TikTok, as long as it remains under parent company ByteDance, poses an “absolute national security threat” because of its connections with the Chinese Communist Party and its use to manipulate public opinion, investigative author Peter Schweizer said on Newsmax Saturday.
“It’s more than just a typical Chinese company that’s subject to the direction of the CCP,” Schweitzer, the author of the best-seller “Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans,” told Newsmax’s “Saturday Report.”
“What you have to understand is that the algorithm that TikTok uses is not only a company secret, the Chinese government has designated it a state secret.”
Meanwhile, ByteDance collaborates with Chinese national security and is engaged in joint research on artificial intelligence, said Schweitzer.
“As I point out in Blood Money, there are a lot of Chinese officials who amongst themselves talk quite openly about the value of TikTok,” he said. “A military official calls it the ultimate Trojan horse to use against the West.”
Schweitzer added that in his book, he quotes extensively from people describing how they are using TikTok to manipulate people and get them to change their views so that they are more malleable and open to new ideas.
Meanwhile, U.S.-based investors are “over a barrel” when ByteDance is concerned, as they are subject to an agreement that says if they criticize the company, they can lose all of their shares in the company.
“They cannot criticize or express any concerns about this,” he said. “That’s why I think we have to look at what they’re saying with a grain of salt.”
Meanwhile, the number of Chinese immigrants entering the United States illegally is climbing, with many of them coming in to operate marijuana plant operations to create a form of marijuana that is highly potent, said Schweitzer.
“We know for a fact that from California to Oklahoma these operations are run by Chinese,” he said. “They are financed by China and many of the people running these operations are in the country illegally. So some of those people crossing the border are no doubt going to be part of this criminal activity that the Chinese view as cognitive warfare.”
President Joe Biden has said he will sign a House bill seeking to force TikTok to move away from ByteDance, but Schweitzer said he believes the president is hoping that the legislation is killed in the Senate.
“Joe Biden has given China pretty much everything that it has wanted on the global stage, so I’m skeptical,” he said. “I think that his willingness to sign this bill is really evidence of him trying to look tough … the bottom line is that the Bidens are financially, uh, entangled with the Chinese. They’ve been given tens of millions of dollars and it is going to be very, very difficult for them to take a hard stand on Beijing with regards to these activities.”
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