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6 August 2024

Chinese communist, military writings reveal plans for strategic influence operations through TikTok

Bill Gertz

The Chinese Communist Party and China’s military view TikTok as one of several strategic tools for both political-influence operations and military-support actions, according to an open-source intelligence report on the short-video sharing app.

The report by two former military and intelligence experts warns that continued use of the wildly popular video-sharing app in the United States will be used by Beijing to target young people and “shift American narratives subtly to favor a more China-centric worldview.”

The report made public recently examines a law signed by President Biden in April to force TikTok’s China-based owner, ByteDance, to sell the American operation to a non-Chinese government-linked owner or be banned nationally. A month later, ByteDance sued to oppose the law, saying it violates the First Amendment.

The Justice Department contended in a legal filing last last month that TikTok collects sensitive data on American users’ views of religion, abortion and gun control, and censors online material at the direction of ByteDance. The company’s American management has denied the charge.

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