Two Senators Warn TikTok Is a National Security Threat: 'Delete It'

(CNSNews.com) – Here are some words you may never have expected to hear from a leading Senate Democrat: “I think Donald Trump was right,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, told “Fox News Sunday.”

Then-President Donald Trump wanted to ban TikTok in 2020 because he considered it a national security threat.

“I think Donald Trump was right, I mean, TikTok is an enormous threat, it’s a threat on two levels,” Warner said on Sunday:

“One, it is a massive collector of information, oftentimes of our children. They can visualize even down to your keystrokes. So If you’re a parent and you’ve got a kid on TikTok, I would be very, very concerned. All of that data that your child is inputting and receiving is being stored somewhere in Beijing.

“The idea that we can somehow separate out TikTok from the fact the actual engineers writing the code in Beijing I think is a — The Justice Department’s trying to come up with a solution. I’m going to take a look at that solution, but they’ve got a huge mountain to climb. 

“The second problem is that TikTok in a sense is a broadcasting network, in a sense. And if the Chinese Communist Party and TikTok at the end of the day has to be reliant on the Communist Party, the Chinese law states that. 

“If they suddenly want to dial up the fact that we’re going to decrease the content that criticizes Chinese leadership but increase the content that your kids may be seeing saying, hey, you know, Taiwan really is part of China, that is a distribution model that would make RT or Sputnik or some of the Russian propaganda models pale in comparison.” 

‘Delete it’

Also appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said China is lying when it claims to store Americans’ TikTok user data in the United States with backup in Singapore.

“Yeah, those are false statements,” Cotton said:

“There have been reports indicating that that data is accessible in mainland China — that TikTok, a Chinese company, is subject to Communist China’s laws and that TikTok is one of the most massive surveillance programs ever, especially on America’s young people. That it’s not just content you upload to TikTok, but all the data on your phone, the other apps, all your personal information — even facial imagery, even where your eyes are looking on your phone. 

“That’s why I’ve encouraged every American, if they’re using TikTok, to delete it from their phone if they can, to get a new phone all together.” 

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