Episode 15: Kara Swisher Talks TikTok Ban & National Security Fears

When TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testified before Congress, he was grilled on whether the popular short form video hosting app used by an estimated 150 million Americans has links to the Chinese government. The Biden administration and several members of Congress from both parties want to ban TikTok, which is owned by Chinese tech firm ByteDance, claiming it threatens US national security. But is TikTok really a national security threat, or are these hearings just the latest example of the anti-China hysteria sweeping Washington? To help us make sense of this, the Eurasia Group Foundation’s Mark Hannah is joined by tech journalist and self-proclaimed national security junkie Kara Swisher. They break down the arguments for and against banning the app, get real about the threats coming from China, and discuss whether Kara would have been better suited for a career in military intelligence.

Kara Swisher has covered issues of power, media, and the tech industry for decades, and has been called “Silicon Valley’s most feared and well-liked journalist.” She is the host of Pivot, On With Kara Swisher, and the official companion podcast for the HBO show Succession.

This podcast episode includes references to the Eurasia Group Foundation, now known as the Institute for Global Affairs.

Transcript:

KARA SWISHER: TikTok is just a symbol of a bigger thing. It's just an easy, low-hanging fruit to be able to take China out.

MARK HANNAH: Welcome to None of the Above, a podcast of the Eurasia Group Foundation. My name is Mark Hannah. Today we're talking about TikTok. Yep, the popular short-form video hosting app owned by the Chinese tech firm ByteDance and used by an estimated 150 million Americans, which could plausibly—if not probably—get banned in the United States. And it all has to do with China.

Interlude featuring archival audio

HANNAH: Since the TikTok hearings in Congress last month probably confused more than they clarified, we decided to speak to the person who knows the tech world best, Kara Swisher. Kara has covered issues of power, media, and the tech industry for decades and has been called Silicon Valley's most feared and well-liked journalist. And though she might not be your typical voice on foreign policy, she's more of a wonk than you might realize.

SWISHER: I thought I would go into either the military or the CIA, actually. But I wanted to be an analyst, especially in military intelligence. And I'm gay. And that wasn't allowed then. It was “don't ask, don't tell.” So, I never did that. And so, I went into reporting instead. I had a lot of interest in—I thought I might be a foreign correspondent at one point.

HANNAH: Not only did Kara want to go into the military, she's also been pretty interested for a while now in how media can be used to influence people. And that has all sorts of implications for our conversation today.

SWISHER: When I studied at Georgetown, they have a very strict curriculum where you take economics, language, history. You don't get a lot of electives at the Foreign Service school. But one of the things I focused in on was propaganda. My senior thesis was about propaganda in China, the use of propaganda by the Nazis, and the uses of various tools to convince populations or to enrage populations. And so, I spent a lot of time thinking about that there. And I did the same thing when I went to journalism school. I worked with a professor there and was, again, about propaganda—about the uses of propaganda and how to change people's viewpoints using different medias. And the Internet had just gotten started. And the minute I saw it, I was like, “Oh, look, a big giant propaganda vehicle. Isn't this great for people who are interested in that?” I spent a lot of time thinking about that at the very beginning of when it started—how it could easily be used a weapon and probably would be, in fact.

HANNAH: That giant propaganda vehicle on everyone's mind today? TikTok. That's one of the reasons lawmakers on the right and the left seem so determined to ban the app because of the fear that the Chinese government could manipulate TikTok's algorithm to spread pro-China content. It seems Kara was on to something as an undergrad, and that's why TikTok is different from other social media apps like Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. As Kara reminds us, the Chinese government does wield power over Chinese companies in a way that the United States government just can't over American companies.

SWISHER: For good or bad, we hear about everything here. Literally, including every movement Donald Trump makes on his way up the floor. They don't do that there. We have a very open information environment that's way too open, probably, for many people, but that's what it is. It is what it is. And so, those come those companies are government companies. You have to think of them that way. I use a burner phone because I don't trust the Chinese Communist Party. And I remember being met with, “How dare you say that?”

I'm like, “What? I’m Sorry. The Chinese Communist Party—they seem to have a history of surveillance.” And I'm not particularly paranoid as a person, but you have to wonder: these are the most amazing devices in the history of the world for recording people and tracking them and knowing what they're doing.

HANNAH: The problem, though, is there's not a whole lot of evidence to suggest China is actually using TikTok to spy on Americans or is using it as a vehicle for propaganda. But the fear that China could do these things worries lawmakers and people like Kara into seriously considering a ban. Though Congress didn't point to concrete evidence of spying or propaganda, and though Kara admits to loving the app itself, our guest today expressed major reservations about a Chinese company that could be compelled by the Chinese Communist Party to hand over Americans’ data. So, how much of this fear is actually founded? How effective could propaganda on TikTok be? Or how much of this is simply some kind of new red scare?

SWISHER: Number one is propaganda, that they could shape things. They do that now in China itself. They don't get to watch certain things. And so, propaganda in terms of just shading some things—Taiwan is part of China. They could do all kinds of things. Or people watching it could suddenly get a lot of messaging that says, “Hey, maybe you should think again about how good the U.S. is.” That kind of stuff. That's been going on since the dawn of time—some kind of propaganda—but it's very hard to see versus a poster. That used to be what they did in World War II. It's kind of obvious, right? “Oh, they're terrible people.”

And then they could do things like more seriously spy on military installations with, say, a balloon. They can understand high-ranking government officials and high-ranking executives—what they're doing. They could manipulate the stock market. They could do things like understand even a worker at a water factory. If they understood their movements and their ability maybe to be blackmailed or just to follow them, they could do all kinds of damage to grids and things like that. You could think of all kinds of ways you could get in by using information you gleaned. Surveillance I'm less concerned with because most people don't really have that much to be surveilled about. But I would be more concerned about propaganda and the ability to access these phones, and then you access other things—that possibility. And so, that's the kind of stuff you think about. And you wouldn't know who they were tracking, probably military government officials, high-ranking businesspeople.

HANNAH: I want to get more into the potential threat and whether you think that constitutes an important governmental interest, which, a government such as the United States needs to demonstrate in order to kind of check or obviate the First Amendment concerns around this. What is motivating the desire to ban TikTok? You've said before it's not sinophobia or xenophobia necessarily. It is happening in a broader context of U.S.-China, kind of new Cold War. And obviously there are moneyed interests in the United States. Big tech companies probably would benefit greatly from a ban on TikTok. So, what's your read, and can you point to evidence that it's those things?

SWISHER: I think number one is they really are a rival. They really are a rival, and they are all over the world competing with us in minerals and all kinds of technologies.

HANNAH: You’re talking about China.

SWISHER: Yes, China. China's our actual rival. And I've talked to some very significant defense people. I talked to an admiral once, and he's like, “They're our number one rival.” And that wasn't weaponry. It was cyber weaponry. And so, no question that they are trying to dominate in the world, make it a Chinese century—the next century. That's part of it.

And they have a very different idea about democracy. We have democracy. They have an authoritarian country. So, a very different idea about that. They're much more willing to do deals in certain places than we are—that kind of stuff. They're obviously our critical rival. So, that's that. That's one thing.

Two is they… There is really good information available. And that would give them an advantage. So, that would be problematic. I think, probably, much of what they're saying, though, is performative because they don't—it's more, again as I said, they could do it, and not that they will. And so, I'm most concerned with the fact that the Chinese government is in it for the long haul—which is a trope, but it's true—and that we lose our interest or we have all sorts of competing things. TikTok is just a symbol of a bigger thing. It's just an easy, low-hanging fruit to be able to take them out. It's sort of a symbol because most of our companies aren't there.

HANNAH: I'm trying to think of another example of a foreign government that owns… Essentially, no Chinese media company is totally independent. Right? So, this is unique.

SWISHER: Yes. Because it's a very popular app. And we can't bring our apps there. We can't influence them.

HANNAH: Because of the great The Great Firewall.

SWISHER: Yeah. I mean, there's Apple there, but that's a manufacturing relationship, and they do sell products into the country. Tesla, same thing. It's a manufacturer relationship, and they also sell product in the country. But none of our social media. Google famously came out because of spying. Facebook's not in there. Snapchat is not in there. They're all not there. And so, it's sort of this unequal playing field that they get to be here because we're America, and we let that. And we get to play by their rules there. It's very unfair, but they're never going to let our social media sites operate the way they do in this country there. They don't let their social media sites operate the way they do in this country.

HANNAH: But isn't that just an extension of our very different economic and political models? Like, don't we then abandon, to some extent, free markets and free marketplaces of ideas?

SWISHER: Yeah, but that happens in trade all the time. You're not letting us in. We're not letting you in. That's certainly not something fresh and new. But definitely these—Facebook loves this, right? Facebook's loving this because they've not been able to compete as a product. TikTok is a superior product. It just is. It's a really good social media app, and it's fun. It's not even social media. It's entertainment, really. And so, U.S. companies have to compete with TikTok for the attention of especially teens. They’re like, “Oh, god, let's get rid of this one, because we can't compete, and maybe we'll steal some of their best ideas.” Like Reels is starting to get much better on Facebook, for example.

HANNAH: Facebook, Google, Meta—these guys have huge lobbying operations, government relations, and they're trying to sway policy.

SWISHER: They had a dinner. They had a dinner the night before the hearings with all the major figures. And it's all the—it was Peter Thiel in this group. They do it all the time. They're doing it all the time. When I interviewed Mark three years ago, he started down that road of, “It's G or me, Kara.” And I was like, “Oh, I don’t like this choice. I guess you if I had to pick.” And this idea of national heroes, international companies that are heroes for us versus the Chinese. It was always a: “If we don't do it, the Chinese will.” The same thing is going on in AI now. If we stop AI, China is going to get ahead. And Russia is going to get ahead. Iran is going to get ahead.

HANNAH: Yeah, and I do wonder whether the trade protectionism promoted by these huge American companies is affecting U.S. foreign policy and the political rhetoric. We just heard General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, say that the rhetoric between us and China is getting overheated, and we need to scale that back. And I wonder how much of that is attributable to the TikTok debate?

SWISHER: It was started by Trump, but it's the same thing. Everyone gets it. Nobody gets what's happening in the South China Sea. Very few people get Taiwan, but everybody gets TikTok. Like, oh, they're coming in here and sneaking in on us and spying on us and sending propaganda. It's writ large—the problem—which we think they're doing elsewhere, by the way, in more critical places. That spy balloon is the same thing as TikTok. It's just there's 150 million more of them floating over our teens So, it's the same story. It's a very easy for Americans to get like, “Yeah, what the heck?”

HANNAH: Which brings us back to today and to those congressional hearings we just heard. China was center stage for sure, but so were the typical ills of any social media platform. As such, not all the opinions and questions we heard were particularly well-informed.

Interlude featuring archival audio

SWISHER: The comments that were made—some of them were very smart, and some of them are like, what? There was one—I can't remember the one that was so dumb. I kept saying, “Oh my god, it’s embarrassing.” This is an important thing we need to discuss. It really is. Are they a national security threat? Are they shading things? Are they spying? And then it becomes this scream fest about China, and then then they make threats they can't back up, like banning it. Can they? Isn’t that unconstitutional? And Trump tried to do it. It didn't work because all these judges were like, “That's freedom of speech.”

HANNAH: But of course, when it comes to concerns about national security in China, in particular, the United States is going to try to find a workaround. That's what we're seeing now. The Senate has introduced the Restrict Act, which would give the Commerce Department and the White House new authorities to ban and restrict a wide range of apps and tech products coming from China in general. Is this the right kind of legislation? Some are calling it the Patriot Act on steroids and fear it would lead to even broader surveillance here in the United States. Is that going to increase the size of the security state?

SWISHER: One of the things I'd say is, everyone's like, “Well, in China, they're doing surveillance.”

I'm like, “Well, we're not China.” “

“Well, it's hindering us because we can't be surveilled.”

I'm like, “Well, they're China. We're not China. We’re the U.S. We can't do that.” I'm not naive. Obviously all kinds of surveillance is going on. But there was a reason people were horrified when the Edward Snowden revelations came out, including people in tech. Are you kidding me? I thought we don't do that. Well, we do. So, I think that's the big thing. What are our rules, and who are we?

To me, I think the reason we've invented everything, including currently the new AI stuff here, is because we have a bottom-up approach. We’re entrepreneurial and free and open societies. And the reason China didn't make it is because that's their society. They can certainly do really well technically, but where innovation comes from is an open, free society. We now are having a very thriving moment now in AI because even though big companies are also involved, there's all kinds of companies getting started because we're here, and the government doesn't tell them not to create themselves or control them or own part of them. That's really the strength of us—our freedom. And I think we have to really lean into freedom. I think we do.

HANNAH: I'm wondering if you're worried about one of two things. One is you don't think this debate is being necessarily propelled primarily by anti-Chinese sentiment, but do you think it runs the risk of stoking those kinds of suspicions?

SWISHER: Like when we used to bash Japanese cars back when…?

HANNAH: Yeah. We saw during COVID that there was a rise in anti-Asian American violence. And scapegoating China seems to be a perennial phenomenon in American presidential campaign politics. There's not a big constituency of swing voters that are Chinese.

SWISHER: It can be offensive like Donald Trump and calling it Kung Fu or whatever the heck he called it. That's different than… you shouldn't be doing that. But you could also say, “Boy are these people our rivals.” How do you do that in a mature way, instead of attacking a country in really heinous ways? Everyone recognizes what he said about that was terrible. Everybody should be wanting to get more information out of them about where COVID started. We would like you to open up your things so we could all understand this terrible virus. And you're not doing that. And you should be able to call them out for not cooperating without seeming to be anti-Chinese. That's operating like a mature geopolitical player versus calling them names. It could lead to that, I guess. It depends on who's saying it. I think Trump acted badly around TikTok. He kept making… China—he pronounced it funny. You can be mature about it and say, “We're worried about this, and here's why.” And make a good case. And there is a good case to be made.

HANNAH: I'm Mark Hannah, and this has been another episode of None of the Above, a podcast from the Eurasia Group Foundation. I want to thank Kara Swisher for joining me.

If you enjoyed Kara's analysis, you're lucky because she's the host of several famous podcasts herself. She's the host of Pivot, which she co-hosts with Scott Galloway, On with Kara Swisher, which she co-hosts with Nayeema Raza, and of course, the very important official companion podcast for the HBO show Succession.

Special thanks go out to our None of the Above team. Our producer is Caroline Gray, and our associate producer and editor is Sarah Leeson. If you enjoyed what you've heard, we'd appreciate you subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or anywhere else you find podcasts. Do rate and review us, and if there's a topic you want us to cover, send us an email at info@noneoftheabovepodcast.org. Thanks for joining us. Stay safe out there, and see you next time.

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