The revelation this weekend that China was able to hack US wireless telecom networks undetected for months proves yet again that President-elect Donald Trump is dead wrong to try hindering the 2024 law, set to take effect Jan. 19, effectively banning social-media app TikTok unless parent ByteDance sells it to non-Chinese owners.
Trump has asked the Supreme Court to delay the law’s kick-in so he can further stop it after taking over Jan. 20, and if the justices don’t go along maybe his lawyers can figure out another way to gum up the ban.
But he’s wrong, no matter how many billions of views of Trump-themed content the app has hosted in the past — because Beijing can’t be trusted.
That telecom-hack news shows what China will do even knowing it’ll eventually be found out: It believes any US response will be a joke.
TikTok is simply a soft-power intel play in which hundreds of millions of Americans voluntarily hand over personal data to Beijing — no hacking required.
Sure, ByteDance shouts again and again that its Chinese employees can’t access US user data, but that’s already been proven untrue; workers were using that data to track journalists.
Indeed, with one of TikTok’s board seats filled by a political commissar, it’s clear all user data is there for Chinese Communist Party perusal.
ByteDance itself openly collaborates with China’s military and intelligence agencies, running an AI academy explicitly for military purposes.
Worse, this intel op runs both ways.
Beijing isn’t just harvesting data on us, it’s using a corporate cats-paw to brainwash Americans via TikTok’s insanely addictive algorithm.
Trump is literally the most famous person in the world — he doesn’t need TikTok because he can find other platforms.
Congress passed the TikTok ban with massively bipartisan agreement; it’s beyond necessary.
So for the good of the country, Trump needs to cool down the “warm spot” he feels for TikTok and side with those who see the clear and present danger the app and the government behind it present.