Op-ed: If Trump reverses TikTok ban, donors win and U.S. national security loses

Not true Stan. Our number one physical immediate threat to national security is the influx of undocumented and unchecked illegal immigrants. He was stopping that and will again. The current admin cares absolutely nothing about national security and will sell us out for kindergarten paintings.

Lt Col Scott Shuttleworth - As usual I disagree with your opinion, but that's OK. Have a nice day.

MSG Stan Hutchison - You as well

I agree with that, and find it strange that is not already the case.

SGT Mary G. - This has been a political hot potato in which neither side has been 100% consistent on, other than the experts in the Intelligence and cybersecurity communities have been pointing out since before 2016. The Intelligence community and the reporting coming from cyber reverse engineers on the Tik Tok App, has been released to the rest of the world for quite some time. Put simply, it's malware, China owns it, and I have no confidence the US side of TikTok is preventing Chinese state actors from accessing it and influencing it. TikTok provides more than just a means to influence people and push disinformation. It can also serve as a collection asset beyond the application itself using your device for various capabilities found in most cyber threat actor's tool kits. Thinking of it simply as a means to deny accurate information to people while pushing your own is only scraping the surface here. But this is still a relevant issue regardless of whether the election is over or not. Influence operations are not executed over a period of months, but rather years. We know all too well that there is a significant number of people around the world that receive a majority of their news from social media and much of that is TikTok as the sole means. This is why I am a huge proponent for keeping information un restricted because this is how you counter false information. TikTok has the means and has been observed controlling information.

So, to be clear, I was for dealing with them when Trump was in 2016 and the Democrats weren't, I was for dealing with them when several Democrats started realizing there is a concern, and I am for dealing with them now as everyone continues to flip depending on what the other party is saying and/or doners are saying. For God's sake people, see the threat for what it is and do something about it. It has been banned in my home and on all devices under my control at home. That did not sit well with my daughter originally, but she has learned why it is important since and now agrees (funny how they get smarter when they navigate the teenage years into adulthood).