FBI director says TikTok poses a threat to national security
Christopher Wray warned that the app is vulnerable to control by the Chinese government, "which allows them to manipulate content, and if they want to, to use it for influence operations."
FBI Director Christopher Wray warned of the problem TikTok presents to national security. The platform, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, has been under fire for two years now, when then-President Donald Trump began to show concern and threatened to ban the social network nationwide.
Wray made these comments Friday during a talk at the University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. There he claimed in statements picked up by Fox News that the FBI was aware of Chinese officials’ power to control various TikTok algorithms "which allows them to manipulate content, and if they want to, to use it for influence operations."
The fact that the Chinese government has access to Americans’ data is what worries the FBI director most. During his speech, he also asserted that the Chinese social network collects user information that can be used for espionage:
China is the most serious threat to the country
Wray continued his lecture by talking about the Chinese government, which he considered one of the greatest dangers that the country has to face: "There is no country, no government, that represents a more serious, more persistent threat to our innovation, our ideas and our economic security than the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government," he assured during a Q&A session.
Wray has been warning for some time about TikTok’s danger to national security. One of the last times was during his appearance before Congress just a month ago:
TikTok’s negotiations with the United States
Wray also recently claimed that the Chinese company would be in talks with U.S. officials with the intention of reaching an agreement that would put an end to these national security concerns.
He confirmed that these negotiations are ongoing and will affect all U.S. government agencies. Brooke Oberwetter, a spokeswoman for the platform, also assured in an emailed statement that the social media giant is in conversation with the federal administration:
On the other hand, TikTok's Chief Operating Officer Vanessa Pappas sought to reassure that U.S. users' data was fully protected: "We will never share data, period."