It does not appear that any legislator disputed the national security risks associated with TikTok’s data collection practices, but instead took the security state’s assertions at face value.
Many of the 170 million Americans blocked from using TikTok last night seem to have no idea it was the handiwork of the national security state.
Sure, Trump initially supported the ban and Congress overwhelmingly voted for it before Biden ultimately signed it into law. But behind the scenes was an intense lobbying campaign by the intelligence community, from the FBI to the CIA. In one classified briefing after another, intelligence officials succeeded at scaring the shit out of our elected leaders about China using the app to collect Americans’ data or covertly influence them. Never mind that the threat is purely hypothetical, that China can already buy Americans’ information from private data brokers, or most importantly, that foreign influence campaigns are largely ineffective. None of that matters because in Washington, three magic words can override almost anything: national security threat.
