TikTok doesn’t pose security threat to US, new academic study says
- The Chinese app poses no greater risk of either surveillance or influence operations than other social media platforms, according to researchers
- US lawmakers from both parties have supported efforts to ban TikTok nationwide, after multiple states imposed their own prohibitions
The analysis, released on Monday, comes as US lawmakers on both sides of the aisle appear more aligned than ever in efforts to ban TikTok – a subsidiary of Chinese company ByteDance – in the US.
According to the report, written by researchers at Georgia Tech’s Internet Governance Project: “Chinese government efforts to assert control over ByteDance’s Chinese subsidiaries are targeting its domestic (Chinese) services, not its overseas operations.”
Included in the omnibus legislation that US President Joe Biden signed into law on December 30 was a measure prohibiting federal employees from using the app on devices issued by the government. The same bill – introduced by Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri – passed in the Democratic-led Senate for the second time in mid-December.
“TikTok is a Trojan horse for the Chinese Communist Party. It’s a major security risk to the United States, and until it is forced to sever ties with China completely, it has no place on government devices,” Hawley said in December, noting that states across the country were instituting the same ban.
Twenty-one of 50 US states have at least partly blocked access to TikTok on government devices, according to news website GovTech.