This is not your average rundown. We’re diving into a topic dear to everyone’s hearts: TikTok. We’re going to talk about why India banned the app, why the US is considering the same, and why some are saying that this video-sharing app is a national security risk. We ask that you bear with us, since this episode is unscripted and we’re testing out new equipment. Make sure to rate and subscribe, and if you want more content like this let us know!
INTRO
HUNTER
Welcome back to the show, everyone. We wanted to take a quick break from our exploration of the Indo-Pacific and take a lazy Sunday to dove into a topic that’s close to everyone’s hearts. Tik Tok. Now I know what you’re thinking. What the hell does an app that shares videos of people dancing have to do with geopolitics? The truth is there are times when the high level rivalries between states can bleed into our daily lives. With India banning tick talk and other Chinese apps and the United States considering doing the same. We thought we’d take some time to walk you through how these decisions are driven by geopolitics. And let’s get into it.
RAMYA:
All right, so before we get into it, I did want to mention that this is unlike our other episodes in that we have not scripted this. We are just having a discussion and we want you guys to come along.
HUNTER:
So let’s get into, first of all, what Tik Tok is. For those of you who haven’t been on the Internet in the past year, Tik Tok is an app where users can share 15 second videos. That’s exploded in popularity. It has over a billion users worldwide and up to 80 million active users in the U.S..
RYAN:
Yeah, I have a Tik Tok, Ramya has a Tik Tok.
RAMYA:
Yeah. I use my Tik Tok for cooking videos. I mean, it’s so vast. There’s videos on practically anything, which is why it’s so famous, I guess.
HUNTER:
Yeah. I mean, I don’t have a Tik Tok, but it’s kind of inescapable. I mean, everybody I know has one. I see the videos shared everywhere on Facebook and Instagram.
RYAN:
Exactly. The videos get made on Tik Tok, but they’re on every other social media platform as well.
HUNTER:
Yeah. And the reason we’re bringing it up on this show is because the U.S. is considering banning Tik Tok on national security grounds.
RYAN:
I have Mike Pompeo’s statement on the subject and he said basically that people should only download the app “if you want your private information in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.”
HUNTER:
And that’s sort of mirroring developments in India after the India-China border skirmish that we’ve already discussed on this show. India banned Tik Tok and other Chinese apps over, quote, issues of sovereignty.
RYAN:
There was something like over 50 Chinese apps that got banned, all kinds of products, all kinds of services, just a full blanket, no Chinese apps.
RAMYA:
Huawei comes to mind.
RYAN:
Huawei does come to mind. No 5-G.
HUNTER:
Yeah. And that’s another topic that we haven’t tackled on this show. But we might in the future. Is the battle over 5G and sort of the idea that tech and geopolitics are becoming increasingly more interrelated.
RYAN:
And TikTok is just like that. And that’s why we’re talking about today — tech, geopolitics, national security — they’re becoming increasingly intertwined.
RAMYA:
Yeah. I mean, is it possible that this administration particularly has an issue with Tik Tok because, well, we all know what happened in Tulsa with his [Donald Trump’s] rally. It seemed to be that a bunch of young Gen Zs basically used Tik Tok as a platform to encourage other Gen Zers to reserve these free tickets that Trump was handing out and basically no one showed up. Do you think that has anything to do with us, with the U.S. banning it?
HUNTER:
I think that it might have something to do with what’s going on right now. But the U.S. government has been pretty afraid of Tik Tok ever since it came out.
RAMYA:
That’s right.
HUNTER:
Even back in 2019, the logic behind the decision to ban it now comes from an earlier lawsuit that was filed in California that alleges that Tik Tok is a national security threat. And it’s something that our intelligence agencies have been talking about. It’s been something that’s been bandied about on Capitol Hill. Is this idea that the data that Tik Tok is getting from its users is actually being used by the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese government. And that’s because Tik Tok is owned by Byte Dance, which is a Beijing based tech company. Yeah.
RAMYA:
Yeah. We were talking about this earlier, but we were basically saying that companies like Google and Facebook that are based in America also gather data. However, they have the right to protect the data from the U.S. government, whereas we’re not sure if Tik Tok has that same kind of independence from the CCP, right?
HUNTER:
Yeah. And the real issue there is that right now, for example, there’s no evidence that this data is being used by the Chinese Communist Party. But since all of the data on all of these users is stored on servers in China, based on the way that Beijing’s government is set up at any time, they could request that they turn all of that data over to the authorities. I mean, it bite dances basically in a position being a Chinese company where they can’t say no if the Chinese intelligence services want that data.
RYAN:
No, they have no such provisions that U.S. companies would have like in the case of it was the San Bernardino shooting. Yeah. Yeah. And the where that guy, he was – he was a mass shooter, but still, the government wanted access to his phone. And Apple said no. And they won. They couldn’t give access to his phone. If I remember correctly. And what we’re saying is in China, that’s probably the opposite. Like, the government would win that case. They’d get access to anyone’s data that they want whenever they want. And the problem is, most Tik Tok users are not Chinese citizens. They don’t have that kind of sovereign right over their citizens.
RAMYA:
Yeah. And it’s 80 million users in America that we’re talking about. So I guess it makes sense.
HUNTER:
And you’re thinking like, OK, so the Chinese government would have access to a bunch of videos of 80 million Americans dancing to, you know, Tootsie Slide or something like that. But that’s not the only data that Tik Tok harvests, according to a lawsuit that was filed last year. Tik Tok harvests, massive amounts of user data and often kind of without their knowledge. It gathers biometric data — so facial recognition data. It gathers geographical data, so like where your phone is, where you’re posting things from, it gathers your personal data, so like who you’re connected to on social media, who you’re talking to, any of the messages you send that are connected to the app.
RAMYA:
Right. Isn’t there an argument that Facebook and Google do the exact same thing?
HUNTER:
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. And that’s where geopolitics really comes to the fore. Exactly. Because Facebook and Apple and Google having access to Americans data is not really as big of a political issue because are American companies. But any time could legislate restrictions on what they can do with that data.
RYAN:
If we think about it, though, how many Facebook Twitter users are from America? There’s so many as well that. This is where the politics really come into play, because it’s not just about what these companies are doing. It’s what the countries themselves that these companies belong to, how they’re interacting with each other and how they have sway over these somewhat private industries.
HUNTER
Yeah. And, you know, there’s been a lot of movement in this rivalry between the U.S. and China. We’ve talked about it on this show tons of time.
RYAN
Ad nauseum.
HUNTER
Ad nauseum, yeah
RAMYA
Yeah, it’s kind of the prevailing topic in geopolitics these days.
RYAN
Yeah the U.S. versus China.
HUNTER
That rivalry is finally playing out in something that would normally not be a political issue. And it’s — it’s part of the U.S. government trying to push back on the influence Beijing has in the United States. It’s part of a message that they’re trying to send about the separation of tech and politics. And that’s where it all gets a little dicey.
RAMYA
I mean, theoretically, there’s a billion people across the globe that Tik Tok has data on. So it only makes sense that this would be something that, you know, is a geopolitical issue. Because countries — it’s not just America. It’s India. It’s — it’s a ton of other countries that are saying, oh, my goodness, there’s a ton of data that is basically going back to the CCP.
HUNTER
Yeah. I mean, think about it from the point of view of an American counterintelligence officer. If somebody told you that a foreign company had set up a massive surveillance network encompassing a third of your population that you have no control over and you don’t know what type of data they’re getting, you don’t know what the data is being used for as a national security guy. That makes you very nervous.
RYAN
Especially because as a private business, there’s not much the government can do about it. But that’s a loophole that they’re trying to close right now, thinking about whether or not they should ban Tik Tok. And India basically set the precedent that we can ban technology from another country solely because it’s from another country. And what they’re doing with that data is.
HUNTER
Unacceptable in terms and it kind of gets back to this issue of 5G. The U.S. just listed, I think, Huawei and ZTE Technology Corp., both Chinese companies, they build telecommunications hardware and we’re trying to build out our 5G network right now. They provide 5G tech. But the reason that 5G from Huawei and ZTE has been such a big issue is this exact same problem you have with Tik Tok. Yes, it’s a private company, but you don’t know if the Chinese government has built a backdoor in these technologies that allow for data collection, for intelligence collection. Now, Ramya, you brought up a good point about this being connected in some level to domestic politics, to the Tulsa rally and things like that. And I think you bring up a good point that it’s not just the national security thing.
RAMYA
I mean, let me just read out this quote by Justin Sherman, a fellow with Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council. He says, “The Trump administration has taken almost a whack-a-mole approach to dealing with these issues because it seems that as soon as a Chinese company is in the news, all of a sudden that becomes the new target.” So is this — there is a possibility that this might be very symbolic, similar to Modi in India. I mean, there is a threat, but this seems much more performative in a way.
RYAN
Yeah, I like that you said it’s symbolic because what does this do in the end? It makes some people disgruntled that they don’t have their favorite app anymore. It doesn’t hurt China’s abilities in the South China Sea. It doesn’t stop them from encouraging on the border in Kashmir. It doesn’t stop any of their activities and it doesn’t stop the U.S. either. It’s just it’s highly symbolic.
HUNTER
It’s posturing.
RYAN
It’s posturing.
RAMYA
Yeah. Justin Sherman — Justin Sherman, the guy I just quoted, actually said that there is no longer term strategy to this. And, you know…
RYAN
It’s just like a blip on the Trump radar.
RAMYA
Yeah. That he’s just going to, you know, whack like whack-a-mole.
RYAN
And it’ll be out of the news cycle in a week or two. That could be the case, but it could be something bigger. And that’s why we’re talking about it.
HUNTER
Yeah. Yeah. And I think it’s important to touch on the issue of, like, this is not a hard security problem. Now, you know, this is an app that might or might not be collecting some data that the Chinese government might use to influence American citizens.
RAMYA
Hunter, you’ve studied a lot of cybersecurity.
HUNTER
Yeah.
RAMYA
So would you say that this is a cybersecurity threat, especially because China has been involved in hacking all kinds of things, right?
HUNTER
Well, it is, and it isn’t, right. One of the biggest problems that the cyber security community is dealing with is persistent, state sponsored cyber espionage by China.
RAMYA
Got it, right.
HUNTER
So they’ve been hacking into everything from defense companies, power grids, stealing information, building their own copycat tech from it, all these sorts of issues for years. And the worry isn’t so much Tik Tok itself. It’s the ability of the Chinese government to put a backdoor into Tik Tok that could access other types of data. The reality is, we just don’t know whether this could be used as a Trojan horse.
RAMYA
Yeah, and what we don’t know is the most dangerous, right?
HUNTER
Exactly. I mean, especially when it comes to cybersecurity.
RYAN
And what’s maybe the next Tik Tok, maybe Tik Tok gets banned. But maybe another app that comes out and maybe it’s more dubious this time whether or not it’s Chinese related.
HUNTER
Well, there’s actually a little bit of a precedent for this in the cybersecurity community. I don’t know if you guys remember, must have been sometime last year you had FaceApp where it was. It was a Russian owned app, actually, where you could upload a picture of your face and it would show what you would look like in 50 years. It was they found out that this app was using your facial recognition data to build a global facial recognition database for Russian state security. Well, something along those lines, I don’t remember the exact details in tech stocks doing the exact same thing. That’s why everybody’s so worried about Tik Tok. They’re like, well, that’s what FaceApp was trying to do. How do we know that Tik Tok’s not trying to do the same thing?
RAMYA
And how do we know that it’s not already being done?
HUNTER
Now, I will say it’s worth noting that Tik Tok has pushed back against all of these allegations. I’m reading a statement here that says Tik Tok is led by an American CEO with hundreds of employees and key leaders across safety, security products and public policy here in the U.S., we have no higher priority than promoting a safe and secure app experience for our users. We have never provided user data to the Chinese government, nor would we do so if asked. They won’t be as that statement. They won’t be asked.
RYAN
They won’t be asked. They’ll be told. And they’ll have to do it. Yeah. There’s no provisions, as far as I know, for a Chinese based company to reject any kind of strong arming from the government. Yeah.
RAMYA
Wait. So I just saw this. In January, a team of security researchers announced that they had found several vulnerabilities in Tik Tok. This is from a CNN business article. But — and they haven’t been patched yet. So what we’re what we’re thinking, because they were security researchers, I’m assuming that they were looking for any vulnerabilities that could give away data. And if they did find some. What does that mean?
HUNTER
Yeah, and the fact that they haven’t closed them suggests that, you know, maybe they’re there on purpose.
RAMYA
Maybe. Yeah. That’s the worry, right?
RAMYA
Yeah. No, none of us are cyber security experts. No, I worked in the cyber security field for a little bit, but in a very non-technical role. But these are the types of discussions that everybody’s having right now.
RAMYA:
Not a lot of people really know how to protect. I guess. Well, really, there’s no way that any of us know how to fully protect ourselves other than, I don’t know — Just turning off everything and going and living in the woods.
RYAN:
Yeah, most normal people are at an extreme knowledge disadvantage for how to protect our data and also legally provisions to protect our data. There’s nothing that a citizen can really do to if it came out that Tik Tok was harvesting our data. There’s nothing a citizen in the United States could do to seek justice from Tik Tok for harvesting that information without their consent.
HUNTER:
One of the biggest problems you mentioned that there is nothing that a person can do about this, but that kind of is the same for the government. The Internet is the the newest frontier. It’s the newest frontier in warfare. It’s the newest frontier in economics. It’s the newest frontier, really, of law because our policy frameworks are not moving fast enough to catch up to the developments in tech. Hmm. And so you have a situation where –what do you do about a situation like Tik Tok?
RYAN: Consider banning it. That’s what you think that’s like as far as the government has gone in terms of letting us know what they’re thinking about Tik Tok. That’s just ban it or not.
RAMYA:
They haven’t actually banned it yet, have they?
RYAN:
No.
HUNTER:
No, it’s just something that they’re considering doing.
RAMYA:
Yeah. I mean, this might just set off, um, you know, the domino effect. India bans it. Trump’s like. All right. That makes sense. We should do that, too. And who knows? I mean, who really knows how, um, how much Tik Tok is going to reflect how everyone feels about the CCP in China?
HUNTER:
That’s actually a really good point. And not brings it, I think, back to geopolitics, right. Where the decision to ban Tik Tok is less about, I think, concrete national security threats and more about how we as individuals and we as a government feel about China. Because I think part of the reason we’re looking to ban tick talk is because we’re deeply uncomfortable with China right now. We view them as a rival. The at least the Trump administration views them as responsible for the pandemic. And it is creating the kind of distrust where if this were a Swiss app, for example, I don’t think we’d care. We care because it’s Chinese.
RAMYA:
Oh, absolutely, we wouldn’t care.
RYAN:
We barely care when it’s American apps and they’re telling us that they’re harvesting our data. Andrew Yang ran his like — almost his entire campaign on universal basic income and getting our data back from these tech companies.
RAMYA:
I mean, are we are we, um, far past protecting our data or is this the first step in protecting our data?
HUNTER:
I think that the issue of data sovereignty and expanding the right to privacy to include personal data is going to be the next big debate in personal rights in the United States.
RAMYA:
For sure, I mean, and it’s not just individuals, right? It’s entire corporations that are worried about this kind of stuff.
HUNTER:
Oh, absolutely.
RAMYA:
Yeah. It’s like I mean, let’s be real. Like, it’s always the most powerful that end up choosing which way policy goes. And the most powerful are are corporations. We live in a capitalist country and corporations are terrified of data, just, you know, being out there. And if China continues or if there is any evidence that China is gathering data or is making headway with with basically, you know, cyber, any kind of –.
RYAN:
Cyber, A.I., all this will help them try to leapfrog the United States in that really hotly contested field, because like we’ve been saying, it’s the future. It’s going to be a part of everything humans do. And our personal data is inextricably wrapped up with that.
HUNTER:
So to tie this all together. Ryan, why are we talking about this?
RYAN:
The one thing that we want everyone to take away from this episode isn’t to delete Tik-Tok. It’s that just have an understanding of how geopolitics affects our daily lives. We we always talk about these kind of grand events, border skirmishes, fights over resources in faraway places. But it really strikes home more often than not in little ways like this. Your favorite app could get banned by your country.
HUNTER:
Yeah, I think it really drives home the idea that geopolitics and all of these academic and political rivalries that take place in closed doors in Washington, D.C., they have an effect on the real world, and the real world has an effect on it. It’s because we’re all so obsessed with this Tik Tok app that the government feels compelled to view it as a national security issue and to bring it into this whole China U.S. rivalry. It’s because of large scale boycott in India of Chinese goods and Chinese services that the Indian government felt that it needed to ban all those Chinese apps. So it’s the little things. You’re right. It all of these things are very interconnected on a global scale.
RYAN:
Yeah, I. I totally agree. I know that we said you should only remember one thing from this episode, but you should remember too that all these grand. High strategic goals that countries have their interconnected with our daily lives and where they interact are these little things, it’s not generally going to be a giant war. It’s going to be your country considering banning your favorite app because it’s from a rival country.
HUNTER:
That’s it for our episode today. If you’d like to please write and subscribe on I tunes, Spotify or Harvey, you’re listening. We’d love to get your feedback on this format for the show. It’s something a little bit experimental that we’re doing. We’re testing out some new equipment. We didn’t fully script this one. We’re just kind of going off the cuff. So if you liked content like this, let us know and we’ll do more.
Stay tuned next week for our examination of Australia and how it fits into competition in the Indo-Pacific. We’re going to have a friend of ours from the Red Line podcast, Michael Hillard, on the show for our first interview. So we’re excited for that. Otherwise, thank you for listening. This has been Geopolitics… Rundown.