Speaker 1: In recent years, Chinese hackers have stolen information from Americans
Speaker 1: in some major heists. Marriotts just experience one of the
Speaker 1: largest data breaches ever, affecting half a billion of its customers.
Speaker 1: We're talking about email addresses, date of birth. So what
Speaker 1: exactly does that hack mean for you? Equifax is a
Speaker 1: consumer monitoring company. It's reported this gigantic cyber breach, and
Speaker 1: we mean gigantic. We don't know exactly what these hackers
Speaker 1: want with this information, but clearly they wanted it badly
Speaker 1: enough to steal it. We spoke to Claudia being Catty.
Speaker 1: I am an economist. I was working on cyber security
Speaker 1: in the financial sector. She specializes in these kinds of
Speaker 1: cyber attacks, and one day she got an idea. What
Speaker 1: if these governments didn't have to hack into the databases
Speaker 1: or do something illegal to get people's personal information. What
Speaker 1: if they just invented an addictive app that was fun
Speaker 1: to use that people would willingly hand over their information to.
Speaker 1: I started to worry about what my look like a
Speaker 1: perfectly legal activity, like any app that collects data, could
Speaker 1: be a conduit for sending data to a hostile government.
Speaker 1: And then she heard about TikTok. So I was reading
Speaker 1: a lot of news about TikTok, this new Chinese social
Speaker 1: app that had times of minions of downloads and was
Speaker 1: stopping the charts. So there you had it. The Chinese
Speaker 1: government had the possibility of requesting personal data from location,
Speaker 1: behavioral data, photo identification through the TikTok videos, or millions
Speaker 1: of people overseas without even needing to carry out a
Speaker 1: cyber attack. It looked to me that this was extremely dangerous.
Speaker 1: So she wrote a paper where she wore Western governments
Speaker 1: that ignoring TikTok could be disastrous, that TikTok could be
Speaker 1: used for sp manage and to manipulate public opinion. Claudia
Speaker 1: says that what really cut her eye were videos of
Speaker 1: U S soldiers on TikTok. Many of them are teenagers
Speaker 1: using TikTok for fun. They did push up contests, they
Speaker 1: made dance videos. Oh sorghe were you in the Marine Corps? Yeah?
Speaker 1: A question question, but dare you kill? But Claudia saw
Speaker 1: a big national security problem. The so called military TikTok
Speaker 1: was distinct a subgroup of users, quite successful as an
Speaker 1: app for very young recruits, find the bad guys and
Speaker 1: of course, not all of these very young soldiers were
Speaker 1: aware of the fact that they were potentially sending data
Speaker 1: to China. And of course you really don't want this
Speaker 1: data to be disclosed to any private company. But of
Speaker 1: course it's even worse if you're doing that with a
Speaker 1: with a feign country. You're listening to Foundering, I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Shelley Banjo. Up until now, we've been telling you all
Speaker 1: about the rise of TikTok and how an app from
Speaker 1: China hit it big on the world stage for the
Speaker 1: first time ever. But TikTok's fortunes were changing quickly. By
Speaker 1: the company would find itself a target of US politicians,
Speaker 1: security experts, even Black Lives Matter activists. Many of the
Speaker 1: fears about TikTok came down to politics. TikTok's owner, Byte Dance,
Speaker 1: is a Chinese company. Critics feared any tech company from China,
Speaker 1: especially one built on such advanced AI technology, because it
Speaker 1: could mean that very personal data of Americans could wind
Speaker 1: up in the hands of the Chinese government, and that
Speaker 1: Chinese style censorship could mold a generation of young, politically
Speaker 1: savvy Americans. These fears reached a fever pitch and threatened
Speaker 1: to take the whole company down. We'll tell you more
Speaker 1: after this break. By now, most of us are resigned
Speaker 1: to the fact that tech companies are tracking our every
Speaker 1: move um At this point, I feel like I've been
Speaker 1: on social media. I grew up around computers and phones.
Speaker 1: I'm actually not that upset about my data being like
Speaker 1: quote unquote stolen, are being sold because I understand, like
Speaker 1: we live in a in an age where technology knows
Speaker 1: everything about you, Like that's kind of a given. That's
Speaker 1: Mila Delatre, She's nineteen. She was kind enough to step
Speaker 1: in as our teenager in residence. I think I'm just
Speaker 1: so used to like, Oh, Facebook's watching you, Instagram's watching you,
Speaker 1: Like all your ads are so directed towards you because
Speaker 1: they read your text. So then what's the big deal
Speaker 1: about TikTok. It's just another tech company, right, except that
Speaker 1: it's owned by a company in China. And in China,
Speaker 1: all companies are required by law to hand over any
Speaker 1: information the government asks for. This isn't just some hypothetical fear.
Speaker 1: About twenty years ago, Yahoo gave the Chinese government information
Speaker 1: about someone posting online about democracy. The guy was sentenced
Speaker 1: to a decade in prison. So far, there's no indication
Speaker 1: this is happening with TikTok. A company spokesperson told me
Speaker 1: that people in China can't use TikTok. There's a separate
Speaker 1: Chinese version, and TikTok's data is stored in the US
Speaker 1: and Singapore. So the company says that American data isn't
Speaker 1: readily available to China. But still, the laws in China
Speaker 1: put TikTok in a tricky position. They can swear up
Speaker 1: and down that they're not handing over data to the
Speaker 1: Chinese government, but it's impossible to prove something is not
Speaker 1: happening or that it won't happen in the future. Here's Claudia,
Speaker 1: What I actually believe is that they have no way
Speaker 1: to prove that they are in a position to say
Speaker 1: not to the Chinese government. So I might believe that
Speaker 1: they want to, I actually have no grounds on which
Speaker 1: to believe they can. If the controversy around TikTok seems
Speaker 1: over the top, it's because in many ways, TikTok became
Speaker 1: a symbol for a deeper conflict. Donald Trump rose to
Speaker 1: power by blaming a lot of America's problems on China.
Speaker 1: As president, he sparked in nasty trade war and a
Speaker 1: campaign against China's most high profile targets. It's tech giants,
Speaker 1: including bitte Dance, TikTok's parent company. So when Claudia being
Speaker 1: Cotti's paper came out saying that TikTok is the Chinese
Speaker 1: company we need to worry about, its set off a frenzy.
Speaker 1: The US, UK, Australian and Indian governments all started investigating TikTok.
Speaker 1: The U S military banned their members from using the platform,
Speaker 1: a number of users sued the app, and all these
Speaker 1: accusations started flying around about TikTok and their Chinese founders.
Speaker 1: TikTok pushed back at these accusations, but many powerful people
Speaker 1: just didn't believe them. Here Senator Marco Rubio, he's one
Speaker 1: of TikTok's earliest and loudest critics. All these companies will
Speaker 1: tell you the same thing. We don't turn over data.
Speaker 1: It is the law in China that you turn over
Speaker 1: data when they ask you for it. And all the
Speaker 1: engineers that work for byte Dance that ultimately have the
Speaker 1: keys to to whatever it is they're storing in the US,
Speaker 1: if they want that data, they can get it. I
Speaker 1: spoke to Marco Rubio after he asked for a formal
Speaker 1: investigation into TikTok from a government committee called SIPHIAS. SIPHIAS
Speaker 1: stands for the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US.
Speaker 1: So if you're an American business and you want to
Speaker 1: make a deal with a company from say China or Poland,
Speaker 1: then SIPHIUS might look at your deal to see if
Speaker 1: there are any risks to national security. But usually they
Speaker 1: focus on deals involving stuff like nuclear power, not social networks.
Speaker 1: So Bye Dances CEO John Ming never thought he needed
Speaker 1: to get approval from SIPHIUS. Plus, when Bye Dance bought
Speaker 1: musically and folded the app into TikTok, this was one
Speaker 1: Chinese company buying another Chinese company, so it was a
Speaker 1: big surprise. When Syphia started investigating TikTok, they said TikTok
Speaker 1: had such a big base of American users that it
Speaker 1: warranted review. The investigation caught TikTok off guard, and it
Speaker 1: also caught Senator Rubio into some trouble at home with
Speaker 1: his teenage sons. Just laughing, I put something out on
Speaker 1: Instagram like a month and a half ago about if
Speaker 1: you want your all your data going to China, leave
Speaker 1: your kids on TikTok. So parents at the school al
Speaker 1: saw and make their kids delete TikTok, and so now
Speaker 1: the kids are kind of upset at my kids because
Speaker 1: of me putting that out there and that sort of deal.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty funny situation, but it also speaks to
Speaker 1: how hard it is to make kids get rid of
Speaker 1: the app. Even Marco Rubio could hardly do it. After
Speaker 1: Rubio started talking about TikTok, other u S lawmakers piled on.
Speaker 1: Democrats and Republicans united in the push against TikTok. Senators
Speaker 1: Chuck Schumer and Tom Cotton asked for a national security review,
Speaker 1: and Senator Josh Holly pass legislation to ban all you
Speaker 1: as federal employees from downloading TikTok. We interviewed Holly back
Speaker 1: in September. This was months before he stoked election conspiracies
Speaker 1: that inspired the deadly riot on Capitol Hill. Well, TikTok,
Speaker 1: as I think, in a uniquely invasive app. In many ways,
Speaker 1: there is no reason TikTok needs to collect key strokes.
Speaker 1: There's no reason that TikTok or any other app like
Speaker 1: that needs to have access to your contact list. To
Speaker 1: your text messages, to your browsing history, your location history,
Speaker 1: none of that. To Holly, giving data to TikTok was
Speaker 1: the equivalent of giving it straight to the Chinese Communist Party.
Speaker 1: Bye Dance has Chinese Communist Party members as part of
Speaker 1: its executive leadership structure, and we know that Byte Dance
Speaker 1: actually pledged publicly to Beijing that they would be good citizens,
Speaker 1: uh good you know, communists, and would allow the Chinese
Speaker 1: Communist Party access to to Bite Dance leadership. Again, there's
Speaker 1: no indication that TikTok has passed along American data to
Speaker 1: the Chinese government. But anti TikTok sentiment was building, and
Speaker 1: there was one person in particular who was cheering Facebook's
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg for years. Zuckerberg saw TikTok grow, becoming a
Speaker 1: major competitor, drawing people away from Facebook and Instagram. So
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg decides to issue his own warning to Washington. He
Speaker 1: had been called up to Congress to defend accusations that
Speaker 1: Facebook had gotten too big. Instead, he uses as his
Speaker 1: chance to deflect attention to China. Here Senator Dan Sullivan
Speaker 1: from Alaska questioning Zuckerberg. Mr. Zuckerberg, Quite a story, right,
Speaker 1: dorm room to the global behemoth that you guys are
Speaker 1: only in America. Would you agree with that, Senator, mostly
Speaker 1: in America and you couldn't do this in China, right
Speaker 1: or what you did in years? Well, Senator, there are
Speaker 1: there are some very strong Chinese internet companies, right, But
Speaker 1: you're supposed to answer yes to this question. Okay, come on,
Speaker 1: trying to help you, right, I mean, give me a break.
Speaker 1: The answer is yes, okay, so thank you. Um. The
Speaker 1: senators are all laughing, but Suckerberg is looking ahead, barely
Speaker 1: blinking with a super straight face. Because Suckerberg came before
Speaker 1: Congress with very specific talking points that Chinese internet companies
Speaker 1: like TikTok needed to be stopped. He says the issue
Speaker 1: is bigger than Facebook and that the rise of China's
Speaker 1: tech companies were huge threat to America. Is face. One
Speaker 1: of the key issues here is Facebook too powerful? Are
Speaker 1: you too powerful? And do you think you're too powerful? Well?
Speaker 1: I think most of the time when people talk about
Speaker 1: our scale, they're referencing that we have two billion people
Speaker 1: in our community. And I think one of the big
Speaker 1: questions that we need to think through here is the
Speaker 1: vast majority of those two billion people are outside of
Speaker 1: the US, and I think that that's something that, to
Speaker 1: your point, that Americans should be proud of. And when
Speaker 1: I brought up the Chinese internet companies, I think that
Speaker 1: that's a real, a real strategic and competitive threat that
Speaker 1: in in American technology. We can see another thing here
Speaker 1: real quick, I want to I don't want to interrupt,
Speaker 1: but this was a huge one eight for Zuckerberg. He
Speaker 1: spent years trying to get into the good graces of
Speaker 1: the Chinese government because Facebook was banned in China. He
Speaker 1: learned Mandarin and bragged about speaking to China's president Shi Jimping.
Speaker 1: He was so confident about winning China over, but none
Speaker 1: of it worked, and Zuckerberg eventually gave up. He shifted gears,
Speaker 1: and China became the enemy. In a later speech at
Speaker 1: Georgetown University, Zuckerberg named TikTok directly. While our services like
Speaker 1: WhatsApp are used by protesters and activists due to strong
Speaker 1: encryption privacy protections on TikTok, the Chinese app growing quickly
Speaker 1: around the world, mentions of these same protests are censored
Speaker 1: even here in the US. Is that the internet that
Speaker 1: we want? We'll be right back TikTok has been haunted
Speaker 1: by the question of what they're doing with all the
Speaker 1: data they collect. The media, regulators, world leaders, and even
Speaker 1: TikTok users won't let up. I spoke to John Boyd Bolton,
Speaker 1: a former Bite Dance employee. We heard from him in
Speaker 1: a previous episode. Well, I mean it's upsetting for me
Speaker 1: because I know them. I have friends that work there,
Speaker 1: and you know this could hurt them. Um, I really
Speaker 1: don't think there's a national security threat. I just because
Speaker 1: of the way I know Yimming and that team. They're
Speaker 1: really trying to build a great company. And I don't
Speaker 1: think they're a national security threat. I don't. I don't that.
Speaker 1: I think there's other things at play here. John told
Speaker 1: me the investigations around TikTok seemed politically motivated. He worked
Speaker 1: with By Dances CEO John ki Ming, and he just
Speaker 1: felt that Eaming worked too hard to put his business
Speaker 1: in danger. China would totally compromise them if they did that,
Speaker 1: and I don't think China wants to do that. I
Speaker 1: think they're smart to know, like, yeah, let's this is
Speaker 1: the first real Chinese tech company to be successful outside
Speaker 1: of the Chinese borders, particularly in America. I think, what
Speaker 1: kind of user data are they going to get that
Speaker 1: actually helps them do anything. You can hear the sympathy
Speaker 1: in John's voice for Yu Ming. John helped Eming buy
Speaker 1: up US startups. It was part of Ming's grand plan
Speaker 1: to achieve his dream of becoming the first consumer tech
Speaker 1: company from China to make it bigg around the world.
Speaker 1: The great irony is that once Eeming succeeded at becoming
Speaker 1: a history making CEO, the American politicians were saying, whoa
Speaker 1: wait a second, we don't want a Chinese guy to
Speaker 1: run the most popular app in America. So by the
Speaker 1: end of twenty nineteen, you mean came up with a
Speaker 1: new idea. He decides to rebrand TikTok as an American
Speaker 1: company instead, and Jiman puts a lot of money into it.
Speaker 1: He ramps up hiring in the US and puts a
Speaker 1: bunch of Washington lobbyists on salary. He moves TikTok's content
Speaker 1: moderation out of China, and he tells his team in
Speaker 1: Beijing he wants a major revamp. Should we set up
Speaker 1: TikTok's global headquarters outside of China? Should we sell a
Speaker 1: stake in the company to an American investor, should we
Speaker 1: do an IPO in New York. It was all on
Speaker 1: the table, and there was one more PR push I
Speaker 1: thought was pretty funny. Like a lot of companies, TikTok
Speaker 1: is incorporated in the Cayman Islands. But TikTok started saying
Speaker 1: they were based in the Cayman Islands, even though they
Speaker 1: had few, if any employees there, and their PR team
Speaker 1: starts calling up journalists, including me and my colleagues and
Speaker 1: chewing us out when we called TikTok a Chinese company.
Speaker 1: Any So, in November, TikTok agrees to sit down interview
Speaker 1: with The New York Times. But even though John ki
Speaker 1: Ming is the big boss in Beijing, TikTok sent Musically's
Speaker 1: founder Alex jew Alex was back. He had taken a
Speaker 1: few months off after the big TikTok launch in the US,
Speaker 1: but Eming asked him to return. Ray John, the New
Speaker 1: York Times reporter who wrote the story, said it was
Speaker 1: the first time anyone was able to get Alex on
Speaker 1: the record to answer the question that was on everyone's mind.
Speaker 1: I asked very directly, if Seating Ping approached you, Alex
Speaker 1: drew and asked for asked you to collect data on Americans?
Speaker 1: What would you do? And he and he sort of
Speaker 1: said I would turn him down. He's just really immediately answered,
Speaker 1: didn't really even take take a moment to think about it.
Speaker 1: It seems like a cut and dry response from Alex. Right,
Speaker 1: of course, TikTok wouldn't share data with the Chinese government,
Speaker 1: And isn't this what Americans wanted to hear? But it
Speaker 1: Race says, the response from Alex totally backfired. Many people
Speaker 1: simply didn't believe him, and the interview just raised more questions. Yeah, ultimately,
Speaker 1: maybe it's just because he's not eating he's not the
Speaker 1: absolute head of the company. He's not you know, he
Speaker 1: is ultimately still reporting to Eaming and he he's only
Speaker 1: in charge of TikTok, and maybe he could say um uh.
Speaker 1: Even if I say no, Eming might still love to
Speaker 1: say yes. And in fact, I think the next thing
Speaker 1: Alex said after I asked the question was but I
Speaker 1: don't think cheating p would ever ask me Um to
Speaker 1: do those things. And I don't know if he meant
Speaker 1: that in the sense that he would know cheating would
Speaker 1: never approach me. Lowly, Alex drew Um to ask for
Speaker 1: such things, or if he meant that cheating Pie would
Speaker 1: never want data on Americans. I'm not sure. Even though
Speaker 1: Alex was in charge of Tiktokiming was the ultimate boss
Speaker 1: for years, Eaming shied away from interviews with Western media.
Speaker 1: He he's never said on the record that he would
Speaker 1: turn down China's leader Shi Jimping. This was a difficult
Speaker 1: situation for TikTok. Here's my colleague Chipping Huang. They have
Speaker 1: to show the world that they say something never happened,
Speaker 1: but they have to prove that never happened. How can
Speaker 1: improve something that has never happened. A TikTok spokesperson told
Speaker 1: me that Eming has never been in charge of the
Speaker 1: day to day operations at TikTok and that the company
Speaker 1: doesn't share data with the Chinese government. To try to
Speaker 1: smooth things over in Washington, Ming wanted to send Alex
Speaker 1: to d C to speak directly with politicians and convince
Speaker 1: them that TikTok wasn't an nefarious actor. So Alex lined
Speaker 1: up a number of meetings with U. S senators, including
Speaker 1: Holly and Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn. There was a lot
Speaker 1: of build up news reports came out announcing these meetings,
Speaker 1: but at the last minute, Alex got cold feet and
Speaker 1: didn't show up at the time, Senator Holly tweeted, TikTok
Speaker 1: just canceled their meeting with me this week. Willing to
Speaker 1: answer questions get a call from Beijing. TikTok, one of
Speaker 1: the world's most valuable tech startups, has postponed multiple meetings
Speaker 1: scheduled on Capitol Hill this week, canceled, rescheduled, delayed. What's
Speaker 1: going on. We're told these are delayed and that they
Speaker 1: will be rescheduled in the new year. Of course, some
Speaker 1: of these senators are curious why they pulled the plug,
Speaker 1: but in theory, we should be hearing about these again
Speaker 1: in TikTok never did reschedule the meetings. When I asked why,
Speaker 1: a TikTok spokesperson told me they fell through because it
Speaker 1: was just before Christmas and most folks weren't available to meet.
Speaker 1: But other sources told me that Alex didn't go to
Speaker 1: Washington because he just didn't want to go. They didn't
Speaker 1: feel comfortable. Here's Rama, a former tech banker who's followed
Speaker 1: by Dance for years. I mean, just like just looking
Speaker 1: at the man right he's a little bit more like
Speaker 1: a Jack Dorsey, you know, very sort of alternative. He's
Speaker 1: not like the He just doesn't seem like the guy
Speaker 1: who wants to suit up and go in front of Congress.
Speaker 1: This is a terrible look for Alex. His main job
Speaker 1: at that point was trying to make American lawmakers feel
Speaker 1: more comfortable with TikTok, not ghosting a bunch of senators.
Speaker 1: At this point, Alex was on the cusp of losing
Speaker 1: his job. Right around that time, Meaning hired a well
Speaker 1: known American recruiting firm to start looking for a new
Speaker 1: CEO for TikTok. Eming wanted an American face at the top.
Speaker 1: I had heard in two thousand nineteen that Jim was
Speaker 1: spending a ton of time in the US looking for
Speaker 1: a CEO to lead TikTok, and this person took him
Speaker 1: a really long time to find because they were hoping
Speaker 1: for someone with d n A in both technology, entertainment
Speaker 1: and also of course the political connections that you know,
Speaker 1: might be necessary to ensure the app success in the US.
Speaker 1: So if you think about it, someone with San Francisco,
Speaker 1: Los Angeles and Washington d C networks and expertise would
Speaker 1: just be very very difficult to find. Okay, If the
Speaker 1: first thing on Eming's wish list was an American CEO,
Speaker 1: the next thing was finding an American tech company to
Speaker 1: form an alliance with and serve as an ally in
Speaker 1: TikTok's campaign to win over Washington. So in December, you
Speaker 1: Mean flies to Seattle for a secret visit with Microsoft
Speaker 1: CEO such An Adela. You Mean and Satya overlap briefly
Speaker 1: during ming short stint at Microsoft, and even though Bye
Speaker 1: Dance and Microsoft made for strange bedfellows, Eming wanted to
Speaker 1: propose a partnership that they could both benefit from. Here's
Speaker 1: my colleague, Dina Bass, She's covered Microsoft for more than
Speaker 1: twenty years. If you're Bye Dance, that you're going to
Speaker 1: be thinking about is how do I find someone that
Speaker 1: is going to create a relationship that helps me with
Speaker 1: my problems with the US government, that's credible with with Congress,
Speaker 1: that's credible with President Trump. And Microsoft is a good
Speaker 1: choice for them because of that. Microsoft didn't have a
Speaker 1: lot of experience in social media, and you Mean saw
Speaker 1: that as a good thing. He thought he could trust
Speaker 1: such An Adela. I think for a Bite Dance perspective,
Speaker 1: they didn't want to work with anyone who could be
Speaker 1: a competitor, and I think that rules out Google because
Speaker 1: of YouTube and google significant social media presence there, Microsoft
Speaker 1: has really nothing to speak of in the social media area.
Speaker 1: In return, you mean dangle the promise of storing byte
Speaker 1: dance massive amounts of data with Microsoft's cloud business. This
Speaker 1: meeting hasn't been reported on, but it was important because
Speaker 1: it laid the groundwork for a much bigger discussion about
Speaker 1: Microsoft and TikTok joining forces down the line, and then
Speaker 1: later leaving hopped on a plane for Davos to attend
Speaker 1: the World Economic Forum. It was a personal triumph for Eming,
Speaker 1: who finally got to rub shoulders with the likes of
Speaker 1: Sundar Pichai and Cheryl Sandberg. TikTok was a hot topic
Speaker 1: of conversation at Davis that year, although you mean didn't
Speaker 1: headline any big events, other influential people defended TikTok on
Speaker 1: stage four for him. There's another factor though, that I'm
Speaker 1: hearing is I'm meeting with CEOs of Chinese companies that
Speaker 1: are growing. Do they want to be positions in the
Speaker 1: world as a Chinese company or do they want to
Speaker 1: be positioned in the world as a global company. That's
Speaker 1: David Solomon, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, talking to Bite
Speaker 1: Dances board member Bill Ford about TikTok's rebranding. It's a
Speaker 1: great point for two reasons. If you take if you
Speaker 1: take Bite Dance million daily active users six fifty or
Speaker 1: TikTok outside the Chinese firewall. And when we talk about
Speaker 1: a lot at the board, is a global internet company
Speaker 1: with Chinese heritage as opposed to a Chinese internet company.
Speaker 1: I think that is exactly right. So the CEO of
Speaker 1: General Atlantic, who's also one of Bite dances biggest investors,
Speaker 1: is on stage pushing the idea that TikTok wasn't a
Speaker 1: Chinese company. He's saying, it's not Chinese, it's global. Here's
Speaker 1: my colleague Chipping. The biggest reason, and maybe the only
Speaker 1: reason people have doubts people can trust trains tech companies
Speaker 1: is that they are from a cone tree that is
Speaker 1: not a democracy. It's the Communist Party. It's the Chinese
Speaker 1: coleman who had a final boss. What can you do
Speaker 1: as a business, You try your best to shake off
Speaker 1: that image. After Davos Ming took his young daughter and
Speaker 1: wife who also works at By Dance, on a trip
Speaker 1: throughout Europe. Sources told me that despite his dreams of
Speaker 1: creating a global company, Ming hadn't traveled much for fun
Speaker 1: outside of China. It was Iman's last days to freedom
Speaker 1: before the whole world would change, because just as he
Speaker 1: was indulging in a European getaway, a deadly virus was
Speaker 1: spreading throughout China in what would turn into the fatal
Speaker 1: coronavirus pandemic, killing millions throughout the world. Wuhan, China, ground
Speaker 1: zero for the outbreak, now under lockdown. Most of the
Speaker 1: seventeen dead and more than five hundred second are in Wuhan.
Speaker 1: Since Friday, the number of known infections across Asia has
Speaker 1: more than quadrupled. Every mode of transport out of the
Speaker 1: city grind to a halt, claims trains, buses, ferries, and subways.
Speaker 1: China was the first country to go into COVID lockdown.
Speaker 1: So you Mean and his family decided not to go home. Instead,
Speaker 1: they go from their European vacation to California, where you
Speaker 1: Mean meets with his American investors and spend time interviewing
Speaker 1: candidates for the top job at TikTok When it became
Speaker 1: clear that COVID was virtually contained in China, he flew
Speaker 1: back to Beijing, but the virus was overtaking the US
Speaker 1: and Europe. People around the world, including President Trump, are
Speaker 1: blaming China for the pandemic, calling it the China virus
Speaker 1: because it originated there. But in a twist of fate,
Speaker 1: because of COVID, TikTok's business had never been better. People
Speaker 1: were locked in their homes with little to do and
Speaker 1: turned to TikTok as an escape. For the first time,
Speaker 1: adults start downloading TikTok in huge numbers. The search made
Speaker 1: it clear that TikTok wasn't just for teenagers anymore. It
Speaker 1: was a sensation across generations. You Mean felt even more
Speaker 1: pressure to hire an American CEO, and this was when
Speaker 1: a former executive from Disney came onto Eman's radar for
Speaker 1: the top job, Kevin Mayer. Sources told me that you
Speaker 1: Mean made a list of the top three candidates and
Speaker 1: Kevin wasn't on it. But you Mean felt he needed
Speaker 1: to move fast to slap an American face on top
Speaker 1: of TikTok. So he rushed to hire Kevin because at
Speaker 1: the very least he looked good on paper. When the
Speaker 1: news broke that Kevin Mayor had been hired, I was
Speaker 1: I think reading Chinese news actually, and it was just
Speaker 1: really hilarious how they just described him as Captain America.
Speaker 1: The reaction was that Kevin is this you know, six foot,
Speaker 1: really polished, really good looking, um and buff, you know
Speaker 1: former football player who graduated from m I t uh so, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he like really ticked all the boxes of the all
Speaker 1: American um male you know business executive. I guess Kevin
Speaker 1: had work to Disney for more than twenty years. He
Speaker 1: launched Disney, plus he had a lot of experience in China,
Speaker 1: but he was passed over for the top job at Disney,
Speaker 1: and TikTok was a chance to run another successful global
Speaker 1: company and it came with a hefty paycheck. A TikTok
Speaker 1: spokesperson disputed this characterization. She told me Eming didn't feel
Speaker 1: pressure to hire a CEO because he was not in
Speaker 1: charge of TikTok's day to day operations. They will point
Speaker 1: out that hiring a CEO is hardly an everyday task.
Speaker 1: It's a high level decision, and Meming was notorious for
Speaker 1: aggressively recruiting top executives. As for the current head of TikTok,
Speaker 1: Alex Jew, he sort of fades into the background, his
Speaker 1: life's work overshadowed by the fact that he was Chinese
Speaker 1: and that he wasn't able to clean up TikTok's reputation
Speaker 1: in Washington, which is what Eming wanted from him. Here's
Speaker 1: where Ima, the former tech banker, he just wanted, you know,
Speaker 1: as he wanted an executive and charge that was as
Speaker 1: American as it gets. Like Alex Drew, even though he
Speaker 1: had spent a lot of time in the US, was
Speaker 1: still like a Chinese American, right, So they really wanted
Speaker 1: someone who was unquestionably American through and through. But Kevin
Speaker 1: Mayer was in for a hard time. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: The new TikTok CEO, Kevin Mayer had a harrowing first
Speaker 1: day on the job. It was June one. All over
Speaker 1: the U S black Lives Matter protesters took to the
Speaker 1: streets over the killing of George Floyd, and many of
Speaker 1: them tried to use TikTok to spread their message. But
Speaker 1: there was a problem because TikTok videos with Black Lives
Speaker 1: Matter and George Floyd hashtags got little to no views.
Speaker 1: People were furious they were trying to speak out against
Speaker 1: racism and finding the self silenced. I was very, very,
Speaker 1: very upset. There's so some of the other creators I know,
Speaker 1: mostly people of color, We were all talking about it,
Speaker 1: just because it was upsetting to see that the platform
Speaker 1: was like where we felt like we could be open
Speaker 1: and stuff could would suppress something like that, something so massive.
Speaker 1: That's Darius Jackson, a nineteen year old who spends about
Speaker 1: four hours a day on TikTok. He says TikTok issued
Speaker 1: an apology. They said they weren't censoring Black Lives Matter videos,
Speaker 1: that it was a technical glitch, But Darius and many
Speaker 1: other TikTok ER's didn't buy it. It felt like they
Speaker 1: were apologizing because they were caught, not because they were
Speaker 1: apologizing because they felt bad about it. Censorship like this
Speaker 1: is wrong. It could uh mess up the perception of
Speaker 1: what's truly going on or how we truly feel about
Speaker 1: certain things, you know. These accusations of political censorship resurfaced
Speaker 1: deep fears about TikTok that many people had been harboring
Speaker 1: for years, that China might be manipulating content to influence
Speaker 1: the world view of Americans. We spoke to a former
Speaker 1: TikTok employee, Chu June Chin. He helped TikTok set up
Speaker 1: operations in Southeast Asia and train people on content moderation,
Speaker 1: so we became somewhat of an expert on how TikTok
Speaker 1: sensors videos. He says that for TikTok, censorship was generally
Speaker 1: a feature, not a bug. Woman's are gonna industry. We
Speaker 1: don't allow national leaders or political figures to appear in
Speaker 1: videos from any country. It's not only China, but in
Speaker 1: any country we operate, at least during my stay. TikTok
Speaker 1: is very neutral. It never involves itself in politics. It
Speaker 1: positions itself as a peer entertainment platform. It's not like Facebook,
Speaker 1: which constantly influences the US elections. On Facebook, you go okay,
Speaker 1: so they dig at Facebook aside. He said it was
Speaker 1: policy at TikTok to steer clear from controversy at least
Speaker 1: when it comes to our rules about censorship, we tend
Speaker 1: to be pretty conservative. We take down anything that seems
Speaker 1: sensitive and we don't touch politics. I saw this firsthand
Speaker 1: when I was living in Hong Kong and covering the
Speaker 1: massive pro democracy protests against China and the Hong Kong government.
Speaker 1: I went out on the street with a gas mask
Speaker 1: in one hand and my phone and the other. Both
Speaker 1: journalists and protesters were actively documenting the tear gas, water
Speaker 1: cannons and marches online, and the protesters I spoke to
Speaker 1: lived on social media on Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Telegram.
Speaker 1: But when I opened up TikTok and searched for Hong Kong,
Speaker 1: I got zilch no protest content at all. Instead, under
Speaker 1: the Hong Kong hashtag, I saw videos of the city
Speaker 1: skyline and girls dancing at tourist destinations. We asked a
Speaker 1: few of the Hong Kong protesters about this, say so,
Speaker 1: I think TikTok must be censoring and scrutinizing videos because
Speaker 1: China is sensitive to all the political content. They want
Speaker 1: to maintain the social and political stability in the country.
Speaker 1: If the Chinese government wants to get your user information,
Speaker 1: they will find a way to get it. These are
Speaker 1: young activists who protested against China's increasingly restrictive control over
Speaker 1: Hong Kong. They didn't want to give us their full names.
Speaker 1: Amy is twenty and Sam's twenty two because TikTok is
Speaker 1: funded by a Chinese company, there has to be concerned
Speaker 1: in doubt regarding the data safety. There are concerns that
Speaker 1: TikTok transfers user information to mainland China. I'm afraid to
Speaker 1: use it because TikTok is owned by a Chinese company
Speaker 1: and the Chinese government can use the app as a
Speaker 1: tool to track my location. I'm worried that they can
Speaker 1: go after me, so I have to protect my personal
Speaker 1: safety and to leave the app. I went download TikTok again.
Speaker 1: The reason why these young people sound so afraid is
Speaker 1: because the threat to them is not theoretical. In Hong Kong,
Speaker 1: dozens of teens have been arrested for the things they've
Speaker 1: said online. Many of the protesters were afraid of posting
Speaker 1: on TikTok, but there was also something else going on.
Speaker 1: You look on those hashtags and TikTok and there was
Speaker 1: just a total silence. That's Daniel Sinclair. He's an independent
Speaker 1: researcher who studies TikTok. As an experiment, he downloaded some
Speaker 1: Hong Kong protest videos from the Internet and tried posting
Speaker 1: them on TikTok. But in instances where I had tested
Speaker 1: weeks later after they posted that um it was not
Speaker 1: going through, or if it was going through, it would
Speaker 1: take hours days. That's something that doesn't happen to other
Speaker 1: social media in the US, to Twitter, to Facebook. At
Speaker 1: the heart was this ability for TikTok to moderate and
Speaker 1: gate content before it ever reached users. A TikTok spokesperson
Speaker 1: told me the app wasn't censoring videos about Hong Kong,
Speaker 1: and months later they shut down the app in Hong
Speaker 1: Kong entirely. TikTok has faced many censorship allegations over the
Speaker 1: years that they suppressed videos of fat people, queer people,
Speaker 1: people who have spoken out about the Chinese government, and
Speaker 1: TikTok's answer to these accusations has been, yes, we used
Speaker 1: to take a blunt approach to moderation. They also previously
Speaker 1: admitted to pushing down content that promoted conflict, but they
Speaker 1: say that's changed. Their spokesperson gave us a statement, we
Speaker 1: continually evolve our policies and approach to protect against emerging
Speaker 1: harmful content, and this is where TikTok reverse course. After
Speaker 1: Black Lives Matter activists accused the platform of censorship, TikTok
Speaker 1: started promoting protest videos. In the span of a few months,
Speaker 1: gen z activism exploded, giving rise to the term TikTok
Speaker 1: to vist. It didn't take long for teens to realize
Speaker 1: they could use TikTok not just to talk about politics,
Speaker 1: but to organize on the platform. I recommend all of
Speaker 1: those of us that want to see this nineteen thousand
Speaker 1: seat auditorium barely filled or completely empty, go reserve tickets
Speaker 1: now and leave him standing there alone on the stage.
Speaker 1: What do you say, guys? Donald Trump is having a
Speaker 1: rally next week and it's free. So I got two
Speaker 1: tickets and I just verified it too, so that means
Speaker 1: there's gonna be at least two empty spots. Guys, that's awful.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. I'm just registered for Trump's rally and
Speaker 1: I'm so excited to not go. The chain succeeded in
Speaker 1: getting Trump's attention in a big way. Here's Darius Jackson,
Speaker 1: the nineteen year old we heard from earlier. Donald Trump
Speaker 1: is not very well liked on that app, especially so
Speaker 1: if enough people own that app saying something or just
Speaker 1: doing like one what it took maybe three to five
Speaker 1: minutes to sign up for a seat like that's three
Speaker 1: to five minutes out of your day, like we had
Speaker 1: the time the TikTok users had embarrassed the president. TikTok
Speaker 1: users may well be President Trump's latest adversary. Thousands of
Speaker 1: people who'd gotten tickets online didn't show up. Trump was
Speaker 1: said to be furious. Was President Trump's fiasco of a
Speaker 1: rally and Tulsa sabotage by an army of teenagers. Some
Speaker 1: officials in the Trump administration saw this as an opening.
Speaker 1: They were looking for a way to punish China for
Speaker 1: the global spread of coronavirus. Here's Trump talking to TV
Speaker 1: host Gretave Ancestra. In Secretary Pompeo was talked about possibly
Speaker 1: banning TikTok in this country. China is something we're looking at. Yes,
Speaker 1: why why would you ban it? Well, it's a big
Speaker 1: business China. Look what happened with China with this virus.
Speaker 1: What they've done to this country and to the entire
Speaker 1: world is disgraceful, and we are looking at numerous different things.
Speaker 1: TikTok's one of them. One of many people told me
Speaker 1: that when the news got back to ye Ming, he
Speaker 1: was in the middle of eating breakfast at his home
Speaker 1: in Beijing. A friends and over a link to the news,
Speaker 1: and Yeming was confused. He said, China virus. What did
Speaker 1: the coronavirus have to do with TikTok? It was bizarre
Speaker 1: to target an app like TikTok as a way to
Speaker 1: get back at China for the pandemic, But that's exactly
Speaker 1: what Trump said he would do. And then a few
Speaker 1: weeks later, right as Trump was about to board his helicopter,
Speaker 1: We're looking at TikTok. We may be banning TikTok, we
Speaker 1: might be doing some other things. Are a couple of options.
Speaker 1: That's next time on the season finale of Foundering. Foundering
Speaker 1: is hosted by me Shelley Banjo. Sean Wyn is our
Speaker 1: executive producer. Raymondo is our audio engineer. Molly Nugent is
Speaker 1: our associate producer. Additional reporting by Tom Giles, Josh Bruce,
Speaker 1: Team Chipping Huang, Felix Tam and Dina Bass. Production helped
Speaker 1: from Michael Tobin and Bertie Ford. Special thanks to Edwin
Speaker 1: Chan and Davey Kim. Our story editors are Mark Million,
Speaker 1: Anne vander May, and Alistair Barr. Francesca Levi is the
Speaker 1: head of Bloomberg Podcasts. Be Sure to subscribe, and if
Speaker 1: you like our show, leave a review. Most importantly, tell
Speaker 1: your friends see you next time.