Is the national security concern that high-profile Americans such as members of congress, high ranking US military or executive branch officials are exchanging classified state information across Tiktok?
Or is the national security concern that the Chinese government can force TikTok to give up their data to Chinese authorities?
So China has 1.4 billion people to data mine on using a minority-report-like data warehouse mega structure in the like of which the world has never seen before, and all of those people are in their own jurisdiction. Assuming that’s the kind of infrastructure the Chinese government can build and is fully operational, why would they justify the time, cost, and energy required to fetch what meme someone’s looking at from overseas and risk damaging their already shaky reputation with their biggest trading partner? Even if there’s a conspiracy and they cared about what your phone number was or where you lived, what could they do with it? Yes clearly the most plausible theory is that they’re kidnapping Americans from their homes in broad daylight. Or perhaps covid was synthesized in a lab so next year Americans will be getting biological super weapons mailed to them. Or maybe 5G is a mind control device that’s hiding the truth from all of us, the truth that you can parse html with regex.
Anyways, we have a presidency largely based on putting pressure on China with a proven history of reactionary measures would, make a reactionary anti-china measure for the sake of supporting a partisan policy right before the November election.
There are obviously a lot of shady things we are seeing surfacing from the Chinese government that warrant further investigation, and there are diligent people are on the ground right now trying to push through the secrecy of that government. But with Tiktok, it’s a baseless conspiracy theory rooted in irrational fear that’s being used as a political tool.