TikTok is a Trojan Horse living inside our country

Tik tok's parent company bite dance is Chinese run now this matters because Tik tok's not just for fashion trends or kind of cool workout tips that's just the catnip to draw you in China wants Tik Tok to be America's number one site for news opinion and yes cultural change and if they said we want you to put out videos that make Americans fight with each other or spread conspiracy theories and get them at each other's throat bite dance doesn't have can't go to Chinese court and fight the Communist party they would have to do it that's my understanding and I would just add that that kind of influence operation or the different kinds of influence operations you're describing are extraordinarily difficult to detect which is part of what makes the National Security concerns represented by uh by tiktock so significant Senator good to see you tonight influence operations data collection even geol location efforts algorithms that suppress certain views and inflate others How can any American and any position of power not move immediately to force this 100% sale of the company Tik Tock from the Communist Chinese how's there any want against us because Tik tok's popular people like it and the reason why they like it what makes Tik Tok so good is that it has this artificial intelligence that knows you better than you know yourself it's literally reading your mind the more you use it the more it knows about you the problem is not that Tik Tok has that the problem is that bite dance and their engineers in China are the ones that own that artificial intelligence and no matter where you put my data or anybody I don't use Tik Tok but people that use Tik Tok no matter where you store that data you could store it in a safe in the United States those engineers in China have to have access to the data but they control the brain of Tik Tok they control that artificial intelligence the point I made today and the FBI director agreed is if the Chinese Communist party goes to them and says we want you to defeat Donald Trump we want you to put out messages that are anti-trump and pro Biden bite dance has to do it it doesn't matter that they're a company in China by Chinese law they have to do it if they say we want the data of all your users that live in Florida they have to give it to them they don't have a choice but to do it that is Chinese law and so as long as bite dance owns the artificial intelligence that powers Tik Tok we got a we got a trojan horse living inside our country now Senator your colleague ran Paul weighed in on the Tik Tock debate writing on X over the weekend that if Congress bans Tik Tock they will be acting just like the Chinese Communist who have also banned Tik Tock why not just defend the First Amendment that's an easy one your response well there's no First Amendment issue here we are not going after we're not going after Tik Tok because of what the videos say it's because of the company's conduct the conduct of their parent company their parent company is under the complete control period of a foreign government that's hostile to the the United States and the day they decide to weaponize that against us to convince soldiers not to go fight to convince their families that it's not worth going to fight to get involved in our elections uh to to spread things that make us fight against each other and further divide this country or keep us distracted or to convince American teenagers to kill themselves because the world's about to end they have to do it if the Chinese tell them to do it they have to do it it's the conduct not the content that we're talking about if Tik Tok was just a website where people could give their opinions it's the control by the Communist Party it's that conduct that we're going after well but it's it's our adversary our our most powerful adversary and we're just giving them all this information because they got some well healed lobbyists on Capitol Hill and I know money yeah and I know um there are reports that President Trump recently met with this hedge fund manager named Jeff yass he's a major league investor in Tik Tock and Trump has reportedly which shocked me since reverse versed his position on Banning the app and his former adviser and friend of this program kellyanne Conway is also apparently working to Lobby people on Capitol Hill for Tik Tock it it pains me to talk about this because I mean I like them both very much yeah here well I haven't talked to the president about it what I read is that he said that it's valid that Facebook will now become more powerful that all these other but that's a separate problem and we should confront that problem too I don't like the fact that Facebook and Google and all these people have all that power we should confront that problem too but the answer to that problem is not to have a Chinese Communist party controlled company in the marketplace those are two separate problems and I think we need to deal with both of them I I um like I said I'm this is not for me and listen all if Tik Tok decides we're no longer going to associate with bite dance we're going to find another company not controlled by the Chinese Communist Party they're going to provide us the algorithm and the from now on problem solved the problem is they won't do that they can't do that or they don't want to do that because bik Dan is the company and they're in China why would they give up aund something a a million Americans whose phones they are in why would they voluntarily give that up