Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., says former President Donald Trump “was right” to go after the China-owned videosharing app TikTok.
Warner made the comments during an appearance on Fox News Sunday, telling host Shannon Bream that the app represents a major threat to Americans’ privacy. He also warned parents against allowing their children to download the app on their phones.
“Well, I think Donald Trump was right. I mean, TikTok is an enormous threat,” Warner told Bream. “So if you’re a parent, and you’ve got a kid on tik tok, I would be very, very concerned. All of that data that your child is inputting and receiving is being stored somewhere in Beijing.”
Warner is only the most recent in a series of U.S. politicians and officials to call for a crackdown on TikTok. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr called on regulators to ban the app in the U.S., and FBI Director Christopher Wray warned that it contributes to China’s status at the number one theft of U.S. data in the world.
“China’s vast hacking program is the world’s largest, and they have stolen more Americans’ personal and business data than every other nation combined,” Wray told lawmakers last week, adding specifically of TikTok: “[Dangers] include the possibility that the Chinese government could use it to control data collection on millions of users or control the recommendation algorithm, which could be used for influence operations if they so chose or to control software on millions of devices, which gives the opportunity to potentially tactically compromised personal devices.”
STUDY FINDS 10% OF US ADULTS USE TIKTOK TO GET THEIR NEWS REGULARLY, UP FROM 3% IN 2020
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) speaks during an oversight hearing with the Senate Rules and Administration in the Russell Senate Office Building on December 07, 2021, in Washington, DC.
((Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images))
Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Hilton…
