TikTok Timebomb – but who’s lighting the fuse?

By: Steve Huston

With each tic-toc of the clock, the nefarious weaponization of Beijing’s Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) TikTok becomes more apparent. To the uninformed, this app seems bent on the frivolity of silliness, fun, and amazing video functions. But those of us who have kept our antennae up and have listened to those who desire to protect Americans and the American political machinery, recognize TikTok for the unrestricted warfare weapon that it is. The fact that the CCP doesn’t allow its own citizens to use TikTok should be warning enough.

TikTok’s data collection, dangerous online challenges which have resulted in numerous injury/deaths, and mental health risks to its users is well-traveled ground. It’s use as a hyper-effective propaganda tool cannot be questioned in light of TikTok urging its users to contact Congress, after the House passed a bill which could lead to its banning, and masses of children and teens fell in line. Minors called Congress asking, “What’s a congressman? What’s Congress?” while thousands of teenagers called their legislators saying that “they would kill themselves” or “commit suicide if Congress made ByteDance sell TikTok.”

It’s no wonder that Beijing’s app has been likened to “digital crack cocaine” and “digital fentanyl.” But what many are not aware of a Present Danger China webinar hosted by Frank Gaffney revealed. One of the presenters, Connie Elliott, shared that “these systems optimize on the very basic parts of our neurotransmitter psychology, like they understand our dopamine psychology for addiction, they understand our oxytocin psychology for attachment, and they understand our adrenaline psychology for our understanding of threat arousal, how we determine what frightens us and what makes us angry…”

Later, she continues, “So, we’re in a Brave New World. We’re in a world where the terrain being fought for is not physical. We’re not fighting for stuff. Governments and corporations, large entities are fighting for control of the terrain behind our eyeballs. In between our ears. They’re fighting for our cognition. They’re fighting for our attention. They’re fighting to make us perform actions which are favorable to them.”

Several times we heard that enormous amounts of data have been collected on each American and that “we have no protection for our digital selves from this kind of information harvesting and manipulation. And this can be used to track us down to very fine detail.” PresentDangerChina.org’s “TikTok: Xi’s Not-so-Secret Weapon: How Do We Disarm It?” has a lot of important information. I highly recommend it.

Who’s lighting the fuse on the “TikTok ban” timebomb? Only the Lord knows, but let’s be thinkers.

On March 13, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act” by a vote of 352–64 (50 Democrats and 15 Republicans – mostly strong conservatives – opposing). Although this bill has been sold to the American republic as “The TikTok ban,” this bill is not specifically about TikTok. It’s much wider and permits more than is likely wise, but because we’ve heard of the vast dangers of TikTok regarding our national security, data collection on our citizens, and the inherent dangers to our children, many hail this bill as a salvatory strike for our children, our security, and America as a whole – putting a stop to this extremely useful propaganda tool and removing this unrestricted warfare weapon from the CCPs extensive armory. Although this bill has “bipartisan support,” in today’s political scene “bipartisan support” generally means the fix is in on something. Not to mention that often when we read the title of the bill, we can assume it does the exact opposite of what it says.

Add to that, Biden says, “If they pass it, I’ll sign it.” There’s a real question to his sincerity; President Biden’s re-election campaign joined TikTok last month, even as the app is banned on government devices due to national security concerns. Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) suggested that the Biden administration isn’t really serious about passing the TikTok bill as it’s made its way through Congress. Speaking to The Epoch Times’ sister media outlet NTD, “The Biden administration says one thing and does another. You don’t open up an account of anything that you say you want to abolish.”

There’s good reason for concern; whoever is in control today may not be in control tomorrow. Lately, the one in control has been the definer of terms. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) called the broadly-worded bill a “Trojan horse” that would give the President “the power to ban WEB SITES, not just Apps.” Ron Paul called the vote “the most dangerous and anti-American act since the passage of the PATRIOT Act!” Others fear that it’ll be used to ban alternative media outlets and websites under the ban of “foreign control.”

One Christian news commentator warns: “The poison pill hidden inside the word salad coming from inside the beltway is this: ‘Any website desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application (that’s words directly from the bill) that is determined by the president to present a significant threat to the national security of the United States’ is covered. In other words, it gives the president of the United States power to clamp down on any online application, not just social media site, but any online application, augmented reality, or immersive – in other words VR or AR – technology that they determine is a threat to national security… You can see how this is dangerous. They’ve just passed a law giving the president the power to censor and control the internet.”

Perhaps Connie Elliott says it best: “I think that we realized that we’re hemorrhaging as a nation. We realized we’re hemorrhaging to Chinese psychological manipulation through the use of TikTok and bad situations. Difficult cases make for bad law, or they make for difficult law. They make for a hard situation. I think Congress is in a place where they have to do something, and [it’s] best they do the minimum necessary.”

 

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