TikTok and US National Security

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2023-03-26 15:00:11

IGP conducted the first thorough national security threat analysis of TikTok, given drives to ban the application entirely from the US market.

A bipartisan group of China hawks in Congress and a couple of government agencies have argued that TikTok is a Trojan horse for malign influence, espionage, or offensive operations by the Chinese government. However, these voices fail to explain how a single app’s ownership and control can threaten an entire nation’s security. We take these warnings at face value and provide a comprehensive threat analysis framework to consider the viability of those arguments.

Is TikTok benign, a long-term influence operation, or a convenient stooge whose rapid growth can be leveraged to weaken or destabilize the US politically or militarily? To the best of our knowledge, this work represents the first serious attempt at answering those questions while including an in-depth look at ByteDance’s financials, corporate structure, and business model.