On the surface it can be viewed by some that TikTok is being unfairly criticized for some similar privacy concerns that exist on other social media outlets. While that is true, a key nuance many are overlooking is just what a huge difference it is with geo-politics when the app is owned by a Chinese company.
This is a map of how China views their world.
China is hemmed in by geology and their neighbors, their one area of growth is to the Pacific. Their best access to the Pacific is in a narrow sea lane from the Yellow Sea, to East China Sea, to Phillipine sea then out to the wider Pacific Ocean. This means they are hemmed in by countries allied to varying degrees with the United States (many home to US military bases): Japan, South Korea, Philippines and Taiwan.
It’s rare when you see non partisan members of the U.S. legislature united in the same concerns. According to CIA intelligence reports, China has been told to prepare to take back Taiwan by 2027. Their Naval expansion is already alarming and still planning to grow.
CBS News on their 60 Minutes program recently explored the readiness of the US Navy compared to China and it’s rapidly growing Navy. In the early 2000’s, the People’s Republic of China had only 37 vessels in their naval fleet, in roughly 20 years they have grown exponentially. According to an article at CNN, “The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) surpassed the US Navy in fleet size sometime around 2020 and now has around 340 warships, according to the Pentagon’s 2022 China Military Power Report, China’s Navy surpassed US fleet size in 2020, and is expected to top more than 400 ships by 2025. Even with currently planned US Naval plans, even by 2045 the US Navy will be smaller. Additionally China has recently instituted a program including military training for all the students in the nation. That is a sign of a country planning for war, even recent fluff looking stories like giving students a chance to fall in love during Spring Break might have an ulterior motive, creating the next generation to replace military losses.
US leadership has stated that if Taiwan is invaded by China the US military will respond. This means that we’re not judging TikTok on it’s own merits purely as a social media platform (and certainly is not judging how you do life hacks, or dance moves as what you may upload), but in context of serious security concerns when we may find ourselves at war with China is the very near future. Taiwan is the leading supplier of microchips, which is what runs today’s global economy. Interruptions in that supply chain will have global repercussions. But more than just that, the Chinese government has been buying up shares in popular Chinese tech based companies so they can control the business: examples include Alibaba, Tencent, and the TikTok parent company. Alibaba is more than just retail merchandise to purchase, but they also have videos and news sharing components too, and their own web browser. As part of the shares in the company, the political communist party of China now has the ability to dictate what is shared on the popular social media platform. China has long suppressed free press, and it’s alarming to see this, it indicates fore planning to control news and information and to use it for propaganda. (We have a real world example of what can happen when news is controlled, look at how the Russian people are lied to about Ukraine).
Plus they now have a ‘stunning lead’ over the US in the research of 37 out of 44 critical and emerging technologies (especially across space, defense, and technology), according to a new study from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Consider that with the fact there’s a plethora of claims of China stealing tech and intellectual property from outside it’s borders (examples: J-20 fighter planes, UAVs, night-vision technology, air defense systems, and more). Even Moscow has fallen prey to them on multiple occasions:
“Unauthorized copying of our equipment abroad is a huge problem. There have been 500 such cases over the past 17 years,” said Yevgeny Livadny, Rostec’s chief of intellectual property projects on Dec. 14. “China alone has copied aircraft engines, Sukhoi planes, deck jets, air defense systems, portable air defense missiles, and analogs of the Pantsir medium-range surface-to-air systems.”
Dimitri Simes, Nikkei News
The fear then also becomes can China more than control the news and deliver propaganda, but can they then data mine and find people who have access to various secrets and confidential information both within, and without the military industrial complex. Pharmaceutical research, utility companies, banking information (for businesses, as well as individuals), and more. Historically China has long stolen intellectual property, so it’s within it’s normal modus operandi.
Ironically China is cracking down on apps on smartphones in their own country, and making it more difficult to download things not state controlled. They’re even now purging academic archives, including the largest academic archive in the world. Reminds me a bit of the infamous libricidal acts of the Nazi’s including the famous book burning in Berlin.
The government of China has also treated their own people abominably. They have been attacking their own Chinese polytheistic folk religions destroying thousands of temples (Wild Hunt, BitterWinter and another at BitterWinter), including some that have stood for centuries, as well as shrines dedicated to ancestral veneration. Only those shrines, and temples that have enshrined Mao Zedong have so far been spared. They’re also composing a database of Buddhist and Taoist monks to control them, they’re separating over a million Tibetan children from their families and indoctrinating them in a policy drawing parallels to Mission and Residential schools. They are denying the students their native languages, destroying their culture and way of life, destroying family connections. They are also persecuting Christians as well as Muslims too like the Ughyur with similar genocidal tactics using re-education camps and combining the approach with infanticide, forced sterilization, (gang)rape of the women.
Yes, there are other privacy concerns with other social media platforms, or services like Amazon’s Alexa, including the companies (and sometimes even our own government) having access to what we talk about or search for. Most users on Tiktok are innocuous, and just having fun. But there are serious privacy and security concerns with TikTok because of its connection to China and the increasing likelihood of a future military confrontation with China, concerns over propaganda, over national security, and even intellectual property theft. When you consider that the Chinese government is now a share holder that receives taxes from the company but also profit income through it’s own shares, then you have to understand that using the service helps to fund and support rape, genocide, and more.
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