A bipartisan House majority has voted overwhelmingly, 352–65, to ban TikTok unless it is divested, sold, within five months. TikTok is currently controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and its evil justifies strong actions.
The problem is that the accompanying government enforcement that limits TikTok could become a back door to suppressing the freedom of speech of those who oppose government tyranny. Many people believe that is a current reality, not speculation about the future.
First, Gordon Chang and others are absolutely right about how evil TikTok is. Second, what are the dangers to First Amendment free speech? Third, what changes might the Senate and House make in conference to answer legitimate concerns about dangers to free speech?
Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), a devout constitutionalist, said: “We should defend the free and open debate that our First Amendment protects. … The best way to judge truth from lies is to put the two side by side and trust the people to know the difference. The last thing we should do is take that power AWAY from the people and give it to the government. … The answer to CCP-style propaganda is NOT CCP-style oppression. Let us SLOW down before we BLUNDER down this very steep and slippery slope.”
Foreign disinformation would not be fixed with a bureaucracy—like the KGB, Gestapo, Stasi, Cuban DGI—that turns against Americans’ free speech rather than answering foreign propaganda. The government ought to be turned toward foreign enemies rather than the freely speaking people of America.
In particular, why care so much about TikTok, a social media platform? Well, it is omnipresent, with 170 million American users; and it is Generation Z’s favorite toy. Gen Z does internet searches almost exclusively on TikTok.
CCP Control
The CCP controls TikTok employees and its content, runs political influence operations, and collects massive amounts of data on millions of citizens.TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, employ about 300 directly from CCP state media. Late-night U.S. employees of TikTok are required to report to their supervisors in Beijing, not their U.S. supervisors.
Influence
Mandarin-fluent Matt Pottinger of Trump’s National Security Council (NSC) has observed that TikTok is one of the CCP’s greatest weapons to divide Americans and to “cause us to lose faith in our form of government.”TikTok has allegedly distributed a video urging school shootings. TikTok runs seductive drug cartel videos recruiting young Americans.
“[They] show lots of money, they show lots of drinking, partying,” said Jorge Esparza of the Brooks County Sheriff Department.
TikTok runs ads in the United States, claiming it is a patriotic American enterprise rather than a Beijing tool corrupting American youth.
TikTok has its fans—and lobbyists. Biden Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo has vigorously defended the value of TikTok to the Democratic Party, saying: “The politician in me thinks you’re going to literally lose every voter under 35, forever … However much I hate TikTok … it serves kids; you know, this is America.”
President Joe Biden has campaigned on TikTok.
Data
Buzzfeed reported that leaked audio from over 80 internal meetings proved that China-based employees of TikTok repeatedly access U.S. user data.TikTok gives Beijing the faceprints and voiceprints of Americans, and it blocks critics of the CCP. TikTok collects IP addresses and user clicks, typing, and searches, according to Malwarebytes Lab. TikTok has the capacity to surveil and censor over 100 million American smartphones and computers.
Dangers of Government Violating Free Speech
Government enforcing a ban on TikTok has dangers that have already been experienced in America. Journalist Matt Taibbi and author Michael Shellenberger exposed the taxpayer-funded government agencies that have financed a “censorship-industrial complex.”Mr. Taibbi said the links between government agencies and their private-sector proxies—and the censorship—was “digital McCarthyism.”
In the fall of 2020, the Department of Homeland Security created a Disinformation Governance Board that was easily exposed as a “Ministry of Truth” censoring “misinformation.” So the Disinformation Governance Board was paused, renamed, and reorganized into the Foreign Malign Influence Center (FMIC).
FMIC’s expansive agency membership brought together military, law enforcement, intelligence, and diplomatic agencies. Mr. Taibbi identified quasi-private, often taxpayer-funded, censors—Stanford’s Election Integrity Project, Newsguard, and the Global Disinformation Index.
The New York Times, joining the CCP, asked TikTok to censor Americans who were complaining about election integrity. Welcoming the invitation, TikTok, a wholly CCP-owned entity, censored so-called conspiracy theories and misinformation during the 2022 elections.
Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines defended FMIC and its domestic agenda, stating that it is dealing with foreign interference in elections but also with domestic disinformation.
While FMIC was tasked with combating foreign interference in elections, it turned toward disinformation inside the United States. FMIC supported the State Department’s well-funded Global Engagement Center, turning to countering domestic disinformation.
Likewise, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), founded in 2018 and having a massive $3 billion budget, refocused from foreign interests to domestic election security, “a critical national infrastructure.” The problem being unwanted American speech and assembly.
CISA, a government agency, illegitimately allied with corporations, universities, and research centers, including Stanford’s Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), to censor speech.
The U.S. government funded the censorship work of the Aspen Institute and Stanford. Stanford’s EIP had “partnerships” with other government agencies—the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, and State’s Global Engagement Center—“ticketing” specific misinformation. The New York Post reported emails showing that Stanford’s EIP’s “disinformation” group worked with CISA to censor Americans before the 2020 election.
Jen Easterly, director of CISA, claimed that focusing on misinformation would protect America’s “cognitive infrastructure.” CISA was cognitively challenged. CISA advisor Kate Starbird from Stanford’s EIP and former CIA legal advisor Suzanne Spaulding recommended targeting “mal-information,” the factually true but “misleading.” Truth did not matter.
Then there’s the FBI. The FBI used surprising proxies—the Alliance Securing Democracy, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Aspen Institute, and most notably the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
In SPLC’s “Year in Hate & Extremism” report for 2022, SPLC labeled a dozen parental rights groups extremist, e.g., Moms for Liberty. Following SPLC guidance, the DOJ and FBI treated moms and dads as terrorists. Attorney General Merrick Garland targeted Moms for Liberty because it condemned the government’s promotion of anti-white and anti-straight curriculums.
In an FBI case, the Supreme Court unanimously decided against the FBI secretly listing 2 million people to be considered for censorship.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett said the FBI “trying to persuade an intermedia speech intermediary to take down a private third party speech … is covered by the plain text of Norwood (v. Harrison)” and that this is “an abridgment of speech.”
“A state may not induce, encourage, or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish,” Ms. Barrett stated.
Twitter, Facebook, Google, and others accepted moderation “requests” from every government agency. Using Facebook and Twitter, Mr. Biden unilaterally disarmed U.S. information warfare against the CCP but instead waged a disinformation campaign against his American political opponents.
Before Elon Musk, Twitter content “moderators” routinely exchanged spreadsheets from the FBI and other government agencies with the specific names of thousands of people whom government agencies wanted censored.
Mr. Musk discovered that U.S. government agencies had full access to Twitter users’ private messages. The U.S. Constitution requires a warrant to eavesdrop on citizens.
The Answer?
Debates in the Senate have revolved around extending the time to sell TikTok, finding any buyer(s), and allowing any foreign buyer.Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.), working with Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), suggested giving ByteDance more time to sell TikTok.
Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) opposed foreign ownership, telling the Washington Examiner, “I think I’d feel more comfortable if there was no foreign ownership.”
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said, “More needs to be done to protect Americans from foreign governments.”
Mr. Wyden angrily condemned former treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin for seeking foreign, potentially Saudi, investors.
Mr. Rubio argued that the real issue was that “we are looking for someone who’s not subject to the national security laws of Beijing.” He wanted fellow senators to understand “the threat … that ByteDance can be weaponized against the United States for informational warfare.”
Similarly, Mr. Warner insisted, “We’re just trying to make sure that ultimately that control is not held by the Communist Party of China.”
Unfortunately, the debate has generally neglected the issue of free speech. While Chinese divestment is less than a full ban, threats to free speech from the U.S. government and its censorship proxies remain, as do those from the CCP.
The answer is both simple and complex. Government agencies ought to redirect their gunfire to counter foreign disinformation rather than against the natural right to liberty and the constitutional right to free speech.
CCP-ruled China has been conducting “unrestricted” and undeclared political warfare on the United States for decades without any significant response. The problem is that too many government agencies are disinterested and resistant to waging even a defensive war of just answering disinformation.
They have abandoned their constitutional, statutory, and moral duties and turned on fellow Americans who are exercising their natural and constitutional rights.
