Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA) said during an interview on Sunday that top U.S. officials fear that the Chinese-government-controlled app TikTok is being used as a “propaganda channel” by the Chinese Community Party and that it could have severe implications in the U.S.
Warner made the remarks during a Sunday CBS News interview on “Face The Nation” with host Margaret Brennan when asked about combatting Chinese influences in the U.S., including their use of artificial intelligence and social media.
Warner said that it was important for the U.S. to not only focus on TikTok but on “all foreign technology that might pose” a national security threat.
He said that legislation he introduced on the issue needed to move forward because “literally 40 percent of young people get all their news from TikTok.”
“This technology competition, we’ve had military competitors like Russia,” he said. “We’ve never had an economy that’s making the investments the way China is in these new technology domains.”
Warner said he feared TikTok “could be used as a propaganda channel for the CCP, the Communist Party of China.”
TikTok has faced growing calls from U.S. lawmakers to be banned because it is allegedly boosting heavily anti-Semitic content on its platform that has distorted the reality of what is happening with Israel’s war against Hamas. The content on TikTok matches the stances of China’s communist government, which has criticized Israel and refused to condemn Hamas after it murdered 1,200 people in Israel, wounded 5,300+, and took more than 240 people hostage.
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“But around artificial intelligence where I think we need to be humble because candidly we’ve done nothing on any guardrails on social media and on technology writ large,” Warner added. “The two areas where artificial intelligence could have an enormous negative effect tomorrow is interfering in our public elections, but it also could have a tool in terms of interfering in our public markets.”
Warning about how AI could be used for election interference in 2024, @MarkWarner says Congress has “done nothing on any guardrails on social media and on technology writ large,” and that AI “could have an enormous negative effect tomorrow” in elections and public markets. pic.twitter.com/owL9BYjYb0
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) November 12, 2023
Related: ‘Think Again’: Rubio Warns Americans Against TikTok, Wants It Banned
