It was January 20, 2017, and President Trump had just been sworn in after a grueling campaign—one I had proudly been a part of. Throughout the campaign, Trump had rightly criticized how Hillary Clinton jeopardized our national security by refusing to use official government email at the State Department. Now, I was at Foggy Bottom as a Senior White House Advisor at the State Department, leading our new appointees and preparing to implement our new America First agenda. We took our oaths of office, met with counterparts from the foreign service, and then quickly got to work. Among the first briefings we received in the wake of the Clinton email scandal was how to protect ourselves from cyber spying from America’s competitors and adversaries – identifying threats and preventing new ones. We were particularly warned about using applications and software from foreign countries, and, to this day, they are not permitted on government devices. As we have seen with the devastating attack on the Colonial Pipeline, cyber spies and hackers, and those who oversee them, are ever-present. Even while taking extensive precautions, my own credit card was hacked by individuals believed to be based in mainland China.
This threat is clearly ongoing, but this week, the Biden administration made the reckless decision to reverse the Trump-era ban on Chinese-owned apps like TikTok that was instituted to protect Americans’ privacy from prying Communist China. While most Americans know this as a bizarre ‘app’ used by their children and grandchildren, it has actually become a coded way for many to communicate across the world. What many of the nearly 700 million TikTok users across the globe do not realize, however, because of surveillance laws enacted by the Communist Part of China, companies like ByteDance – the owner of TikTok - can be forced to turn over private data, information, and property. This is the price to pay in Communist China, and we’ve seen it happen before. Huawei, a Chinese technology company, for example, coordinated with leaders in autocratic nations to spy on its own citizens, with many believing they then colluded with spy agencies in China. This is precisely why U.S. protocol rightfully precludes the use of these applications on government devices.
But what about ordinary Americans who don’t know that they’re trading their sensitive data in exchange for catchy songs and videos? President Trump understood the need to protect Americans from potential privacy violations and national security risks by putting applications like TikTok on notice that they needed new ownership to do business in America. In yet another embarrassing display of weakness abroad, however, the Biden administration has reversed this ban and paved the way for Communist China to spy on ordinary Americans
Americans deserve to know, and have the right to protection, from their personal data being turned over to spy agencies in Beijing. Joe Biden during the campaign said that China couldn’t eat America’s lunch – but he’s obviously OK with them stealing the data used during Americans’ lunch break.
Matt Mowers served as Senior White House Advisor in the U.S. Department of State in the Trump Administration and was the 2020 Republican Nominee in New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District
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