Get TikTok off public-funded education devices
Angela Morabito
More than 20 states have banned TikTok on government-owned devices, with New Jersey and Ohio joining their ranks just days ago. Though the impetus behind these bans is to protect state government information from Chinese spyware, these laws also evict TikTok from devices owned by public school districts and state-supported postsecondary institutions. This is a necessary protection to prevent the Chinese government from exploiting its control over ByteDance, TikTok’s owner, to gain access to America’s schools and the minds of its students.
It is no secret that the Chinese Communist Party seeks economic, military, and political dominance over the United States and to displace it as the principal power in the Western Pacific. One step to that end is to create conditions that allow China’s workforce to outperform ours, including by undermining our education system. Funneling harmful content through an app used by children and teachers is one way to accomplish that goal.
If there is any question that the Chinese understand the influential power of TikTok, the differences between the Chinese and American versions of the app should remove all doubt. On the American version of the app, users challenge each other to vandalize their schools and partake in trends like “Slap-a-Teacher.” The #schoolfights genre shows an endless reel of in-school violence. Children are taught the supposed virtues of using “frog/frogself” pronouns. Woke teachers cry into the camera over being “misgendered” by children and brag about making their students pledge allegiance to a Pride flag. Tablets, computers, and phones bought with public funds and meant to assist learning should not be turned into vectors for whatever social contagions a hostile foreign power wants to inflict on children.
In the Chinese version of the app, called Doiyun, a dedicated team of curators select content meant to inspire national pride and personal excellence. Users see clips of graduation ceremonies, science experiments, and museum exhibits. A Chinese teenager scrolling Doiyun sees respect for teachers and parents, excellence in academics, and healthy personal habits. American viewers are shown in-school anarchy; Chinese viewers are shown algebra. American viewers learn about neopronouns; Chinese users are taught about patriotism. ByteDance knows what the Chinese communists want us to see and what they want Chinese users to see, and those sets of videos are very different.
TikTok is not China’s first foray into influencing American classrooms: The Chinese government has funded hundreds of Confucius Classrooms in America’s schools and Confucius Institutes at U.S. universities, in which teachers and curricula hand-picked by Beijing are presented under the guise of cultural exchange. Where TikTok is allowed on school devices, the Chinese communists need not purchase influence one classroom at a time. TikTok gives it a one-way line of communication to our students and teachers through which to spread disruptive social contagions.
As if the terrible influence on student behavior was not enough, user data privacy issues should also preclude the use of TikTok on public school-owned devices. The TikTok agreement allows it to collect biometric data on users, which includes faceprints and voice recordings. Last year, a privacy analysis found that TikTok was “injecting code” into its app that enables it to function as a keystroke logger. With these capabilities on school-owned devices, the Chinese communists would have the ability to collect massive amounts of data on America’s students. The company denies tracking biometric data or logging keystrokes, which leaves us with two options: Either TikTok is gearing up with invasive abilities for no reason whatsoever, or it is lying.
There’s another reason why TikTok is a national security threat: It soaks up data from users at America’s universities, including prestigious research institutions. TikTok is the technological extension of China’s Thousand Talents Plan, which recruits operatives in universities across America to steal information and classified research. Through an app placed on the devices of university researchers that tracks their location, online searches, and biometric data, there is now the very real concern that the Chinese, through ByteDance, can remotely cull sensitive data about American university researchers and their work.
If a cybersecurity researcher has TikTok on his phone, the Chinese communists could potentially see what he searches for online and could copy his biometric data. If an aerospace engineer uses TikTok on her iPad, the Chinese government might be able to read an email she types to her colleagues on that same device. Beijing wants a window into our campuses: Dozens of Chinese nationals working in American higher education have been credibly accused of lying about their ties to the Chinese government and shipping our intellectual property to Beijing. Thanks to TikTok, the Chinese communists will no longer need a person in the room if it has an app on the phone.
State governments have an obligation to ensure that devices purchased with taxpayer dollars are not turned into indoctrination megaphones for whatever China wants our students to see and hear or a data pipeline from our research institutions to the Chinese Communist Party. States that allow TikTok on their devices may soon find the app to be a Trojan horse that not only intrudes on the privacy of students and teachers but also causes great harm to the U.S.
Angela Morabito is the spokeswoman for the Defense of Freedom Institute for Policy Studies and the former Department of Education press secretary.