Fox News Airs Ad by China-Owned TikTok During GOP Primary Debate

Fox News aired an advertisement for the Chinese mobile phone application TikTok during its highly touted Republican primary debate Wednesday evening.

TikTok, a Chinese social media app, used its purchased air time to advertise its alleged ability to enhance the lives of veterans:

TikTok bought an Ad in the GOP Debate pic.twitter.com/NRqHonLbvR

— Brennan Murphy (@brenonade) August 24, 2023

“TikTok is a cancer on our society. It’s a tool to corrupt and indoctrinate our kids. It’s a propaganda and spy app for Communist China,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) wrote in an April op-ed on Breitbart News. “It needs to be banned, not just from all government devices, but from the entire United States.”As Breitbart News reported in 2022, TikTok confirmed that employees in China can access the personal data of U.S. users:

The CEO of TikTok parent company ByteDance, Shou Zi Chew, said in a June 30 letter that China-based employees who clear a number of internal security protocols can access certain information on U.S.-based TikTok users including public videos and comments. Chew claims that none of this information is shared with the Chinese government and is subject to “robust cybersecurity controls.”

The company claims that it is working on strengthening data security around sensitive information, including any that is defined as “protected” by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS). This new cybersecurity effort is called “Project Texas” and includes physically storing U.S. information in data centers on U.S. servers owned by Oracle Corp.

“TikTok’s response confirms our fears about the CCP’s [Chinese Communist Party] influence in the company were well founded,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) told Bloomberg. “The Chinese-run company should have come clean from the start, but it attempted to shroud its work in secrecy. Americans need to know if they are on TikTok, Communist China has their information.”

Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.