Two top Democratic Party organizations have embraced Chinese-owed TikTok despite new revelations about China’s influence over the app and concerns that the Biden administration is not doing enough to crack down on it.
The Democratic National Committee joined TikTok in March, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, responsible for electing Democrats to the House of Representatives, joined the app on Wednesday.
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Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), a longtime critic of Chinese-owned TikTok, tweeted in response to the news: “Democrats are openly embracing an app that provides user data to Beijing. It’s clear the left does not understand the threat Communist China poses to our freedom.”
Republican National Committee spokesman Nathan Brand told the Washington Examiner: “While Democrats are busy dancing and using Chinese Communist Party spyware, Republicans are addressing Biden’s gas prices and laying the groundwork to turn out voters in November.”
The DCCC did not respond to a request for comment.
Numerous Democratic candidates are also using TikTok.
“The DNC’s privacy concerns with regard to TikTok remain unchanged,” Daniel Wessel, the committee’s deputy communications director, told Politico in mid-June. “We take additional precautions when developing content and communicating with voters through that medium and advise campaigns to take similar precautions.”
The DNC said it has dedicated devices for TikTok that are isolated from “other DNC assets/processes/business as a mitigation to the privacy risk.”
The RNC told Politico: “We do not have any plans to give the Chinese Communist Party our data, nor do we plan to use their spyware.”
The Biden White House has collaborated with TikTok influencers and celebrities such as Benny Drama, the Jonas Brothers, and Bill Nye, with the videos shared on the accounts of those stars. The White House itself does not have an account.
TikTok thrived during the first year of President Joe Biden’s presidency following unsuccessful efforts by the Trump administration to crack down on the app.
TikTok was dubbed the most popular website in the world last year, with over 100 million users in the United States, despite concerns about data privacy and Chinese links. Biden officials emphasize a national security review of the app is underway.
The National Security Council said a separate review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States “is ongoing.”
The Trump administration labeled TikTok a national security threat due to concerns it could be exploited by the Chinese Communist Party to obtain U.S. user data illicitly.
Former President Donald Trump issued an August 2020 executive order prohibiting transactions with ByteDance and TikTok within 45 days, alleging that TikTok’s vast data collection “threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information — potentially allowing China to track the locations of federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.”
The Trump Commerce Department backed off of a possible ban on TikTok in November 2020, citing a federal court order. The Biden Justice Department asked a federal appeals court to dismiss the TikTok case in July 2021.
Biden ditched Trump’s executive orders against TikTok and other Chinese apps and replaced them with his own in June 2021, saying vast data collection on apps “threatens to provide foreign adversaries with access to that information.” The president ordered Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and other Biden officials to conduct reviews of Chinese applications.
Biden’s presidential campaign told staff members to delete their TikTok accounts in 2020.
Last month, BuzzFeed, citing leaked audio from dozens of internal TikTok meetings, reported that “China-based employees of ByteDance have repeatedly accessed nonpublic data about US TikTok users.” It quoted a member of TikTok’s Trust and Safety department saying last year that “everything is seen in China.”
TikTok put out a statement the same day citing work it has done with Oracle.
“Today, 100% of US user traffic is being routed to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure,” it said. “We still use our U.S. and Singapore data centers for backup, but as we continue our work we expect to delete U.S. users’ private data from our own data centers and fully pivot to Oracle cloud servers located in the U.S.”
Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Brendan Carr, the commission’s top Republican, wrote a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai this week calling on them to “remove TikTok from their app stores for its pattern of surreptitious data practices.”
The New York Post said this week that “TikTok has been quietly telling advertisers it is exploring a possible move out of China and may even consider a spinoff from its Chinese-owned parent company ByteDance.”
Shou Zi Chew, who simultaneously served as the CFO of ByteDance until last November, began serving as CEO for TikTok in April 2021, solidifying the influence of the Chinese parent company over the app.
Chew admitted that “employees outside the U.S., including China-based employees, can have access to TikTok U.S. user data,” though he said it was “subject to a series of robust cybersecurity controls … overseen by our U.S.-based security team.”
“We have not provided U.S. user data to the CCP, nor would we if asked,” the TikTok leader also claimed in a letter to Senate Republicans on Thursday. “The Chinese government does not directly or indirectly have the right to appoint board members or otherwise have specific rights with respect to any ByteDance entity within the chain of ownership or control over the TikTok entity.”
ByteDance and TikTok have repeatedly claimed they have not and will not turn over user data to the Chinese government, but national security experts have raised concerns about China’s national intelligence law, which requires all Chinese companies to assist Chinese intelligence services when asked. The Pentagon, other government agencies, and a host of organizations and agencies have banned employees from using the app.
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TikTok has hired dozens of lobbyists in the U.S. to defend the platform.
Its privacy policy still makes it clear that it “may share all of the information we collect” with ByteDance. The company says information may include “biometric information,” such as “faceprints and voiceprints.”
