By Kaviesh Kinger
(Editor's note: this piece was selected for inclusion in our annual anthology for 2023-2024, entitled Conflict and Contradiction)
The American Dream is not only an individual, but a collective force. Built on American values of individuality, freedom and success, America assumes a rise to international hegemony by promoting its values as the world’s protector. Essential to achieving this vision is its subjugation of counter-values by framing them as threats to this prophecy. The Red Scare during the Cold War is a prime example, with American contempt for the Soviet enemy’s way of life. The American identity was fueled and framed by its opposition to the Soviet identity, with subsequent decisions such as testing government employee loyalty and scrutinising film productions all attempting to protect America against these values. The recent national fervour against Tik Tok in America can be understood in a similar light: as a digital Red Scare far less concerned with privacy, and more with identity.
On the 23rd of March 2023, the CEO of TikTok was welcomed into a hostile questioning of the app and its relationship to the Chinese Communist Party. TikTok is currently a bipartisan hot topic on the legislative agenda, attracting support across party lines. This interest comes after the spotting of a Chinese space balloon in the US. The supposed apprehension about China from what was assumed to be a spy operation led to Blinken postponing his plans to visit Beijing. China and the U.S have had a diplomatically strained relationship in the past, but, these recent suspicions have arguably helped flare up an American legislative conundrum over other possible methods of surveillance. Marco Rubio, a Republican American senator has thus introduced bipartisan legislation to ban TikTok from operating in the US with the Anti-Social CCP Act.
This act is not made in isolation and comes about in a wider focus Americans have been placing on TikTok. ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company has come under fire for its employees tracking physical movements of reporters. ByteDance did agree to cooperate with any official investigations, as well as having an ongoing internal investigation of their own. Those involved have been fired or resigned, but the suspicion over TikTok as a result remains prevalent in discussions of national security in America. The Biden administration has threatened a ban on TikTok unless its Chinese parent company ByteDance divest their stakes in TikTok and sell their shares in it.. Allowing the U.S to freely own ByteDance shares means increasing accessibility to Chinese media firms. As a result, the U.S can gain greater control over these firms that are currently competing against previously uncontested American social media companies. While it could be that these economic means are a way of resolving security threats, it could equally be that these security threats serve as a camouflage for U.S economic interests.
Therefore, central to America’s discussion of Tik Tok is a paintbrush, used to dramatically cast this app away by colouring it red. The elements of this American effort can be better understood in conjunction with the deployment of American identity. Republican Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers has described her distrust of TikTok because it does not ‘embrace American values.’ Building on this, Republican Representative Mike Gallagher has compared allowing TikTok to continue operating in the U.S as equivalent to letting the U.S.S.R buy up major American journalist outlets such as the Washington Post during the Cold War. Clearly, the rhetoric of this issue of digital privacy is one that has a glaring red haze, nostalgic of Cold War hostilities. The success and popularity of TikTok serves as the perfect opportunity to create moral panic, and drive support behind an issue that seems to be related to reinstating an American hegemony.
Political fear mongering is how the recent hearing was described by Democratic Representative Jamaal Bowman, opposing the efforts to ban Tik Tok. To him, these conversations are focused on ‘speculation and innuendo’ rather than actual concrete evidence. Indeed, Democratic Senator Michael Bennet says his concerns about TikTok are because it is ‘subject to dictates from the Chinese Communist Party’. His anxiety seems to ignore that TikTok cannot be downloaded in China, with all American user data being stored only in Virginia and Singapore, a claim TikTok has made. Furthermore, TikTok and Shou Zi Chew have reiterated their plans to protect American data, especially with Project Texas. This plan would relocate all American user data to domestic servers and allow a third-party tech firm, Oracle, to scrutinise and monitor TikTok. Despite a lack of concrete proof to substantiate national security concerns, Mitt Romney, a Republican senator, has compared the aforementioned controversial air balloon to ‘Chinese TikTok balloons on our phones.’
Another element of this fear mongering is related to the threat TikTok supposedly presents to children. In Chew’s questioning, Republican Congressman Gus Bilirakis cited the suicide of a 16-year-old boy who had been shown self-harm content on his social media and blamed TikTok for this. Other lawmakers have described content promoting drugs and their sale on the app. Related to this, Congresswoman Democratic Kim Schier describes a generation that needs saving, presumably through the banning of TikTok. Similarly, in a press release Representative Gallagher describes TikTok as ‘digital Fentanyl that’s addicting Americans.’ Framing issues of national security and privacy with the stories of vulnerable children helps lawmakers expand their data privacy concerns into a generational threat to the future of a nation’s youth.
There is no doubt that social media has terrible consequences for youth. Some online forums have led to harmful practices such as bone smashing, hate crimes and glorifying eating disorders.The misunderstanding however lies in projecting this blame merely to TikTok, with other social media apps being equally able to display dangerous content to teenagers. After all, social media feeds are based on concepts of algorithms which can negatively influence people on a variety of apps seen in a study of TikTok, Instagram and Youtube. Hence, banning TikTok does not serve as a solution to these issues of social media, but merely as a smokescreen for American soft power. This clear misunderstanding of social media use raises the question of whether those interrogating TikTok have the understanding necessary to be properly questioning and legislating against this issue. Discussions of pupil dilation conspiracy theories and misconceptions of Wi-Fi networks would suggest that they do not, and that this hearing lacked any proper productive potential due to this. Hence, banning TikTok does not serve as a solution to these issues of social media, but merely as a smokescreen for American soft power.
American lawmakers have thus relied upon Chinese scepticism to not only develop their project against TikTok, but fuel support behind it. An earlier article from 2019 by the New York Times describes Washington ‘reaching back into the Cold War toolbox to confront the threat (of China).’ This description is all the more relevant in today’s context, where the popularity of this app, competing with Meta, has left America possibly dumbfounded at why its technology is not reigning supreme. In resorting to such rhetoric which has been seen recently America positions itself in contrast to the surveillance Communist state that is threatening its security. By doing so, it champions the unlimited freedoms of Americanism. The ‘Red’ dynamics of this make it all the more successful in driving support. This issue has drawn bipartisan support, with 56% of Americans viewing TikTok as a Chinese national security threat. Indeed both Former-President Trump and President Biden have made attempts to ban TikTok. This can serve as a reminder that internationally America remains aggressively interested in projecting its identity, no matter how divided it remains domestically.
TikTok is thus, as Forbes describes ‘the punching bag of the day’. It is without a doubt beyond the scope of this article to ascertain whether TikTok does serve a legitimate threat to the national security of America. However, it is evident that the investigative efforts against TikTok remain far less concerned with digital privacy, protection and surveillance. Instead, they are more concerned with China, and whether TikTok is its Trojan horse intended to topple the American state. If the American concern was genuinely related to social media, then American-owned social media businesses would have also come under scrutiny of an outright ban, but have instead only been subject to calls to regulate and address their conduct. U.S mobile apps also collect sensitive data such as geolocation and device identifiers, but America’s concern strays far from this, focusing more on this ‘economic protectionism’ while ignoring its ‘underregulated U.S counterparts’ that take part in the same practices. Indeed there has been speculation that this push to ban TikTok has a commercial element to prevent a further breakdown of U.S digital monopolies such as Alphabet and Meta. This supposed hypocrisy only extends one step further when you consider that the US denounced Nigeria for banning Twitter, and Russia for its bans on technology platforms and services. This presents the paradox of American freedom, only supporting unlimited liberty if it can be derived from an American source.
In opposition to the legislative proposal to ban TikTok, there have been calls for more comprehensive user security with a consumer privacy bill. U.S data privacy laws have been accused as being old-fashioned and lack adequate restrictions. A legislature actively concerned with data privacy would instead engage in efforts to regulate all social media platforms, not just the popular Chinese ones. Representative Bowman calls for wider regulation of big-tech monopolies, allowing the people to actively make decisions on their data. However, this arguably progressive and people-centred digital policy seems to stray far from what’s on the American agenda. Instead, America’s agenda is concerned with questioning the digital threats that TikTok presents to her interests. Both the answer to these doubts about TikTok and its validity remain uncertain, but what stands clear is the red paintbrush that has been used to construct them.
Author Name: Kaviesh Kinger
Bio: Kaviesh is an undergraduate Politics and International Relations student at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His passion for writing and journalism comes from his passion in creating impact and awareness about issues in the past with non-profits and international student committees. His passion extends to his ambition to pursue a career in policy.
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