(TheLibertyRevolution.com)- During a speech last week, FBI Director Christopher Wray admitted that the FBI is concerned that the popular video-sharing app TikTok may be a threat to national security since the Chinese government can control the app’s algorithm.
While addressing an audience at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy last Friday, Wray suggested that Beijing could use TikTok to collect data on users that could be used for traditional espionage operations.
This isn’t the first time Director Wray shared the FBI’s concerns about TikTok.
During testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee last month, Wray also expressed the FBI’s concern TikTok may present a unique threat to national security due to its links to communist China.
Wray was asked by Tennessee Republican Congresswoman Diana Harshbarger about whether the Chinese Communist regime could be using TikTok or its parent company ByteDance to spy on American citizens.
In his testimony, Wray said from the FBI’s perspective, there are national security concerns about the Chinese-owned TikTok, including the possibility that the Chinese regime could use the platform to “control data collection on millions of users or control the recommendation algorithm” to conduct its influence operations. Wray suggested that Beijing could also use TikTok to “control software on millions of devices” allowing it “to potentially technically compromise” those devices.
Wray declined to go into detail on how China could use ByteDance or TikTok to undermine national security, telling the Homeland Security Committee that this is something he would only address with them during a closed, classified setting. However, Wray added, “it is certainly something that is on our radar.”
In early November, Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Mike Gallagher (R-WI) announced new legislation to ban TikTok from operating in the United States.
Meanwhile, the governors of Maryland, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Texas have all issued orders banning the app from government-issued devices.
