To Tok or not to Tok
My opinions on the impending ban as a TikTok influencer who also studies national security
After a long day last weekend, I got comfortable in bed, breathed a deep sigh of relief, and took out my phone to begin my evening TikTok doom scroll wind down…only to find the app unavailable.
Now there are not that many national security decisions that affect the average American. But that Saturday, millions of Gen-Zers yelled at their phones in frustration with their peace broken by the looming TikTok ban.
The ban strikes a chord deep in my simultaneous values of preserving and elevating American national security and supporting free speech and expression.
As a sophomore at Stanford, I considered myself somewhat of a micro influencer on TikTok. I found myself inspired by the gold rush of hitting 100k views in 24 hours and became excited to share content about my Stanford life with a larger community.
At the same time, I’ve spent my entire undergrad at Stanford trying to understand how we apply technology to improve our national security and simultaneously secure the technology that puts our national security at risk. The problem of TikTok comes at the crux of my creativity and pragmatism and this isn’t the first time it has come up.
Two years ago I wrote an article (pre my Substack days) arguing against the TikTok ban. In short, I argued the ban should not be instated for 3 reasons: 1) there was no evidence of an immediate national security threat 2) the ban could be easily circumvented and 3) the ban was a political path for the deeper problem of a lack of federal data privacy.
Then and now, I tend to be skeptical of alarmism against any one threat—when the public is most scared is when we as individuals must think most critically.
However, in this article, I’d like to pull a Donald Trump and disagree with my former self. With more evidence and higher stakes, I do believe TikTok is a national security threat and in so has also begun to threaten our society’s capacity for true free speech. Here are the essential questions and answers I’ve developed:
🔒 Is TikTok a National security risk? Yes.
After completing coursework in China’s military history and authoritarian regimes, I now have a better understanding of how the regime interacts with its private companies. It’s actually pretty simple: it’s one and the same and empirical evidence supports this.
At the micro level, TikTok has mishandled user data. TikTok employees have put journalists at risk by misusing data, and have been storing creators’ financial information in Chinese data servers.
At the macro level, ByteDance in collaboration with the government is actively controlling an information ecosystem seen by 50 million Americans everyday. As described in the Supreme court brief, “ByteDance Ltd. is subject to Chinese laws that require it to ‘assist or cooperate’ with the Chinese Government’s ‘intelligence work’ and to ensure that the Chinese Government has ‘the power to access and control private data’ the company holds.” To this extent, reports have highlighted that the app’s algorithm has prioritized Chinese agendas and TikTok itself has acknowledged the information operations present on the app.
I learned from my Hacking for Defense project with US Central Command that the intelligence community lack an empirical way to understand how information on social media influences people’s behavior. But Jennifer Allen’s recent work on misinformation and Covid vaccines would suggest that all information, especially negative information, regardless of accuracy can directly influence individual action.
If we were to extend this learning to the future we could imagine the following scenarios:
The CCP could use personal information from powerful government officials and their relatives to conduct psychological operations: “Access to such detailed information about U. S. users, the Government worries, may enable "‘China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.’ 3 CFR 412” (TikTok Inc v Garland).
In the case of a kinetic war in Taiwan, the CCP could influence the algorithm to create false narratives around American sentiment around the war and therefore affect national security decisionmaking. Side note: There is definitely need for more research in understanding how exactly public opinion affects national security at different levels of government.
As TikTok becomes a larger source for news for more people, the CCP could also continue to push their narrative of “the east is rising and the west is declining” (which is completely false) to relevant investors to impact economic decisions. The DeepSeek fiasco of this weekend provides a prime example for potential CCP narrative manipulation.
🪄 Why is this a debate? The TikTok Magic
As the moves to RedNote demonstrated, the average American doesn’t seem to care that TikTok is a national security risk. And to be honest I don’t blame them. The federal government does not excel in demonstrating to Americans how national security impacts their everyday lives (the same applies especially to cybersecurity).
Despite all the risks of TikTok I described above, I also acknowledge that the app has built community.
As a TikTok user myself I’ve seen what makes the app special. The algorithm is in fact better than Instagram reels. I’ve found dance communities I never thought of and even wrote a paper about how much I’ve learned about South Asian cooking via TikTok. While millennials shared squares on Instagram, Gen Z built culture on TikTok. During Covid it encouraged us to make creative videos with our families, learn small dances with friends, and united us in shared meme-ry and laughter. While Instagram and Youtube elevated verified voices, TikTok gave anyone the chance to be famous (even a random Stanford NARP). In some ways it became the most active form of social media—rather than comparing yourself to your peers, young people spent their time learning niche things, sending ideas to friends, and creating.
☀️ Now what? An opportunity
I do think TikTok will inevitably be banned given its threat to national security. To be fair, for all the magic of TikTok there have certainly been perverse and unintended consequences. Like any scrolling app, I fear my brain (and those of my peers) is rotting, our generation is becoming more anxious, and anonymity breeds cruelty.
Now in theory, less social media could be great for our generation but I believe in pragmatic rather than idealistic approaches. I hypothesize that upon a ban, Generation Z will not use their doom scroll time to let’s say ~read~ but will instead just switch to another app. The question is: which one?
The winner of these consumers seems to be Instagram reels. But from a design perspective, Instagram has overly diffused its features (bring us back to the simple grid please) and suffers not just from an inferior algorithm to TikTok but also low quality content. In fact, half of the Instagram reels content is TikTok content reposted weeks later.
Now, I think a company like Meta with the right content could develop an algorithm on par with TikTok’s. But on a more fundamental level, I don’t know if I trust Mark Zuckerberg to manage 50 million+ Americans’ nightly scrolls that much more than the CCP.
We need platform diversification for true free expression. And although I’m skeptical of any young entrepreneur who claims to have the next big thing in consumer social, I think the banning of a TikTok does provide a unique window of opportunity.
So this is my call for an American, Gen-Z led type of platform that can harness the creativity, humor, and viral nature of TikTok while also perhaps implementing the trust and safety policies the app lacked. To the up and coming Evan Spiegels—now could be your time. I only hope you’ve learned from the successes and failures of the behemoths who came before you.
Until then, see you on instagram reels.
—DG