We’ve worked on this very issue for a long time, whether it was the problems of having Huawei technology in your infrastructure, we’ve gone all over the world, and we’re making real progress getting that out. We declared ZTE a danger to our national security. We’ve done all these things. With respect to Chinese apps on people’s cellphones, I can assure you that the United States will get this one right too. I don’t want to get out in front of the president, but it’s something we’re looking at.”
When asked whether he would recommend that people download TikTok, Pompeo replied: “Only if you want your private information in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.”
TikTok is a video-sharing social network app owned by Chinese internet technology company ByteDance, which is based in Beijing. ByteDance and TikTok have repeatedly claimed that they have not and would never turn over TikTok user data to the Chinese government, but national security experts point to China’s own 2017 National Intelligence Law, which requires all Chinese companies to assist Chinese intelligence services when asked — and to keep it secret. The U.S. military banned TikTok from cellphones in early January, citing national security concerns.
The Justice Department and U.S. intelligence agencies believe Huawei, ZTE, and other Chinese companies are working hand-in-hand with the ruling Chinese Communist Party, potentially giving China’s surveillance state access to hardware and networks around the world. In June, the Pentagon named Huawei as one of 20 Chinese companies operating in the U.S. with direct ties to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.
China’s more recent so-called national security law was imposed on Hong Kong by fiat by the Chinese Communist Party in June, allowing the Chinese government to set up a National Security Committee within Hong Kong and to impose its will upon the semi-autonomous city.
TikTok responded to Hong Kong’s new national security law by announcing it would be ending the app’s availability in Hong Kong, with a spokesperson telling the Washington Examiner that “in light of recent events, we’ve decided to stop operations of the TikTok app in Hong Kong.”
Tik Tok has been downloaded more than 2 billion times worldwide through Apple’s App Store and Google Play, according to the Sensor Tower data website, and there are likely tens of millions of TikTok users in the U.S. Last year, TikTok said it had attracted 150,000 users in Hong Kong. In May, longtime Disney executive Kevin Mayer became TikTok’s new CEO.
“TikTok has an American CEO and is owned by a private company that is backed by some of the best-known U.S. investors, several of whom have members on its board … TikTok has never shared user data with the Chinese government, and would not do so if asked. Period,” a TikTok spokesman said.
Following the new law put in place in Hong Kong and after skirmishes with the Chinese military near a disputed border, India banned almost 60 Chinese cellphone apps, including TikTok and the popular Chinese messaging app WeChat. TikTok said reports that the Australian government is looking into banning TikTok are not credible.
Facebook-owned Whats App and competitor messaging app Telegram announced they would be pausing their compliance with requests from law enforcement in Hong Kong to turn over information. Google, Facebook, and Twitter said they would at least momentarily cease processing requests from Hong Kong’s government while they review the new law. The encrypted app Signal snarked on Twitter: “We’d announce that we’re stopping too, but we never started turning over user data to HK police. Also, we don’t have user data to turn over.”
The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, led by Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, released a report in June detailing how the federal government provided “little-to-no oversight” of Chinese state-owned telecoms for two decades and how China is illicitly targeting U.S. communications the same way it has targeted education, research, and personal data.
Pompeo also weighed in on the broader Hong Kong crisis. “We’d love to preserve the freedom in Hong Kong, but if we can’t, we’re going to hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable,” he said.
“A few weeks back now, President Trump made clear that Hong Kong was autonomous. I certified the same. And we can see that this is going to end up being just another communist-run city. It’s unfortunate,” Pompeo said. “Hong Kong was such a special place, where there were all of the freedoms that the people of Hong Kong were promised by the Chinese Communist Party. It’s much like the promise they made to tell us the truth about where the coronavirus came from — we know it started in Wuhan, we know it came from China, and yet they covered it up for an awfully long time. It’s these same kinds of broken promises that will lead the United States to take the right response with respect to Hong Kong’s new national security law.”
The secretary of state added: “We’ve already begun the process of revoking visas for people who made these decisions, and there will be a series of actions the administration will take.”
Pompeo also criticized the Obama administration for, in his view, not standing up to China.
“We have eight years of history with President Obama and Vice President Biden’s China policy, and they did nothing, whether it was on the important issues we’re facing today on human rights, whether that’s in Tibet, or Hong Kong, or in the Western part where Uighurs are being forced to conduct abortions and forced sterilizations, they did nothing,” Pompeo said. “Whether it was in Taiwan, where they refused to do the right thing. Or even protecting Americans from predatory economic activity, costing Americans thousands and hundreds of thousands of jobs here in the United States, we know what the Obama-Biden administration did with respect to China — it kowtowed, it appeased, it turned the other cheek, and it left America in a weaker position as a direct result of that failure to lead.”
