Who runs TikTok?

TikTok’s CEO is asking America to trust him to stand up to the Chinese Communist Party. Let’s not.

Desperate to avoid an imminent ban of the embattled Chinese video app, Shou Chew came to Washington to make the case that TikTok can be totally walled off from CCP manipulation. In the lead-up to his testimony Thursday before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Chew and the company waged a full-on influence campaign against Washington’s national security establishment, complete with implied threats, dubious promises, and TikTok influencers.

Before testifying, Chew recorded a TikTok video to inform U.S. politicians that more than 150 million Americans and 5 million American businesses use the app regularly, a not-so-subtle reminder to the upwardly mobile politician that banning the app would come at a political cost.

The message must have resonated with Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), who soon became Congress’ most prominent TikTok advocate. He later told NBC News that banning TikTok would hurt President Joe Biden’s re-election prospects because the president already struggles with young voters. Perhaps we should thank him for saying the quiet part out loud.

The same day, TikTok launched a new website to compile PR material for the “U.S. Data Security” subsidiary it has established to try to avoid a ban. It promises that TikTok parent company Bytedance is not a Chinese company but a “global company.”

TikTok and Shou Chew are making grandiose promises about engineering protection from the totalitarian reach of the CCP with complicated corporate structures and technical solutions. They’re urging Congress to look at the security protocols they’ve ostensibly put in place, to look at the popularity of their influencers, to look at the political consequences of crossing TikTok—to look anywhere but behind the curtain, where the CCP can always pull the strings.