Former Senior Obama Advisor Claims GOP Concerns Over TikTok ‘Bad Faith’

Dan Pfeiffer, former senior advisor to Barack Obama, has condemned Republicans for trying to ban TikTok, a social media app from China that has raised concerns about national security.

Pfeiffer took to Twitter on March 24, writing “The Republicans see the issue as a win-win. If Biden doesn’t ban TikTok, they can paint him as soft on China. If Biden does ban TikTok, he risks alienating the young voters who put him over the top in 2020. Per usual from the GOP, it’s bad faith BS.”

The day before Pfeiffer’s statement, TikTok CEO Chew Shou Zi testified before a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing. However, lawmakers were unsatisfied with the assurances given by Chew that TikTok would not pose a national security risk, given that it is owned by China-based parent company ByteDance.

During the hearing, congressman Bob Latta (R-Ohio) asked Chew if ByteDance’s engineers could access Americans’ user data. Chew did not provide a straightforward answer in response, instead stating that it was a “complex topic.”

Chew claimed that the company’s initiative “Project Texas” would eventually transfer all U.S. user data to Oracle-based cloud infrastructure in the United States.

Following Chew’s testimony, John Kirby, the National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, stated that the United States has “legitimate national security concerns” about TikTok.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) also commented on the issue one day after Pfeiffer, stating her opposition to banning TikTok.

“Do I believe TikTok should be banned? No. Why should TikTok not be banned?

“I think it’s important to discuss how unprecedented of a move this would be,” she continued. “The United States has never before banned a social media company from existence, from operating in our borders, and this is an app that has over 150 million Americans on it.”

Ocasio-Cortez also said that concerns about China’s surveillance of Americans were not the real issue.

“So to me, the solution here is to actually protect Americans from this kind of egregious data harvesting, that companies can do without your significant ability to say no,” she said. “The solution is not to ban an individual company.”

Last week, Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), and Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) held a joint press conference with TikTok influencers against banning the Chinese social media app.

“Big tech needs to be regulated to protect Americans’ data and privacy, but banning apps and limiting our freedom of expression is not the answer,” said Garcia on Twitter a day after the conference.

Democrat Response

However, some Democrats are in favor of banning TikTok.

Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) tweeted on March 23, “Anyone defending @tiktok_us is either too caught up in being a social media celebrity or they’ve been brainwashed by the Chinese government’s propaganda. Both put our national security at risk. We need to ban TikTok or force the sale of its U.S. operations to an American company.”

“We know that the Chinese government views the U.S. as an enemy, we know that they are actively trying to spy on us and compromise our critical infrastructure, and we know that TikTok gives them access to millions of Americans’ data,” he added. “China can control what our kids see and consume.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) tweeted on March 24, “TikTok isn’t just an innocent app for viral videos. It’s a threat to our democracy. We can’t ban it soon enough.”

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), ranking member of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, told ABC that Chew’s testimony “created more concerns.”

“Project Texas is a mess,” Krishnamoorthi said. “There are whistleblowers coming forward saying that whatever the TikTok management is saying about Project Texas is a pack of lies, and that even when they erected this firewall, supposed firewall with regard to data of American users, these Chinese employees of ByteDance, the parent company, were able to spy on American journalists.”

“We have to recognize that while TikTok is another social media app and we have a generalized concern about these social media apps, it’s different in kind from any other social media app because its parent company is beholden to the Chinese Communist Party.”

Currently, TikTok has already been banned by the federal and several state governments from government devices.