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Speaker 1: Well, we know that the tiktop app is a very

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Speaker 1: popular Here's a question, are U S military members creating

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Speaker 1: a national security risk by using the social media service? Well,

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Speaker 1: according to Brendan Carr, a Republican member of the s

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Speaker 1: E f c C, I should say the answer is

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Speaker 1: definitely yes. We want to take a closer look at

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Speaker 1: the story now with Bloomberg's Alexandra Barrinka, who is our

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Speaker 1: social media reporter based in Los Angeles. Alexandra, thanks for

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Speaker 1: being with us. Provide some context to begin with. How

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Speaker 1: do we get here? Of course, so this is part

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Speaker 1: of kind of an ongoing spat that TikTok seems to

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Speaker 1: be in with lawmakers and officials in the US government.

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Speaker 1: A few weeks ago, there was this big report at

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Speaker 1: a bus feed basically UM prompting TikTok to make an

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Speaker 1: admission to U S senator saying, look, some data does

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Speaker 1: go to Chinese employees. Um, we are trying to answer

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Speaker 1: your questions on data privacy. We are working with the

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Speaker 1: National security arm of the government to court and off

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Speaker 1: us add up, these ongoing questions keep coming from US

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Speaker 1: lawmakers and officials saying, hey, look, you are owned by

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Speaker 1: a Chinese parent company, is US users data safe? Very recently,

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Speaker 1: Brendan carr Um this gentleman you mentioned, he's a Republican

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Speaker 1: member of the SEC. He has really been sounding off

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Speaker 1: on things like asking Apple and Google to take the

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Speaker 1: app out of the app store over privacy concerns. And

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Speaker 1: then today you saw him in this meeting on a

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Speaker 1: bit of a different subject on on protecting UM military

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Speaker 1: people and UM veterans from scams. You saw him show

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Speaker 1: up and kind of sound off on TikTok again. So

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Speaker 1: he is really leaning into this UM question of you know,

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Speaker 1: just TikTok give data to Chinese employees to the Chinese government,

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Speaker 1: which the company, for its part, has unequivalently said no,

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Speaker 1: we do not turn over data to the Chinese government.

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Speaker 1: It's interesting that we're not just talking about content, are we.

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Speaker 1: I think location services are another concern right right, And

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Speaker 1: that's what um car was really bringing up today. If

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Speaker 1: you're on the app, you might have seen there's this

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Speaker 1: viral TikTok trend where service members in UM us UM

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Speaker 1: Military are posting basically UM you know, house stores of

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Speaker 1: the barracks with audio and video of where they're spending

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Speaker 1: their time overseas on location and there he's calling into

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Speaker 1: question whether or not UM the the app itself is

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Speaker 1: collecting location data and what is doing with that location data. Now,

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Speaker 1: the company hasn't gone on the record with anything. The

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Speaker 1: company came back today saying, you know, we they look

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Speaker 1: forward to briefing his staff on how they're keeping US

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Speaker 1: data secure. UM, but that location data is absolutely something

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Speaker 1: that car is calling to question this week. You know,

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Speaker 1: during the Trump administration, there was a lot of concern

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Speaker 1: about these very issues, wasn't there and was there a

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Speaker 1: resolution at that point? There was, so if you'll remember, UM,

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Speaker 1: he was the the app was a target of former

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Speaker 1: President Donald Trump. He tried to ban the app and

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Speaker 1: force his parent company called byte Dance, to sell TikTok

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Speaker 1: the US business over what he claimed were security risk.

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Speaker 1: That action was challenging court. Biden finally revoked the ban

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Speaker 1: in June. But it seems like some lawmakers UM are

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Speaker 1: not ready to drop the issue. And when you think

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Speaker 1: about the context of this app, I mean U S

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Speaker 1: consumers UM, according to some researchers, are spending as much

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Speaker 1: time on TikTok as they are on Facebook and Instagram combined.

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Speaker 1: So you can kind of see the scope of the

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Speaker 1: interest in an app whose parent company is in China

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Speaker 1: and who the previous presidential administration did, uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: hold quite the magnifying glass over So do you think

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Speaker 1: Mr Carr is in the process of getting a little

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Speaker 1: bit more momentum behind him, particularly among members of Congress.

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Speaker 1: He certainly is trying. I can say that last week, Um,

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Speaker 1: there were actually folks on both sides of the Aisle

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Speaker 1: um in in on the congressional side, coming out and saying, hey,

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Speaker 1: we're interested in these questions. The thing I will flag though,

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Speaker 1: is UM, as a member of the SEC and the

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Speaker 1: minority party in the FCC, he actually doesn't have the

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Speaker 1: power to say, force Google and Apple to pull the

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Speaker 1: app off of the app stores. So right now, that

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Speaker 1: momentum that you're speaking about, that being vocal and trying

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Speaker 1: to kind of rally folks around this idea seems to

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Speaker 1: be his kind of best tool in his toolbox here

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Speaker 1: if he wants to Alex kind of change to bring

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Speaker 1: it off. Good stuff. Alex Barrinka from Bloomberg