Top Points:
China's Strategic Use of TikTok: The report by Ryan Clarke and L.J. Eads reveals that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) plans to use TikTok to influence young Americans by promoting communist ideology through short videos and other methods. This aligns with findings from the Justice Department, which accused TikTok of gathering extensive user data on divisive social issues.
National Security Concerns: TikTok employees reportedly use an internal system called Lark to communicate with ByteDance engineers in China, enabling the transfer of sensitive data about U.S. users to Chinese servers. This raises significant national security concerns, given TikTok's extensive user base of approximately 170 million Americans.
Three Warfares Strategy: The Clarke-Eads report highlights TikTok's role in supporting the Chinese military's "three warfares" strategy: public opinion warfare, psychological warfare, and legal warfare (lawfare). This strategy aims to manipulate public opinion and influence global discourse, particularly targeting Americans born in the 1990s.
Full Report:
A recent report by two former military and intelligence experts highlights China's plans to use TikTok to promote communist ideology among young Americans, targeting them through the popular social media platform.
The open-source research report titled "TikTok Operations in the United States: Unveiling Strategic Moves, Scientific Insights, and What Lies Ahead" explores the urgent need for TikTok's Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell its American operations to a non-Chinese government-linked entity or face a national ban. The Washington Times covered this story extensively.
This critical report, produced by the China BioThreats Initiative think tank, was authored by Ryan Clarke, a strategic intelligence analyst, and L.J. Eads, a former Air Force intelligence officer. The report uncovers the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) strategic use of TikTok's short videos and other methods to influence young Americans on political and military-support issues.
"The recent findings by the Justice Department align with our research, which reveals that the CCP strategically targets Americans, including college students, to push its ideological and political narratives," Eads told The Washington Times. "The CCP's efforts to leverage platforms like TikTok to gather sensitive data and manipulate content reflect its broader goal of using discourse power to influence global public opinion."
Just last week, the Justice Department accused TikTok of exploiting its platform to gather extensive user data on divisive social issues like gun control, abortion, and religion. Government lawyers detailed in federal appeals court documents in Washington how TikTok and ByteDance use an internal system called Lark, allowing TikTok employees to communicate directly with ByteDance engineers in China. Sensitive data about U.S. users, sent through Lark, is stored on Chinese servers and accessible to ByteDance employees in China.
The report also references a 2022 study by Hu Liang-quan of Hunan University's Propaganda and Traditional Warfare Department, which indicates TikTok's potential to expand ideological education to Americans born in the 1990s, a critical target demographic. A 2023 report from the School of Marxism at Hefei University of Technology suggested that promoting China's cultural and ideological narratives globally will enhance its power.
The Clarke-Eads report highlights how TikTok supports a crucial element of the Chinese military's strategy of "three warfares": public opinion warfare, psychological warfare, and legal warfare, also known as "lawfare." "The overlap between the Three Warfares doctrine and TikTok's observed operations and techniques in the United States is perhaps the most noteworthy of all," the report said, as reported by The Washington Times.
With approximately 170 million users in the U.S., TikTok's influence is vast, and the findings of this report raise significant concerns about national security and the ideological impact on young Americans.
Original Story by Charlie McCarthy, Newsmax
.png)