Donald Trump Jr. has sounded the call for Congress to issue a wholesale ban on the Chinese-controlled TikTok app from the United States and take it an additional step further by pushing through new “hardcore” legislation which would block any and all social media companies from letting any private data connected with a U.S. citizen all into the control of the Chinese Communist Party.
The comments from Trump Jr. seem to have been made in the wake of a large bipartisan group of senators bringing up this week the Risk Information and Communications Technology (RESTRICT) Act, which would let the U.S. issue a ban against Tik Tok and subsequently take action against any and all foreign adversaries. The legislation fully empowers the Department of Commerce to prevent, review, and mitigate information communications and technology (ICT) transactions that seemingly pose an extreme risk to U.S. economic and national security.
“We’ve got to figure this TikTok thing out,” explained Trump Jr. in a recent statement to the outlet The Daily Wire. “But I got to thinking, well hold on just a second, a lot of these social media companies have China issues and if we’re going to do something here, it needs to apply to all of them.”
Trump Jr.’s comments to the outlet were issued in the wake of his public call to Congress to begin taking action to stop additional social media companies from letting the user data of U.S. citizens fall into the hands of the CCP.
“While we’re going hardcore on TikTok regulations, how about NO American data flowing through China for ANY social media company?!” explained Trump Jr. in a social media post. “No letting Facebook, IG, Twitter or anyone else off the hook for data security and privacy in whatever ends up happening.”
While we’re going hardcore on TikTok regulations, how about NO American data flowing through China for ANY social media company?! No letting Facebook, IG, Twitter or anyone else off the hook for data security and privacy in whatever ends up happening. pic.twitter.com/Tppke4NrhO
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) March 7, 2023
David Feith, deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, and Matt Pottinger, deputy national security adviser, — a pair of former Trump administration officials — authored a piece for The New York Times toward the end of 2021 which explained that Chinese communist dictator Xi Jinping has been attempting to turn the Chinese Communist Party into “the world’s most powerful data broker.”
They went on to explain that Beijing is starting to act in a manner labeled as hyper-aggressive in an attempt to accomplish this goal by “exerting new extraterritorial power over global data flows and putting foreign companies operating in China in a legal bind — all while absorbing other countries’ data by means licit and illicit.”
When U.S.-based social media titans, such as Facebook, refuse to hand over their user data to China, China is making use of a highly sophisticated internal internet-data surveillance network to mine social media platforms as a means “to equip its government agencies, military and police with information on foreign target,” concluded the Washington Post.
