In a notably bipartisan act of cooperation, on April 23 the U.S. Senate passed a bill that would ban TikTok unless the owner of the popular social media app, ByteDance, would sell it to a non-Chinese company. President Biden promptly signed the bill but not without ByteDance filing a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the law. This is on top of the $7 million it has already spent trying to lobby Congress and federal officials to prevent the TikTok-banning legislation from getting passed. It will now be up to the courts to decide whether to uphold the law or strike it down so the matter remains out of the hands of the public for now. But a lot can happen in a year and it remains important for the public to understand exactly why TikTok represents such a threat and why banning it was, while obviously not without controversy, the correct move from a homeland security perspective.
Let’s begin with one of the most common arguments that I hear—from many of my own students included— contesting the level of danger that TikTok actually presents. The argument is that all of the major social media apps collect our data and track our behavior anyway so TikTok isn’t different in this sense and it therefore isn’t fair to single it out. This is partly true but also partly untrue. It is indeed true that other apps such as Facebook, X, and Instagram also collect our data and track us. But what they do is surveillance capitalism, meaning that the surveillance is carried out with the goal of making money via targeted advertising and algorithms designed to keep you on their apps for as long and often as possible.
Can this lead to problems such as misinformation, disinformation, malinformation, the breakdown of civic discourse, and even something as serious as the undermining of democracy? Yes, absolutely, but these problems occur as side effects of the monetization model. It is not the deliberate, explicit goal of these companies to misinform, disinform, or polarize American society (though one could certainly argue that this is what they are nevertheless doing).
On the surface, TikTok does not appear very different. Like the others, it is a social media app that extensively collects its users’ data with the goal of making money. But there is one key difference: while the other apps are owned by U.S. companies, TikTok is owned by ByteDance which is a Chinese company. This means that it is subject to a series of Chinese laws such as the National Intelligence Law of 2017 which require that “any organization or citizen shall support, assist, and cooperate with state intelligence work according to the law.” In plain language, this means that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or its primary intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security (MSS), can demand access to TikTok’s vast archives of data at any time and ByteDance would have no choice but to comply. In fact, there is some evidence that this has already been occurring.
Even with this explanation, the clear and present danger still may not be immediately apparent to everyone, particularly younger Americans who make up the majority of TikTok’s users. So a little more context may be helpful. To start with, China has already made clear in no uncertain terms that it is engaged in information warfare with the U.S. This is part of a broader cold war between China and the U.S. which, despite recent rhetoric from the leaders of both nations, experts widely agree we are very much in. Moreover, there are significant risks of this cold war escalating into a hot war, and both the U.S. and China are already making preparations for this very real possibility.
Next, the future of war will increasingly rely on information warfare (IW)—or the deliberate use of information and communication mediums to pursue a strategic advantage over an adversary by influencing and manipulating the thoughts and behaviors of that adversary’s leadership, military, and/or citizenry through neurocognitive hacking which occurs without the targets being consciously aware of it. Stated differently, IW is the art of winning wars without physical combat or minimal combat. IW can also occur both before and during formal war. We have seen this with the wars between Russia and Ukraine as well as Israel and Hamas.
Part of the reason information warfare can be so deadly is due to the neuroplasticity of the human brain and its ability to form new neural pathways in response to new information. The positive side of this is that we have the innate capacity to be open-minded and change our minds (even if it doesn’t always seem like it, which is in itself due to a variety of cognitive and cultural factors). The dark side of neuroplasticity is that it also makes us vulnerable to external manipulation.
Social media has and will continue to keep playing a large role in information warfare. As acknowledged, all of the major social media apps are implicated in this but, once again, TikTok is different in one critical way. With other apps, state and non-state actors can and do influence people’s thoughts and behaviors but they don’t have direct access to people’s personal data. With TikTok, China does have direct access to people’s data. This means that they can unleash highly personalized attacks with ultra-precision, unlike the broad shotgun approach that bad actors on other social media use, because they know everything about you: all your likes, desires, fears, biases, and triggers. They know exactly which buttons to push to make you think or react a certain way. When you add in AI and its ability to single-handedly execute the cognitive labor of an army of human agents, the possibilities become deeply troubling. With 150 million Americans using TikTok, state and non-state actors could hypothetically use AI to target each and every one of them in the most effective ways possible based on behavioral science.
Warping American citizens’ views toward the CCP, their own government, democracy as a whole, and towards each other should be considered the minimal baseline of how China would harness TikTok. In the event of an all-out conflict, we should assume that they would exploit TikTok’s full capacity as not just an instrument of information warfare but also of unconventional or asymmetric warfare, waging war not with soldiers on a battlefield but but with a wide range of other means such as cyberwarfare, biowarfare, sabotage, and terrorism.
What might a theoretical worst case scenario look like? Well, state actors could use the complete intelligence portfolio that they have on millions of Americans and combine this with increasingly sophisticated tactics to get you to click on something that looks innocuous but is actually a phishing link designed to hack into the networks you’re connected to. Now consider that millions of Americans regularly click on things while they are at work and how many of them work in fields that involve sensitive information such as government, the military, healthcare, finance, power grid management, and supply chains. Imagine that state actors now have access to troves of sensitive data from all of those industries combined such as which high profile people in the U.S. government and military have pacemakers (which are of course connected to the Internet of Things and therefore vulnerable to hacking). The extent of mass chaos and disruptions that could result from such a hypothetical perfect storm scenario is mind-boggling. In other words, TikTok has the ability to be both a weapon of mass distraction and destruction.
This then begs the question: what can we do about it? As stated, I believe that banning TikTok is the right move from a homeland security viewpoint. By definition, part of what it means to live in a liberal democracy is to enjoy certain freedoms and liberties. The challenge is that sometimes, in order to protect and preserve those very freedoms and liberties, certain reasonable, limited, and ideally temporary security measures may arguably need to be taken. Even the political philosopher John Stuart Mill, a great champion of personal liberty, advocated the “harm principle” in which a government could place limits on liberty if it meant preventing harm to others. But since it is possible that the federal courts or the Supreme Court itself will strike down the ban, there are fortunately other proactive actions we can take.
For one thing, while it’s a matter of hot debate, I believe the U.S. needs to stop reacting to what other nations are doing and be more proactive. Specifically, we need to stop playing only defense and go on the offense in terms of information warfare. There’s no reason the U.S. can’t use some of the same tactics that China uses, albeit in a less insidious way. For example, instead of harmfully polarizing the Chinese public and pitting them against each other, the way our adversaries do to us, we could simply fan the flames of rebellion against authoritarianism that are already spreading in China as a result of its own actions anyway, particularly among younger people.
At the same time, information campaigns can also be carried out domestically, educating American citizens on information warfare, the dangers of TikTok specifically, and what they can do to protect themselves. Something like this can be done relatively simply, in a non-partisan way that unites rather than divides, and without falling into any legal or ethical gray areas. Ideally I would like to see cyber hygiene and safety education be integrated into the K-12 education system since the younger people can learn and practice these principles, the more likely they are to stick with them.
Finally, in addition to formal educational policies at the institutional level—or in lieu of them if such policies are not adopted—parents can better educate themselves on the topics of cyber hygiene, information warfare and literacy, and specifically the dangers of TikTok which their children are spending so many hours on.
While these are by no means the full extent of actions that can be taken, they are among the most feasible ones that can be implemented now before this cold war we are in escalates into a hot one. As much as nobody wants that to happen, few who are informed on the subject can deny that the chances of it happening are significant. And as I have tried to convey here, in the event of an all-out war, continuing to use TikTok if it remains owned by ByteDance would be like handing a secret weapon right into the adversary’s hands. Implementing the policies and actions recommended here can therefore go a long way towards protecting the safety and integrity of our families, institutions, and national security.
Craig Albert, PhD, Professor of Political Science & Graduate Director of the Master of Arts in Intelligence and Security Studies at Augusta University.