Don’t look up: The bigger China threat worrying lawmakers is in the palm of your hand, not the sky

Don’t look up, look up below!

According to many lawmakers, the most sinister threat to American security may be at your fingertips with an app on your phone called TikTok.

“The Chinese Communist government has access to all the information TikTok collects,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said on CBS.

“I fear that what they are doing is reaching out to American culture and the nation in ways that are unimaginable,” said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill.

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Owned by TikTok. By Chinese company Byte Dance. The firm admitted that it tracks Americans’ information through mobile devices.

More than half of all state governments are now working to block TikTok from state apparatus.

Sen. Michael Bennett, D-Colo., wrote to Alphabet — Google’s parent company — and Apple, demanding they remove TikTok from their app stores.

Bennett’s idea has bipartisan support.

“I welcome it,” said Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo. “We should go the whole nine yards right now and just ban it outright in the US.”

But it is a challenge.

Sen. Josh Hawley has been an outspoken critic of TikTok and has called for a national ban on the social media platform. (John Roux)

TikTok can be a potential threat today. But lawmakers want a universal plan to combat it. Future TikTok.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., on FOX Business. said, “It’s a big, big hill to climb.” “This will not be the last time we have a national security issue with foreign technology.e”

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Here’s a legislative hurdle: In the 1970s, Congress passed a law prohibiting citizens from helping hostile, foreign governments interfere in U.S. commerce. But former Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., saw a problem. Berman created a niche for free speech platforms abroad. In other words, it wouldn’t help the American cause abroad if the U.S. came down on dissidents who were trying to publish material or make films that spoke out against oppressive regimes.

In 1988, Congress adopted the “Burman Amendment” to serve as a shield for foreign free speech platforms in countries hostile to the United States.

Democratic Colorado Senator Michael Bennett has called on Apple and Google to remove Chinese-owned TikTok from their app stores. (Given to Rook)

This makes it difficult to ban TikTok unless Congress changes the law.

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TikTok is now stepping up domestic lobbying efforts to gain a digital foothold in the US as the app faces more scrutiny over its relationship with Beijing.

TikTok is even offering US regulators the chance to inspect its algorithm in exchange for a continued presence in the US, but TikTok has suggested that banning the app would not increase US security.

Lawmakers have questions about how the app affects children, and TikTok’s CEO is set to testify before a House panel in March.

While TikTok may be a threat on the phone, what if China is now renting space in the heads of many Americans?

“It was a visible, tangible, Sputnik moment, like the one we had in 1957 when the Soviet Union put up the first satellite,” Rep. Michael Waltz, R-Fla., said on Fox.

A Chinese spy balloon was seen moving east-southeast over Fairview, North Carolina on Saturday morning, February 4, 2023. (Evan Fisher)

Sputnik was a pivotal moment in the Cold War and the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union.

The satellite was visible to many Americans in low-Earth orbit, and it scared people.

Lawmakers even turned Sputnik into a political tool, suggesting that the US was going backwards and that the Soviet Union was mocking the US.

Sound familiar?

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President Dwight Eisenhower said that the appearance of Sputnik circling overhead “did not raise my concerns.”

But actions speak louder than words.

Sputnik asked Congress to create NASA in 1958. Eisenhower authorized the creation of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) at the Pentagon. Washington soon moved to close the “missile gap” between the United States and the Soviet Union

TikTok tracks all of your personal information. (Fox News)

America threw itself into space development out of fear that the Soviet Union was eating Americans’ lunch.

Or, maybe drinking their tang?

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In 1961, President John F. Kennedy observed that “If the Soviets control space, they control Earth.”

But things between the superpowers became more tense.

In 1960, the Soviet Union shot down a U-2 spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers. Moscow seizes Powers and combs through the wreckage to understand American technology. The Soviet Union sent Powers to prison. He served nearly two years before gaining his freedom in the Washington/Moscow prisoner exchange.

In fact, Eisenhower never disclosed the spying mission behind the U-2 aircraft. House Appropriations Committee Chairman Clarence Cannon, D-Mo. took care of it, giving the Eisenhower administration the shock of more to come.

Sound familiar?

There are many questions now about China’s recent air incursions.

On Saturday, February 4, a large Chinese spy balloon over the Atlantic Ocean, just off the coast of South Carolina, spotted a fighter jet and its contrail below it. (chad fish)

Why wasn’t it killed when it floated to the Aleutian Islands? Why didn’t the Canadians bring it down? What happens when it flows over Montana through Kansas and Missouri? Why bring it down from the shore into the water? Will salt water damage the equipment? Did the US jam the balloon to prevent it from sending information back to Beijing?

Such episodes are fraught with consequential, international danger. A wrong move during an international crisis can change the course of history.

In 1999, NATO accidentally bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade while trying to force Yugoslav forces to withdraw from Kosovo. Beijing claimed the bombing was deliberate.

In 2000, an American spy plane collided with a Chinese plane. The US aircraft made an emergency landing on Hainan Island in the South China Sea. The Chinese captured American soldiers – sparking a diplomatic row between the two countries. But the parties eventually resolved the volatile crisis without a blow.

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Each of these incidents shows how it doesn’t take long for a spark to ignite an international fire.

The U.S. is worried that China is farming in the Dakotas and building a “domestic” police station in New York City to keep U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, DN.Y. In Watch Citizens, relations between Washington and Beijing are “”strained.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (J. Scott Applewhite)

Innocent mistakes can plunge nations into quagmires like the Bay of Pigs or the Cuban Missile Crisis in the 1960s. That’s why there is concern about when and where the US shot down — or didn’t — the Chinese spy craft.

Small things start big problems.

After the balloon, the public is likely paying more attention to China now – although China could do more damage on a daily basis as people scroll through their phones.

But like Sputnik in the late 1950s, Americans are now paying more attention to China.

Whether it’s a threat from above or in the palm of their hand.