This includes frequent attacks to gain access to the West’s key companies and their trade secrets, as well as rapidly improving its capability to shape the world’s narratives via both overt and covert means. In the South China Sea, Taiwan Strait and disputed Japanese waters, China’s rapidly growing military continues to push boundaries and prepare for conflicts with its neighbors and the West.Ī similar battle plays out online, as China’s numerous intelligence and information warfare units support the country’s long-term economic and strategic goals. We are clearly at the start of a long struggle between the world’s democracies and a new coalition of autocracies, led by a Chinese Communist Party that is emerging from the Covid-19 crisis with its most autocratic leader since Mao Zedong and a burning desire to demonstrate the power of the People’s Republic domestically and abroad.Ĭhinese President Xi Jinping’s visit this week to a battered, beleaguered Vladimir Putin only highlighted its new role, as the Chinese leader publicly legitimized a Russian president who was indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes only last week. An important one, to be sure, but Washington’s laser-focus on capturing this one piece has blinded it to the bigger game. TikTok is only one chess piece in the global struggle to gather and control information. But those concerns are bigger than one company, and the Biden administration is missing an opportunity to lead the free world in addressing the big picture.
To the western world’s national security establishment, however, TikTok is a Trojan horse, bringing the long arm of China into the homes and workplaces of their citizens via its China-based parent company, ByteDance.įrom my seat, as somebody who dealt with continuous state-sponsored attacks from countries around the world as the chief security officer at Facebook, and now running a research group at Stanford focused on online harms, there are indeed many legitimate concerns about TikTok. To the young people around the world who spend hours per day watching the pithy, entertaining short videos, TikTok is the product that won their attention with an almost creepily smart discovery algorithm and a carefully cultivated community of top creators.
0 kommentar(er)
