Mike Turner: TikTok Poses Security Treat With China in Charge

(Photo by STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)

As an adversary of the United States, China must not be allowed to maintain control over TikTok through its parent company, ByteDance, as that poses a national security threat, Rep. Mike Turner said Sunday.

“China, as a country, is not like us,” the Ohio Republican said on ABC News’ “This Week.” “It’s an authoritarian regime that has self-identified as an adversary to the United States. It has banned Twitter. It has banned Facebook. It has banned YouTube in China. It understands the power of social media and social media apps.”

China is also seeking several illegal ways to obtain Americans’ data “as part of its perpetration of this greater surveillance society that it uses to control its own population,” Turner said.

“When President Xi [Jinping] stood next to President [Vladimir] Putin in Russia, he openly stated to the world what his intentions were,” he added. “He said that we, the two of them, are going to bring about change that hasn’t happened in 100 years.”

That change, said Turner, is the “battle between authoritarianism and democracy, and that’s what we’re seeing … its economic, its propaganda, and certainly its military buildup that is part of its self-declaration as an adversary of the United States.”

Last week, the House passed a bill requiring that TikTok and other social media sites operate under parent companies that are not tied to adversarial governments. TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is said to be closely tied to the Chinese Communist Party.

“There are great concerns about individual privacy and issues of data between TikTok and the Communist Chinese Party, but what you have even more importantly here is that this is a propaganda tool,” Turner said. “These algorithms, and this influencing through social apps being in the hands of a self-declared adversary of the United States, one that has banned Twitter, banned Facebook, and banned YouTube, and they understand the use of these tools to be able to manipulate a society. That’s one of the greatest concerns that we have.”

Meanwhile, TikTok supports an estimated quarter-million jobs in the United States, but Turner said he does not think those people will lose their livelihood if the app is banned.

“They have obviously undertaken a livelihood which is communicating to people,” he said. “This is not a ban on TikTok, as you know. This is a piece of legislation that requires that the Chinese ownership of TikTok be divested, so that we would sever that relationship between Chinese ownership, the Chinese government, and the Chinese Communist Party that is of such troubling concern.”