Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because the Chinese cyber threat is incredibly real. The United States should be playing hard ball. The US TikTok systems are compromised by Chinese spammers already.
If the threat of Tiktok gathering data is so real, then isn't a much better solution, to pressure Google and Apple into improving their security models? That way, nobody can spy on your phone anymore. Or do you think Tiktok is the only and last threat there will ever exist? But nobody's talking about actual solutions. All this looks more like a witch hunt to me.
I (18 years old) have used TikTok for about 2 months, before deleting it because it simply got too addictive. In that time it learned what my favourite games are, what shows I watched as a child, my political views, my eating preferences, my technology preferences. The list goes on. While I'm not sure how much of this is saved in a black box and only known by the algorithm and how much they can extract, I'd argue that this is many times more valuable for China that my personal phone.
Furthermore the power to influence the algorithm, subtle and slightly of course, may slowly change the minds of literal millions of teens.