US government case against TikTok heats up with new classified intelligence filings on Friday
Beijing has already succeeded in directing the social video app TikTok to “censor content outside of China,” according to a classified Department of Justice brief filed Friday in a case that casts one of the world’s most popular media platforms as a Chinese Communist Party weapon poised to attack Americans during an election or geopolitical crisis in the same manner as Chinese cyber-spies and hackers that are currently buried within North American critical infrastructure, according to security officials.
The court battle ultimately pits Washington against Beijing in a struggle for hearts and minds waged between the world’s top democracy and its top surveillance state.
The DOJ filings aim to enforce a 2024 law enacted by Congress compelling TikTok’s parent company ByteDance to sell its short video app and secret-sauce algorithms to a custodian that would be accountable to U.S. national security concerns.
TikTok, used by 170 million, mostly teen Americans, on the other hand, claims it is protected by the U.S. Constitution and can work with security officials to mitigate concerns. U.S. officials say suggested remedies such as a “kill switch” that would turn TikTok off during a crisis aren’t sufficient.
According to U.S. lawmakers and expert testimony, ByteDance is one of many Chinese media and tech companies that can be compelled under Beijing’s national security laws to covertly harvest data from global users and participate in espionage and interference operations.
“A foreign power's secret manipulation of the content on social-media platforms to influence the views of Americans for its own purposes poses a grave threat to national security,” a brief filed Friday by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland says. “Among other things, it would allow a foreign government to illicitly interfere with our political system and political discourse, including our elections.”
Garland’s argument relies chiefly on a sworn statement from Casey Blackburn of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Blackburn’s testimony is highly redacted to protect U.S. intelligence sources and methods.
But the former CIA official’s analysis differs from previously reported U.S. allegations against TikTok in this highly publicized battle.
That is because Washington believes China’s use of TikTok is more than a potential threat.
In some nefarious way Beijing has already used the app globally, U.S. intelligence alleges.
“The PRC is expanding its global covert influence posture to better support the Chinese Communist Party's goals. The PRC aims to sow doubts about U.S. leadership, undermine democracy, and extend the PRC's influence abroad through its online influence operations,” Blackburn’s July 25th statement says.
“Intelligence reporting further demonstrates that ByteDance and TikTok Global have taken action in response to PRC demands to censor content outside of China.”
Blackburn compares the TikTok threat to the presence of PRC hackers, known as Volt Typhoon, that according to FBI investigations are pre-positioned for cyber-attacks against U.S. critical infrastructure networks.
"China's hacking program, which spans the globe and thus affects U.S. partners as well, is larger than that of every other major nation combined,” Blackburn’s statement says.
“Allowing the Chinese government to remain poised to use TikTok to maximum effectiveness at a moment of extreme importance presents an unacceptable threat to national security,” Garland’s brief concludes, citing Blackburn’s evidence. “The Chinese government's maintenance of TikTok as a potential threat is of a piece with its general strategy of pre-positioning its assets for use at a time of its choosing.”
The allegation that China has used TikTok in censorship globally doesn’t indicate where the operation occurred and in what context.
The censorship accusation is made in a blacked out series of paragraphs that are titled “Risks of PRC-directed censorship and algorithmic manipulation.”
Prior to these paragraphs, Blackburn states “there is a risk that the PRC may coerce TikTok to covertly manipulate the information received by the millions of Americans that use the TikTok application every day.”
Following pages of blotted out U.S. intelligence that would seem to refer to known cases of such activity outside the United States, Blackburn states:
“Nonetheless, the intelligence community's concern is grounded in the actions Bytedance and TikTok have already taken overseas and in the PRC’s malign activities in the United States, that while not reliant on Bytedance and TikTok to date, demonstrate its capability and intent to engage in maligned foreign influence and the theft of sensitive data.”
FBI counterintelligence officials are also cited in DOJ evidence filed Friday.
“The FBI assesses that the PRC could use its AI capabilities to augment its influence campaigns such as amplifying preexisting social divisions and targeting U.S. audiences through TikTok’s algorithm by promoting and suppressing particular videos,” a classified filing says.
Other filings says FBI Directory Christopher Wray has testified the U.S. would likely not be able to see China’s control of TikTok while such an operation were occurring.
But “TikTok’s and ByteDance’s tight interlinkages with the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party,” have already been proven, according to the filings.
In one case, in April 2018, “in response to PRC concerns about violating PRC content guidelines, the founder of TikTok publicly pledged to increase the number of censors from 6,000 to 10,000, while creating a blacklist of banned users and developing better technology to boost censorship,” they say.
More broadly, they argue “the Chinese Communist Party seeks to undercut U.S. influence, drive wedges between the United States and its partners, surpass the United States in comprehensive national power, and foster norms that favor the PRC's authoritarian system.”
"The PRC's cyber espionage pursuits and its industry's export of surveillance information and communications technologies increase the threats of aggressive cyber operations against the United States and the suppression of the free flow of information in cyberspace,” the filings continue.
Specifically to TikTok, Blackburn’s filings explain how TikTok's "For You" page, driven by a proprietary recommendation algorithm, could be weaponized for PRC-directed censorship and algorithmic manipulation.
Blackburn also referenced the PRC's broader espionage efforts, including "extensive and years-long efforts to accumulate structured data sets, in particular on U.S. persons to support its intelligence and counterintelligence operations."
He cited past incidents where the PRC's intelligence services stole data on over 147 million Americans from a U.S. credit agency and health data on nearly 80 million Americans from a U.S. health insurance provider.
Finally, Beijing’s sophisticated incursions via social media platforms can only be expected to increase in the run-up to this fall’s U.S. Presidential elections, the filings suggest.
"The PRC's intensifying efforts to mold U.S. public discourse or magnify U.S. societal divisions in ways favorable to the PRC should be a cause for significant concern,” they say.
sam@thebureau.news
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