What are the objectives of the TikTok ban?

Question

Google collects temporal + location information of Android handsets by default and is only a subpoena away from US authorities. The current administration is concerned that China would be able to use TikTok to track its users in a manner similar to Google. It is my understanding that just about every app has the ability to track users, who are ready to agree to the terms of service. It's unclear to me how any country tracking TikTok users is a national security issue.

Is there any line of reasoning that enables one to sort out if the subject matter is a genuine national security issue or political posturing?

Answer 1

TikTok doesn't take just your location data, it also takes your clipboard. Everything you copy/paste while TikTok is open, even if it's only open in the background, is sent to their servers. So passwords, banking info, bitcoin addresses, anything at all that you might copy. This is not normal. This is why it is a national security risk.

---

_{Caleb Chen, TikTok seems to be copying and pasting your clipboard with every keystroke, June 25, 2020.}

Answer 2

An article in Wired took a look at this a few weeks ago. By and large, the experts agree with your assessment that TikTok in particular poses no special security risk and that a ban is not justified. Here's a key paragraph from the Wired piece.

TikTok’s fiercest opponents argue that it should be viewed as a dangerous Trojan horse for Chinese Communist Party espionage. On the other side are those who frame that criticism as merely thinly-veiled xenophobia, a result of rising racism toward Chinese people and deteriorating relations between the US and Beijing. In between are plenty of people who aren’t quite sure what to believe. So far, like with Russian anti-virus firm Kaspersky a few years before, US officials have provided little evidence for their claims about TikTok aside from pointing to its country of origin. Absent hard proof, what’s left are more extrapolated dangers, like whether the Chinese government, which the US says was responsible for a notorious series of breaches at American institutions, would pilfer user data from TikTok, or censor content on the platform the way it tightly controls the internet within its own borders.

Here's a more recent piece from The Atlantic, which goes a little more in-depth and provides some helpful context:

In certain respects, TikTok is more of a headache for Washington than any other Chinese company is—even one routinely in the political crosshairs, Huawei. The national-security case against Huawei is much more direct. The firm supplies what is known as critical infrastructure, the nuts and bolts of wireless systems. Any government would, and should, be wary that such vital communications networks could be vulnerable to potential foreign adversaries. But the equipment Huawei makes can readily be supplied by other companies from friendlier nations, such as Sweden’s Ericsson, and its gear can simply be torn out and replaced, as Britain is seeking to do.

TikTok presents a very different conundrum. For one, the app is already on millions of American smartphones. Washington’s concerns about data security in regards to China have been heightened by two recent hacks: of the credit-reporting firm Equifax in 2017, and of the federal government’s Office of Personnel Management in 2015. In both cases, security experts blame Beijing. The assumption is that Chinese authorities are compiling dossiers on U.S. citizens for unknown, but probably compromising, purposes. TikTok could be a handy device for stuffing the files with juicy new details. Even more, TikTok is in the business of content. It can just as readily act as a conduit for spreading information as collecting it—and therefore could be a propaganda tool for the Chinese state.

But that’s all in theory. There doesn’t seem to be any indisputable evidence that TikTok has shared private data on Americans with China. The platform says it stores its data on Americans in the U.S. and Singapore, and is thus out of the Chinese government’s reach. A lawsuit filed in California last year alleges that TikTok lifted private data and shipped them off to servers in China, though what proof the plaintiff has is unclear. (TikTok wouldn’t comment on an ongoing legal case.) When I pressed Hawley’s office on whether it had any hard evidence against ByteDance or TikTok, its case was based mainly on conjecture: The law in China requires that Chinese companies hand data over to the government, the senator stressed in a comment sent to me. From there, they reach the conclusion that TikTok is, at the very least, a potential threat.

Answer 3

I cannot offer objectives, because they are not publicly known. What I can list are benefits - possible motivations.

• Serve as a distraction. The current administration has a history of using news to distract from (even) less favorable news.
• Contribute to a greater strategy of vilifying China as an enemy to rally against.
• Demonstrate strength and leadership by taking action against the bad guys.
• Manipulate the market value of a company in return for favors.
• Reduce the Chinese government's current or future access to an intelligence gathering tool.

Answer 4

I can't speak for the motives of the administration, but the idea that TikTok is a national security risk is plausible.

From location data alone, one can infer your political interests (do you go to the gun range? Are you attending BLM protests?), your religious affiliation (do you go to houses of worship?), and your hobbies/interests, and that alone (far from a complete list) is a massive opportunity for a range of abuses - including targeted election interference, through legal channels, where a foreign actor (e.g. China) is able to show personalized ads (or other forms of targeted propaganda) directly to the people most vulnerable to being swayed in any direction.

This is particularly dangerous if the organization is based in China, as it may be subject much more directly to the whims of the CCP (fewer protections against government interference/overreach, like requesting direct access to real time data).

So while I am also opposed to US tech giants (and smaller companies as well) siphoning up this data, I am more opposed to a Chinese app siphoning up US data when the CCP has already demonstrated a propensity for meddling in US politics (with i.e. bot/troll farms).

With basic data analysis techniques (even without modern Machine Learning), this data invaluable to anyone interested in testing/swaying public opinion. Furthermore it is never truly anonymous and even if it were, in aggregate it still represents an enormous accumulation of soft power.

Answer 5

The objectives are very clear: lowering price for buying it. Just watch the dynamics:

1. Trump declares ban on TikTok
2. Microsoft "continue discussing" buying US part of TikTok.

In some countries such chain of actions (threating, and then "offering a deal you cannot decline") can be called "raiding".

It surely can be understand:

What is good for the country is good for General Motors—and vice versa

But it definitely isn't an example of "unssen hand of the market".

PS

Also, as some additional motivation, look at the fact, that US tend to be a monopolist and trand-setter in pop-culture (applicable all over the world) for at least last 70 years.

And TikTok is the first fundamentally non-western mass-culture application for young auditory (70% of its users are less than 30 y.o.).

Maybe that culture-monopoly-break can be additional motivation for striking TikTok in such rude way.

Answer 6

There are multiple objectives, some have already been elaborated in other answers:

1. TikTok does pose some challenges to U.S. national security, through the collection of user data.
2. At the moment, strong action against China is likely to increase President Trump's chance of winning the 2020 election.
3. I believe this is the most important point: China has extreme restrictions on foreign involvement in their country. That includes investment in sensitive industries, blocks on foreign websites, capital controls, and many other areas. When China first joined the WTO in 2001, it was understood that although initially the economy would remain somewhat closed, over time it would open up. This has happened slower than many in the West would have hoped. At the same time, China has made great strides in acquiring overseas assets and influence, particularly since it adopted the One Belt One Road strategy in 2013. Taken individually, none of these policies give China an huge advantage, but collectively they now add up to a considerable asymmetry in power. The telecommunications industry particularly important, since it can be used for both soft and hard power. Imagine, for example that it was not TikTok, but Facebook that was controlled by China. That would allow them to filter news to more than half of American adults. Given that foreign ownership of Chinese media is practically zero, this would be a huge propaganda asset. It may not be used that way initially - they may wait for a specific event, such as a military conflict, or a trade war before leveraging their influence. We have already seen TikTok impose bans on politically sensitive posts, even if they were later revoked. There is even evidence that users have already began to alter their content to appear pro-China, in the hope that it will increase their search rankings.

Without wanting to sound trite: the battles of the future will be fought in cyberspace, and will be for hearts and minds, rather than territory. China has been acutely aware of this for years, and the West is starting to pay more attention, currently following President Trump's lead, but these same issues have been recognized at least at a conceptual level by the Obama administration and many other nations.