The bipartisan plot to save TikTok - NewsNaija.com.ng

Banning TikTok is “racist” and “totalitarian”? Only if you ask the fringe voices on the left and right. While these voices have less to do with principle than with politics, they are growing louder and jeopardizing Washington’s best chance yet of targeting Beijing’s Trojan Horse app.

Days before TikTok CEO Shou Chew testified before Congress, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (DN.Y.) denounced Washington’s scrutiny as “xenophobic.” His colleague, Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wisconsin) called it a “witch hunt.” Days after the hearing, CNN published a story suggesting that banning TikTok would make Asian Americans more vulnerable to hate crimes. One of his sources was the chairman of the Committee of 100, an organization that allegedly has ties to the United Front influence operations of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

To their credit, some members of the Biden administration have been more honest about their reservations. Look no further than Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo: “The politician in me believes that she will literally lose every voter under the age of 35, forever.” Her directness was only surpassed by her authority. The legislation that the Biden administration has endorsed, the “RESTRICT Act,” would leave banning TikTok to the discretion of the Secretary of Commerce. That’s a long shot, particularly in light of pleas from Democratic political operatives to keep the app online until the 2024 election.

Still, Raimondo at least acknowledges TikTok as a security threat. Others, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (DN.Y.) have echoed TikTok’s talking points about “data privacy” and equated the app with other platforms like Facebook and Twitter. But TikTok isn’t just about privacy; it is misinformation. Thanks to the app, Beijing has a highway to the phones of 150 million Americans, many of whom spend more than five hours a day on TikTok. It is a dream scenario for the CCP. What better way to divide Americans and spread false narratives and outright lies than on a popular app with addictive tendencies?

Unfortunately, political opposition to the TikTok ban is not limited to just one side of the political aisle. In a recent monologue, Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson criticized the “RESTRICT Act” as “part of a strategy to make America look a lot more like China, with the government in charge of what you read and see and with terrifying punitive power at his fingertips. What Tucker did not mention was the origin of the legislation. It builds on a 2019 Trump administration Executive Order that directed the Commerce Department to address problematic technology threats from bad actors like China under existing law. Tucker was remarkably quiet four years ago when a Republican White House advanced the exact same policy.

Unfortunately, bragging seems to be the preferred approach to the problem. Consider recent comments by Donald Trump, Jr., in which he accused Republicans and Democrats to exploit a TikTok ban “to control what we do and watch.” This suspicion dovetails with similar concerns that the “RESTRICT Act” is the reincarnation of the Patriot Act, and leaves private Americans exposed to government surveillance. These concerns are divorced from the actual text of the bill. Section 5, that some libertarians misread as an invitation to espionage, it is nothing of the kind. It is related to blocking and divestment provisions that would target problematic apps like TikTok, not individual Americans.

Of course, it is easy to misinterpret complex legislation. But it should also be easy to avoid repeating Chinese Communist Party (CCP) talking points.

However, the Republicans are also falling into this trap. On March 29, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) announced his opposition to banning TikTok, even in a narrow-scope approach. His stated reason for him? “TikTok is cooperating through the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US to make sure that all data about Americans is protected from any snooping by the Chinese government.” Except they aren’t. CFIUS, the interagency group Sen. Paul is referring to, apparently rejected TikTok’s assurances weeks ago. Of course, TikTok CEO Shou Chew has continued to sell this talking point to muddy the waters. But why accept TikTok’s fig-leaf excuses when American public servants have reportedly rejected them?

Based on Paul’s own comments, the answer becomes clear: Like AOC, he doesn’t see TikTok as a security threat. In remarks on the Senate floor, he dismissed the app as “some dance videos.” Notably absent from his comments was any mention of TikTok’s banning of Americans for criticizing the CCP, the surveillance of American journalists by its parent company, ByteDance, or the censorship of the app’s content about genocide against minorities. Uyghur Muslim from China.

All of these protests raise the troubling possibility that American leaders lack the political will to roll back Beijing’s malign influence within our own borders.

Banning TikTok Doesn’t Make America Like the CCP; it preserves our body politic and protects us from Beijing’s depredations. The United States cannot counter China around the world if we leave ourselves vulnerable and exposed at home. If we want to keep our country strong, we need to ban TikTok, now.