The Lawfare Podcast: Why is Everyone Banning TikTok?

Wednesday, December 28, 2022, 12:00 PM

Published by The Lawfare Institute
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In the last few weeks, over a dozen U.S. states have banned TikTok from government devices, citing national security concerns. A similar bill was included in the omnibus spending bill, requiring the social media video app to be removed from the devices used by federal agencies. But addressing the concerns over how the Chinese government could coerce TikTok’s parent company to get access to Americans' data raises interesting questions about the existing data protection and privacy frameworks in the U.S.

To discuss what is going on, Lawfare’s Fellow in Technology Policy and Law Eugenia Lostri sat down with Caitlin Chin, a fellow with the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who has been closely following these developments. They discussed why TikTok is considered a national security threat to the United States, why a ban might not be the right solution to this problem, and her recommendations for what a comprehensive data protection framework should look like.

Jen Patja

Jen Patja is the editor and producer of the Lawfare Podcast and Rational Security. She currently serves as the Co-Executive Director of Virginia Civics, a nonprofit organization that empowers the next generation of leaders in Virginia by promoting constitutional literacy, critical thinking, and civic engagement. She is the former Deputy Director of the Robert H. Smith Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier and has been a freelance editor for over 20 years.

Eugenia Lostri

Eugenia Lostri is a Senior Editor at Lawfare. Prior to joining Lawfare, she was an Associate Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). She also worked for the Argentinian Secretariat for Strategic Affairs, and the City of Buenos Aires’ Undersecretary for International and Institutional Relations. She holds a law degree from the Universidad Católica Argentina, and an LLM in International Law from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.