US President Donald Trump downplayed the national security risk posed by TikTok in an interview with Fox News on Jan 22, days after offering the social video app a reprieve from legislation that would have forced it to shut down.
“Is it that important for China to be spying on young people, on young kids, watching crazy videos?” Trump said.
Trump suggested all electronic products manufactured in China could carry a spying risk, adding that TikTok’s was not the most serious of them.
“They make telephones and they make your computer a lot of other things,” Trump said. “Isn’t that a bigger threat?”
During Trump’s first term, he signed an executive order demanding that China’s ByteDance Ltd divest from US operations of TikTok because of national security concerns. That executive action was ultimately blocked by federal courts, but a bipartisan group of lawmakers codified it into law in 2024.
TikTok has denied that it spies on its users or that it turns over user data to authorities in Beijing. When asked for a comment on the latest developments around the company in the US, the Ministry of Commerce in Beijing said it “opposes practices that violate the basic market principles and jeopardise the legitimate interests of enterprises”.
“We hope the US side will listen more to the voices of companies and the public, provide a fair and just business environment for the development of companies from all countries, including Chinese companies, and do more to benefit trade ties between China and US and the well-being of the people of the two countries,” the ministry’s spokesman, He Yadong, said on Jan 23.
Officials in former President Joe Biden’s administration said that the app collects names, addresses, credit card and purchase information, device and network information, location and GPS location data, biometric identifiers, keystroke patterns, and behavioral data and could be forced to turn that information over at any time.
Digital world
Trump’s comments revive a debate over what data is considered a national security risk in a world where nearly everything is transmitting digital information, from refrigerators to drones to electric vehicles.
During his first term, the Trump administration pressured countries to avoid equipment from Huawei Technologies Co in building 5G infrastructure while pushing “clean networks” to ensure that the Communist Party couldn’t access the data of Americans, a push that also extended to cloud services and undersea cables.
The Biden administration adopted a more pragmatic approach even as it tightened export controls on advanced chips used in AI and other applications, with former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo saying the majority of US-China trade has nothing to with national security.
In recent weeks, Trump has credited the app for improving his political standing among young voters, citing that as part of the reason he decided to give ByteDance more time to secure a sale. Under an executive order signed during his first day in office, the president delayed the ban an additional 75 days.
Earlier in the week, Trump responded to a reporter’s question about whether he had TikTok on his phone by saying that he would be open to downloading the app. The White House banned TikTok from being installed on government devices over security concerns during Biden’s presidency. – Bloomberg
