
When faced with a choice between national security and a brain-rotting, never-ending scroll of entertainment that keeps us glued to our phones and thoroughly divorced from our real lives, Americans are clear: we want the brain rot, even if it means the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is able to use an app to track our movements, read our messages and mine our contacts. More ominously, our newly-installed president Donald Trump is clear, too, that any claims he has made to caring about American security in the face of powerful privacy-invading adversaries are spurious – or at least easily assuaged by his own interests in influence, money, and power.
The last few weeks have been a real rollercoaster for American TikTok users. After Congress passed a law in April 2024 with bipartisan support banning TikTok in the US because of the serious national security risks posed by the app’s Chinese ownership, TikTok sued, and the case this month went to the Supreme Court, which heard arguments pitching safety interests against free speech concerns. On 17 January the court upheld the ban, ruling that the app’s parent company, ByteDance, would have to sell to a non-Chinese company in order to prevent any TikTok content being blocked in the US. Days later, American TikTok went offline, at least for a while, with a message telling users that the app was banned, but that the company is “fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office”. The message was clear, although perhaps not exactly heartening to sceptics: this is a company clearly well-versed in pleasing and appeasing authoritarian leaders.
It seems to have worked. “I’m asking companies not to let TikTok stay dark!” Trump wrote on Truth Social, the social media platform he owns, on 19 January. Later that night, the day before Trump’s inauguration, TikTok was back online in the US. Despite pushing for a TikTok ban during his first administration, Trump said he would give the company a 90-day extension, during which his administration would work with the company and the Chinese government to find an acceptable solution.
Tech platforms such as Apple and Amazon, it seems, were confident enough that the penalties for enabling TikTok that Congress wrote into law and that the Supreme Court upheld – including fines that could run into the billions – simply wouldn’t be enforced once Trump was in office. It’s likely their confidence isn’t misplaced: corruption, nepotism and self-dealing have been Trump’s modus operandi for much of his career, and he has made clear that he will dole out favours to those who sufficiently flatter and support him. It’s quite notable, then, that a procession of tech leaders has made their way to Trump’s club at Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring, and that TikTok’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, joined tech billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos at Trump’s inauguration. That same day, Trump signed an executive order granting TikTok an extension.
The whole spectacle is depressing from top to bottom. It should make us all worry that Americans now have a profoundly self-interested president with no fealty to democracy or national security as concepts, an endless appetite for power and an unseemly susceptibility to flattery – and who as a result seems willing to sell the nation out to the highest bidder. The Chinese government is an awfully high bidder.
I enjoy TikTok videos as much as any too-online elder millennial who watches them when they’re inevitably reposted to Instagram. But “I like the videos” is about as good an argument for keeping TikTok available as “but the chips taste good” is for keeping lead paint on the market. ByteDance is a Chinese-owned and China-based company, and as such, the Chinese government has full access to the reams of information it gathers from users, including some 170 million in the US. There’s no question that TikTok is under the control of the CCP; that’s why the app cannot be sold without the Party giving its ok.
This might not seem like a big deal if you’re a 17-year-old in Wisconsin posting dance videos with your friends or if your livelihood has come to depend on, say, making loads of money telling other women to quit their jobs and become tradwives. For many others, TikTok has been an invaluable tool to share information about everything from skincare to politics to the devastation in Gaza – even if the app, unregulated as it is, is also a major purveyor of misinformation and spreader of extremism.
The problem, though, is not just that the Chinese government could use the app’s powerful algorithm to shape what users see and by extension what they believe to be true, although that is certainly one of the issues at stake. There’s also the matter of the corporate leaders, diplomats, politicians, and government employees, or their families, who may be inadvertently compromising themselves on the app – sending messages they believe to be private, engaging with the algorithm that gives away particular preferences, compiling contact lists that create a web of potential exploitation – and putting that information in the hands of a powerful, hostile foreign government. All of that makes the US vulnerable: to state department employees being extorted; to corporate executives being bribed; to intelligence agents being compromised. US telecoms companies have already been compromised by Chinese espionage efforts, with spies attempting to listen to phone conversations and read the text messages of important political figures, potentially including Trump and his vice President, JD Vance. There is no question, even from the more honest of TikTok’s proponents, that the Chinese government has a clear interest in its unfettered access to the information the app gathers.
Trump, who initially floated a TikTok ban during his first term in office, has also set up a looming legal crisis with his decision to push the ban back. The ban was passed by Congress, signed into law by a sitting president, and upheld by the Supreme Court. The law does allow for a 90-day extension but with strict requirements. To have an incoming president purport to change the law before he’s even in office is a stunning move; that Trump believes he can single-handedly override the law is an early power-grab from a notoriously power-hungry president. One also has to wonder what’s behind Trump’s change of heart, and we should probably look at the tech giants with whom he has surrounded himself. Elon Musk, for example, has reportedly been one name Chinese officials have suggested for a potential TikTok owner. For all of his bluster about freedom and free speech, Musk has had virtually nothing even moderately critical to say about China, where freedom of speech, assembly, and religious practice are severely curtailed– and there is an enormous market for his cars.
The questions now are: how does Congress respond? Do hawkish Republican legislators who understand the real threat TikTok poses put national security above their fealty to Trump, or does Trumpism win even over the national defence? Do Democrats, who have historically been less aggressive on national security issues, take seriously both the TikTok threat and the president’s power-grab? Will Trump flouting this law be a precursor to further overreach? And perhaps most importantly, can an algorithm-addicted American public actually behave in its own self-interest and log off?
[See more: Elon Musk’s hostile takeover]
This article appears in the 22 Jan 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Messiah Complex