FBI director calls TikTok the best tool for Chinese Internet espionage

During a recent speech to University of Michigan students, FBI Director Christopher Wray called TikTok an extremely dangerous, yet very effective tool for Chinese intelligence agencies. Although the app is formally owned by the private company ByteDance, its potential to control users is extremely tempting.

Officially, Ray pointed to only one specific dangerous aspect of TikTok: the recommendation system, which can be used as an effective tool for manipulating information. The service can also be used for influence operations and personal data collection, but that is a sin of all social networks and many other applications. But TikTok has one of the largest and most active audiences – about 80 million users in the United States and more than a billion worldwide.

The head of the FBI has openly stated that as long as Washington has no control over TikTok, its activity will pose a threat to U.S. national security. China does not share American values, so many American politicians are demanding that TikTok be banned in the United States. The alternative is to fundamentally change its algorithms so that the main traffic goes through American servers, where intelligence agencies can control it.