Expert warns TikTok is a 'Chinese Communist Party spy app'
Former DOD counterterrorism analyst Kara Frederick urges Americans to stop using TikTok amid growing concerns over the app's data collection.
Lawmakers and defense experts have sounded the alarm on the "massive" security threat posed by the popular social media app TikTok, whose parent company is owned by China. They are now urging Americans to get off the app over concerns of Chinese spying.
Kara Frederick, a former counterterrorism analyst for the Defense Department, issued a sobering warning against using TikTok on "Fox & Friends" Tuesday.
"We know that engineers in China can access Americans data when they use this platform," she told host Brian Kilmeade. "So there's no question it is a CCP, a Chinese Communist Party, spy app."
She explained that ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, has the ability to monitor individual users’ locations.
TikTok is among the most frequently downloaded social media apps worldwide, as well as in the United States — specifically among young users. (CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr recently called on lawmakers to outright ban TikTok in the U.S., arguing that there isn’t a way to create sufficient protection of the data to keep it out of the hands of the CCP.
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Frederick explained that TikTok garnered its massive following because of it's machine learning algorithm that curates content specific to individual users’ interests, a tool that other major social media platforms have not been able to replicate at the same level of success.
Democratic Sen. Mark Warner recently called TikTok an "enormous threat" and said parents should be very concerned about their children using the platform. In an interview on "Fox News Sunday," Warner went on to say that former President Trump was right to go after the China-owned app.
"All of that data that your child is inputting and receiving is being stored somewhere in Beijing," Warner said.
Frederick noted that parents reported 30% of pre-teens aged 9-11 use the app, a demographic that she argued is being targeted by Democratic politicians.
"They're so reflexively anti-Trump, because Trump had an executive order that said TikTok should not be born," she said, stating her position that lawmakers want to "court" the younger generation that is active on social media.
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"The Democratic Party wants those voters. So they're using this platform over and over again," she said. "They want political gain at the expense of US national security."
Fox News' Anders Hagstrom contributed to this report.
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