BREAKING: China UNIFIES Congress

Breaking news today on Sekulow, as China unifies Congress. Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow.

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We are taking your phone calls to 1-800-684-3110 to weigh in on this. It is TikTok that has unified Congress together. So again, a Chinese Communist Party-owned company, TikTok, which was almost banned once under the Trump administration.

There was work being done there and then TikTok quickly got a US subsidiary. It slowed down some of that work and then a new administration came in. But this came from, again, the Select Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. The TikTok issue is we've got bipartisan legislation coming from both Senator Thune on the Republican side, Senator Warner on the Democrat side, which is unique in itself that you've got even Republicans and Democrats coming together. The White House is agreeing. It's not a full ban.

That's right. I think how I would like to say this is this is probably the best you could do to get bipartisan support on anything right now. What it does allow is the Commerce Department to come in and ultimately it's called the RESTRICT Act and it would allow the Congress to come in and restrict it.

So it would start a new process basically. And look, we've seen a lot of movement in terms of the federal government actually getting involved in this and say making statements banning TikTok or say you have 30 days to remove it from your federal devices. We've seen a lot of state-run governments say, hey, you're not allowed to use TikTok on state-run Internet. There's actual movement happening right now, which I think we're all a little surprised by. Like you said, this may not be what everyone wants, but it's at least a bipartisan move, something you rarely see. It may be under this administration could at least be a step towards something in terms of just the widespread usage of an app that has had so many issues over the last few years.

Yeah. The bigger piece of legislation, what they've done is they're not just singling out China, but they're saying it would give more power to regulate tech produced by six countries that have adversarial relationships with the US, China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela. Again, some of this, I think it's very TikTok specific because we've all learned about the terms and services. We've learned about the way the Chinese government requires any of these Chinese companies to give them full access to all information whenever they want. So it's not just like they're hacking their own hacking companies internally. That's part of the law in China is that if you have a business like this, they get access to all the backend information and all the information on users. We know they're tracking your actual keystrokes. So we've seen the Biden White House has banned this on use on federal phones or federal devices. And we've seen states like you say can't use it on our wifi. So there's this mixture of like, how do you actually ban it? And we haven't gotten to the point of actually banning it yet.

No, but at least there are steps. And that's something shocking to see from your federal government, actual steps being made to potentially get there. A lot of times, yes, this is proposed legislation.

This isn't anything set in stone. But even the White House signaling this is something that they could support. You have the American people actually saying, yeah, we think there could be some issues here with TikTok. As you said, they kind of punted it down the road during the Trump administration by creating the American subsidiary, talked with them. They've had a whole situation there, but now we still know that the back end, like you said, the data information seems to be still being shared in a way that is uncomfortable. That's what you have to say.

If it's uncomfortable for your federal government and your state governments to do it, not just your Republican run who see, the Democrats may say the Republicans think of China as like a boogeyman. Clearly not when you're shooting down their balloons and you're banning their most popular export right now, which would probably be TikTok. The most popular influencer.

It's the number one app in the world and I believe the number one app in the United States. So if they start losing the ability to be on Wi-Fi networks who are on devices itself, in a sense, you might never have to actually fully ban them. Yeah. The company would just not be able to function in America. Yeah.

And I'm sure that that would necessarily kill the company because there's lots of other markets for this now, but it certainly changes your company when you don't have access to the best economy in the world. Yeah. I mean, and TikTok was largely I'd say responsible for a midterms that didn't go the way conservatives thought they'd go. Is there not so much influence?

There's an incredible amount of influence that's coming from that app more so than anyone takes seriously enough. Yeah. Give us a call.

I'd love your thoughts. 1-800-684-3110. 1-800-684-3110. All right, welcome back to Sec Hill. We are taking your calls as well.

1-800-684-3110. So one of the first bipartisan moves of this Congress has been this proposed legislation coming out of the Senate. It's with Senator Thune and Senator Warner, so Republican and Democrat, to basically give authority to the Commerce Department, the Secretary of Commerce, to restrict access to these apps like TikTok. It doesn't require them to do that, but allows them to restrict access or ban them based off the fact that those are emanating from an adversarial country. So a country that we know it does not have our best interests in mind, or it's not even neutral, but it's actually an adversary. And I think, again, it doesn't say that everything out of China gets banned or that everything out of Russia gets banned. It just says these are the countries that we would list. Most of these are not high-tech countries. So I don't think they're going to be creating apps.

Now, Russia has created plenty, especially the chats. There's a lot of those apps that you're not sure what you're downloading or the facial recognition softwares that are fun and usually have a good gimmick that we all love. Hey, it makes me look like an old man. It makes me look young again.

It makes me look like I, you know. A lot of times those are countries getting, Russia a lot of times, getting data collecting. It's all data.

Look, we all know this. The most valuable resource on all of these apps is the data. It has nothing to do with the actual function of the app. Most of the time, it's not the game. It's not the, uh, you know, with the video clips you can watch.

It's not the fun little clean up your, your, your wrinkles. It has to do with the data that they're collecting. That's not always necessarily a bad thing in the sense of, uh, they're honest with it. They're giving you a free service and they are taking what they get without free service. Facebook doesn't, Instagram doesn't, they all do it. Uh, they're mining your data and you're utilizing a free service they're providing.

It's, it's a trade here, right? The difference is that most of the U S based companies would want to protect. We're talking about those stories in a minute. They're users, they're private information. They're using your data to sell advertising, right?

Those kinds of problems. They actually want, they don't want the government interference. The difference with Tik TOK is that they're literally run by Ford government. Yeah. As you said, I think it's something to clarify for a lot of people is that just cause Tik TOK itself is not owned by the CCP. There is privately owned in the same sense.

You have to kind of get your head into a different space, right? That they actually to have a business in China, the government not only has to approve it, they have to have complete access and control for all of the information and data. Yeah. So who's running the company?

China. That doesn't mean they're making all the decisions about what stupid videos to put forward about people dancing. But what they are doing is every keystroke you make. That's pretty terrifying.

Not with the app open. Now this is interesting. James on YouTube wrote Tik TOK's unstoppable. You must compete with Tik TOK, not delete Tik TOK. If the U S deletes Tik TOK, it's not nearly as influential. I would usually agree with you, James, but in this instance, I actually disagree. I think that because of sort of their egregious actions that sometimes it's okay to say, you're not allowed to be in this. It's not about the apps functionality because you're going to say Instagram or Snapchat or any of these options have created alternatives that are wildly popular. It's not like Instagram is not wildly popular.

The difference is the backend data should be, should be violating if it's true, should be violating Apple's terms of services and the way their services are protected. Now their CEO is going to be testifying in Congress March 23rd, which would be interesting. It will be interesting.

I'll totally watch it. A shoe Z chew. Yes. I believe I'm saying that right. Yeah. So this would be the, I guess is that the U S subsidiary CEO? Yeah.

So, I mean, even there who's running the company. Yep. I mean, I'm looking at the information about him. Yeah. He joined the company headquartered in Beijing in March of 2021.

He replaced Kevin Mayer, who was the CEO for only three months as a Singaporean entrepreneur and went to the university college in London and received MBA from Harvard business school. So you're talking about someone who will be on air and have stuff to say. So it'll be interesting. They're going to give, they're going to say that, you know, big lobbies, huge lobby, huge company right now. They have a lot of influence. In fact, in fact, that's why I think that this legislation is not a ban. This is as far as they could go bipartisan, which is to say, kind of kick the kid down the road a little, but what they are trying to do is clarify that Congress believes that these U S departments, if necessary, and I think like you said, it has to be at a very high bar before we start banning things in our country.

This would bet that. Yeah. Banning it on a federal level, not just Apple saying, you know, Alex Jones, you're not allowed to have an app anymore or parlor.

You're not allowed to be on here anymore. Yeah. And this is interesting with Huawei. We've done it. I mean, this has happened. We're doing it right now with Chinese land purchases. We've done it with Huawei and the five G they were providing. So the country itself is waking up to the idea of just because we do business with China, we rely on them a lot.

We don't have to let them have freewill. This is from the New York times. So just from a few months ago and they put the Tik TOK wrote in a June letter to the U S lawmakers that Tik TOK is led by its own global CEO, who would just reference Singaporean based in Singapore.

But this is from the New York times says, but in fact, mr. Choose decision-making power over Tik TOK is limited. And according to 12 former Tik TOK and bite dance, which is the parent company employees and executives decisions about the service, including moves to emphasize live streaming, as you said, shopping and those are made by the founder of bite dance, not by the U S subsidiary. So even if they have their us CEO, it is still under the control of a Zhenya Ming who is the founder of bite dance slash Tik TOK, who again has to deal with the situation. This is not the New York times giving a puff piece here to the CEO of Tik TOK.

They pretty much said he has limited power because really power is being run by the parent company. Right. And I, again, I think that this is this, it is, it's a dangerous app. Not B not even because what it's about, that's the unique part is as crazy and wild as he's at free speech or your ability to express yourself. And I feel for people who've probably made a living out of it.

Absolutely. But you do have to draw some lines. Like there's no way the Chinese would allow this kind of app to run in their country. In fact, they do have Tik TOK, but it is a very different app. Like an American run app. Oh, Lord. No, Lord.

No, but the, yeah. I mean, even the video games are changed, but you have to do a lot of work to do it. I know in China, I'm sure they're much more strict on that. But in terms of how, why Tik TOK is perceived, it's not presented in the same way. It's the content itself is completely different.

It's educational, mainly it's a Chinese content and it's very limited in the time that you're allowed to even be on it, especially kids. Again, this is in talking about influencing younger people. And I'm talking about younger people. I'm talking about not, not just teenagers here.

We're talking about, let's say 40 and under or 45 and under that are really probably the key demo, uh, for Tik TOK. And I really do believe that a large group of people, a large group of influencers were able to get in there and make it, uh, make their case for the democratic party. And that's why it's interesting to see this be bipartisan. And as you said, this may be the only way or that the, the, the biggest move we can get in terms of under this current administration. Yeah.

I, again, I think, well, this is what Tik TOK said in response to this. We appreciate some members of Congress remain willing to explore options for addressing national security concerns that don't have the effect of censoring millions of Americans. So are they acknowledging there that there's national security? Cause I think that they're spiraling in the U S yeah.

They're not spiraling in terms of users, but if they get fully banned, that's not good. This is the best, but still best market in the world. Yeah. They sell your product to the United States.

Here's how they flip it. They say the U S ban on tech talk is a ban on the export of American cultures and values to billions of people. We're telling you is that in other countries, they're not necessarily feeding about the American content.

No. And in China, they specifically make sure they're not. So they're getting a very tailored content. That's highly restricted, uh, goes through all the government sensors.

And like you said, even limits the amount of time a child could use on it because we, but they would love making robots out of your kids. Yeah. And that's what they do. And that's the way the thing is. And again, this really has nothing to do with the content that's on this app. No, you can just show any places to put that content. Of course, this is about the back end that are actual what's happening in the back end. Right. And we know what's happening with their back end is that they can, they're thinking one, they have access to all of your data. They can take all of your data that includes your IP that you're writing.

Just think about it that way. If you were writing a, a, a, anything creative on your phone or work-related, they're getting the keystroke. Yeah. When you get keystrokes, do you realize they're getting everything you look for in your phone? Every email you said, everything, every contact you have.

Yeah. And you probably clicked allow. Oh, you'd have to use their terms. It's not like it's hidden. It's just no one reads your terms and services.

We all know this. No, but the difference between even their terms and services of like a private company having access to that is that they cannot do anything about the fact that the Chinese communist party gets full access into all of that data. And so I get, whereas we're free speech advocates, you cannot be, don't let them fool you with that. There's, there's plenty of places. It is interesting.

I am a free speech advocate maybe to, to a fault. Take dog is interesting because it is all algorithm generated. You're not really ever deciding what you're wanting to see, right? It's giving you what you would like, what they think you would like. And that has to be the most dangerous part of it for kids. It's cause it's not even about your kids making the right decision in terms of the content.

It's about Tik TOK deciding what to put in their feet. You could say the same for YouTube. You could say the same. Those are American companies that are a little bit more regulated and a little bit more.

If we want to say half board set up to protect, even if I don't think they do a great job at it, sometimes they're at least doing something. You can at least set some parameters with Tik TOK. The main thing is that if you want to actually go after the content, it's not a choice. If you're on the app, you're going to get served with stuff that you're not going to necessarily like. And if you're a kid on that app, the bad news, let's give us a call though. 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. We're in the middle of our matching challenge right now in the month of March, Jordan. Double the impact, your donation to ACLJ.org. If you, again, we've got a group of donors that will match every donation that comes through in the month of March. Donate today, ACLJ.org. We'll be right back. All right, welcome back to Second Hill. We are taking your calls to 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. We're talking about the one hand Congress making a move on Tik TOK. I think, listen, last week's decision by the Biden administration, I think is they don't want to highlight it because they're so concerned about China all the time and upsetting China. But is that they announced last week that you've only got 30 days to get it off all federal devices. Yeah, that came out last week for the Biden administration. So that kind of flew into the radar.

A lot of people didn't see that because I think we've just seen so much of the talk about it. We've seen the states doing it with this from the federal government. Yeah. So it's risen to the level where it's not just red states. It's not just, so it's not just red states that have done it through the use of their wifi that are, that's provided by the state. But now you're, you've seen the Biden administration itself has banned it from all federal employees.

That tells you a lot about how dangerous they think this is, that they want it off every federal device, regardless of how influential their lobby is. Yeah. Let's go to Whitney who's calling in Texas about this. Whitney, you're on the air.

Hi, thanks for taking my call. Um, I know this is kind of out of your lane as a legal experts, but I'm a parent who has teenagers who have had Tik TOK on their phone and you know, we've pressed the X and deleted the app, but I'm pretty sure there's stuff embedded. How do we as parents find the resources necessary to kind of undo the imprinting? That's probably on the phone. It's a very good question.

And I don't know if I have the definitive answers. I had the same thing. Look, I'm right. When you can hide an app, it's, it's really like, it's taking some of the, of the storage deactivated your accounts as well. That's I think what you're talking about is that's what, what I did. I I've deactivated my, look, I'll be honest. I'll tell you, I was a Tik TOK user.

Uh, the Rick Rennell said, what are you doing? And I said, uh, you know, just, it's fun. It's a fun video app. And I actually got some good traction on there.

I ended up deleting it and also deactivating your account. Those are things you can do. That's not to say there's not things embedded in there.

I don't really know the ins and outs. If I'm being honest about a tech side, we can, we can probably find out because there's people think when they delete the app, they delete, you have it. Really? You haven't deactivated your account. All you're doing is taking the app off of your phone for that moment. If you ever go back to the app store and you want that same app again, it downloads faster.

It's already ready to go. A lot of times it has a lot of the data already ready. What is interesting is is I've seen this, this conversation happen. I don't know enough about it to really commentate on it other than saying there's a lot of information about browser based social media and how that's actually potentially a little safer because if you're going to, let's say twitter.com, you're going to instagram.com, you have a safeguard between you and, uh, just access to your phone. It's no different than visiting a website. So there is a conversation that's happening amongst that too, which is the app is really where, and again, I'm no expert on this, so you know, if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. The app is where you're really giving them the rights to everything because it is installing something onto your phone instead of you accessing your phone, if it makes sense. So there's a whole deal to do it. There's, there's ways to delete your account or ways to deactivate your account. You can look at it, make the decision for yourself.

You're growing up, you know, if you're adult, I'm not telling you have to do this is highly regulated. The unique part about this is that the, that these apps aren't out there to get your data. So that's how they make money and they can sell it back to advertisers.

They should like that. The difference with tiktok and all of these other companies like them or not is that tiktok data goes to the Chinese communist party on every. So at every right now until that 30 days is up, that it's federal officials that could include law enforcement that could include security. If it's on your wifi, we're just, we are all getting much more educated about how all this works. I think because people, their kids are watching it more closely. And also the fact that what are you giving up with? So you're always giving something up to get services for free. It's just the truth. So when they're going to give you a free platform to put out what you want and you can even make money off of it, you are going to be giving something up of your privacy.

The question is one thing for Twitter or Instagram or by Facebook to have that information and another for the Chinese communist party. Yeah. You can even turn to know who the CEO is of these companies and they're people that we're all sort of familiar with, whether you like it or not. It is not so shady. Let's just be honest. This is a shady Chinese run influence campaign who's had plenty of time to readjust and it seems to have sold. Yeah. They could have sold to a, to a company that in a, in a more, uh, in a safer place. Let's put it that way. Yeah.

If you're running a business, maybe encourage your boss or whoever it is. If you're running it to, to put in these restrictions, here's the bizarre flip side to this while that's happening with Tik TOK. You have the federal trade commission is asking for all communication, uh, received or sent by Elon Musk as head of C of Twitter, uh, all not limited to subject matter. The liberals boogeyman. Now they're saying this is based off an older consent decree about privacy of, uh, Twitter, Twitter users, uh, that was signed before he even bought the company.

But I mean, they are literally asking for, which to me, this brings up, this goes the other way. This is the weaponization of government. Uh, every piece of communication sit by Elon Musk. Why now? Why that was because he exposed. So we now know it's because of the, the Twitter files, the Twitter files, which honestly got a lot of pop initially.

Well, yeah, the, the, the real hot stuff was upfront and then it sort of became very nuanced. If you're into the details, the FTC specifically asked to, I mean, they are still doing the bidding of the, the deep state. Why did all emails related to why Jim Baker was fired? What was the reason Jim Baker was fired? He's the former general counsel of the FBI who then went over to Twitter and was the one blocking Hunter Biden's laptop and stewing the whole, it's Russia behind Donald Trump. And, uh, of course he could be fired as a public company.

And he was again, part of the bad actors at the, at the FBI. But this is what, this is the federal government. This is not the, a Democrat specifically say this, this is the federal trade commission trying to utilize their powers any way they can to intimidate. I mean, honestly, at the end of the day, I don't think that actually this is the quote, this is for the committee of the weaponization of federal government, uh, and said, information, they were searching for information relating to journalists work protected by the first amendment, including their work to expose and abuse by big tech and abuses by big abuses by big tech and the federal government. Then why would you ask for Jim Baker's information? Why is that that request that doesn't have anything to do with that or, uh, is Twitter selling off too much of its equipment that's in there? Yeah, I'm sure when you do that, you take the, the HR, why do you have Twitter blue?

How about for money? Yeah. I mean, is that the, it's a business Twitter wasn't making any money. Has it still never made a dime?

So they give people options to utilize more services through. Yeah. You know what that really is? Liberals love that blue check mark so much and they are still so bitter that anyone can buy it, that you can buy it. And the truth is that even when you buy it, it's not the same blue check mark, but it still upsets them because they worked so hard to get one. And now it's meaningless, which I love. Yeah. It was the hardest thing to get really on the internet.

There was actually a website that was only for people who had the blue check marks that was called the most exclusive club on the internet. I have to, but it does change somewhat. That did change sort of the situation between how you utilize Twitter is the way the verification process happened. But what does the federal government care? Why do they care about a product being released? An add on bonus that this is where the overreach is getting absurd.

Yeah. I mean literally selling off its office equipment, internal communication, all communication related to Elon Musk by any Twitter personnel, including all communications sent or received by Elon Musk, not limited by subject matter. So it's, I mean, this is, this is just, again, we show the TikTok to where you're saying how government can work, even when it's not a hundred percent of what you want. Then we show that the FTC story to show you how just how weaponized an eight independent agency that's set up to protect us as consumers is being utilized to go after specific people because of their presumed ideologies. 1-800-684-3110 to join the discussion, support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. We have our matching challenge. Donate today, double the impact donation.

That's ACLJ.org. Keeping you informed and engaged now more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host Jordan Sekulow. Hey, welcome back to Sekulow.

We are taking your calls to comments 1-800-684-3110. So we talked about two moves. One move that I think is good. It's bipartisan. It's probably not everything everybody wants, but to step in the likely right direction. I always get a little nervous when Congress gives power over to the executive branch, but what they're doing specifically here is to say Commerce Department, you can ban TikTok. We're not saying you have to, but we're saying you can, and you can also ban these applications from additional countries, which are countries that are considered adversaries of the United States, Russia in there, Venezuela in there, North Korea, Iran, and Cuba, along with China. The White House has also said they've been supportive of this. So again, seeing some bipartisan moves there. Does it mean that TikTok will be 100% banned by our federal government? It doesn't require that. But what we are seeing is the federal government banning it from all of their devices.

So that's a Biden order that came from the White House. And we've seen lots of states ban it from either devices or a state paid for Wi-Fi like in college campuses, government buildings. So there's a couple of different ways people are going about basically limiting the reach of TikTok. And right now basically saying if you want to use it, you've got to use it on your own device and you've got to pay for it with your own Wi-Fi or your own 5G.

Your own cell coverage. Right. Which then is the next step. Then does an AT&T or Verizon or a TiVo, do they step in and say, hey, we don't like the way the information is being gathered for us.

I think you're right by right. I think that unless they're mandated by the government, they don't stop business. Yeah. Because it's a moneymaker for them right now.

And again, that's really not their job. I don't like companies censoring, honestly, unless the government has explained why. Yeah. I mean, we've had Apple do this. We've had Apple ban apps. Right.

They're usually more conservatively campaigning or are sometimes violent. And I think that's why some people might hear this and be a little concerned too. Just that we're stepping in a trap. Are we stepping in a trap? Now I look at this legislation, I get some concern about that.

Why? Because we're giving power to the unelected bureaucracy again. Why can't Congress just put out a ban? Yeah.

Why do we have to give it... You're using the wrong way to do it. It might be the only way that you can get legislation through right now. So I would respect senators through to that sense. This might be the best they could do. And sometimes a divided Congress, they don't want to do nothing on this. They believe it's that big of a threat that they need to do something. And this is as best they could get.

The only issue there is then the commerce department without having to consult Congress can start banning apps. Yeah. Hey, we'd love to hear from you. I know there's a few people on hold. In the next segment, we're gonna be joined by Rick Grenell.

We're gonna talk about this along other situations that are happening in China and other places. Give us a call. We'd love to hear from you. We'll take all these calls as many as we can in the final segment as well. 1-800-684-3110.

We can take one really quick though if you want to. Let's go to Daniel who's calling in California on line one. Daniel, welcome. Hello. My name is Daniel. I'm calling from California. Thank you guys for having me on.

Thank you for all your work. Coming as an American who has a little brother, and my opinion on TikTok is this. I think TikTok should be banned completely.

It has had a negative effect on our Gen Z Americans. If Americans had a problem with Facebook and Instagram with Mark Zuckerberg, had them set a maximum addiction towards millennials such as myself, TikTok is much worse with their algorithm set about maximum addiction, and that's not healthy. And TikTok doesn't let creators keep their intellectual property that they create.

Unlike Instagram Reels, which is my alternative to TikTok and I do recommend to everyone. Listen, I think you bring up an issue point, that's more of a parenting decision. I think if you can come with an algorithm that gets people addicted, so be it. That's business. That should not be the basis for why we ban them. If you make something so good that people love it, it's hard to regulate that. Right. What you have to do is parent. At a certain point, it's only about your influence. Your kids get to make decisions too. So I think what we can do here is go after the bad guys.

There's not that many of them, but this one specifically, we've been told time and time again, how dangerous it is, not just to you, but to your own country's national security. Yep. Give us a call. We'd love to hear from you. 1-800-684-3110.

Support the work of the ACLJ by visiting ACLJ.org. Coming up next, Rick Grinnell is joining us live. We're going to continue this discussion and talk about other topics as well. Again, this is a great time to call.

Get those phone lines loaded up. We'll take them in the final segment. We'll be right back.

All right. Welcome back to Sech Hill. We are taking your calls, comments 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. I want to stay on this move because we're starting to see more action by the federal government. Both Congress, we've seen the Biden White House last week.

So the Biden White House last week issued an order that federal employees have, I guess, 30 days to get ticked off their government provided devices. And then a new legislation announced last night or the early morning hours of today, a bipartisan legislation out of the Senate. It doesn't completely ban TikTok, but it does give the Secretary of Commerce the clear ability by Congress to ban TikTok. It's probably as, I don't know if it's the best we could get right now or not with bipartisan action, but it also includes, Logan, other countries. So it's not just saying we're just going after the Chinese to go after the Chinese, but other bad actors as well. I mean, we can kind of read through the lines and see what they're really focusing on and reconnected with them, but what they're focusing on really is still TikTok. However, when you do look at it, we do have to be a little bit broader in the terms of other countries and other nations that may be trying to influence and trying to get your data.

That's mainly trying to get so much information. But when you do have a country like China is a little different. They're much more high-tech. Yes. It's not like they're much more high-tech and they also are known for using things for nefarious means.

Right. Not just to sell product or whatever it be. You could see blackmail being used here. You could see secrets, government.

I mean, we're talking about classified documents on time. There are people writing, the federal government is saying no more TikTok on here and it doesn't have to do with, they don't like the videos that are being put in your algorithm. No, it has nothing to do with the entertainment part of TikTok. That's why I said, if TikTok really just wanted to be TikTok the huge company, it didn't care about any of that, they could completely sell off to a US-based or switch space company that has no ownership interest by the Chinese Communist Party and they would continue to go and they'd be just as big.

All right. But they know that that's not really what TikTok cares about being number one. It only cares about being number one because of the information they're getting by being number one. So Rick, just the first, kind of your reaction to me, I think it kind of underscores what you've been telling everybody about TikTok, which is to get it off your phone.

The fact that the Biden administration has instructed all federal employees to do that. Yeah, look, it is a spyware that is on our phones. I'll just be honest with you. I don't allow it in my house. I don't have, if you have it on your phone, I ask you to leave your phone in the car. I just don't allow anyone into my home that has TikTok. It's a real problem and I don't want to be vulnerable. Look, other people can make a decision that they like TikTok more than they like being not spied on, but I just don't want to make that decision. I don't think anyone should. But I do come down on the side of, you know, you get to choose your risk. I'm not sure that I support completely banning it in the United States. I think that's pretty drastic. I do think that it's important for intelligence officials or agencies to absolutely ban it.

But individuals, you know, are addicted to it, they love it, and they know the risks and are still doing it. So I fall within the camp of, you know, if you know the risks, then, you know, more power to you. I don't think it's a good idea. Yeah, I think we're seeing that, Rick, this is from governments, is governments are saying we know the risk on our devices.

This is too risky on our state Wi-Fi. We're not allowing you, we're not gonna let you operate on if you want to go home and operate it. You can't, because I agree with you, I don't like banning things. I always, that's my first stop when I ever hear ban, I always think that's not great.

Why are we starting with a ban? But I think what's been different is because of folks like you who have come from the Intel world, and I think there is some bipartisan agreement here about how dangerous it is. People have described it as, and the danger it poses to our country is that all of these devices, it's like, who needs spies when you've got spies in everybody's pocket. Yeah, and I, you know, as someone who was acting director of national intelligence, I can tell you that we've had to give defensive briefings to individuals who got wrapped up with the communist Chinese strategies unknowingly.

And that's a problem. I mean, I've seen it too many times. I've seen local politicians, city councilmen, mayors, governors. So it's like local and state officials as well as federal officials. I mean, we all know Eric Swalwell and that case. So individuals are getting wrapped up into this and now the Intel community is doing defensive briefings.

I've seen it too much. I just, I think it's a real danger. The broader issue, we've got a new statement from the Chinese foreign ministry, Rick, and the statement is basically the US has to change their attitude or they are risking a conflict with China. I think what people always want to know is how much of this is just a kind of propaganda and rhetoric and how much of this is, you know, the risk that we actually would be in an actual conflict with China. Look, when I was ambassador to Germany, I was very aggressive about Huawei and what I heard constantly in Europe when we would share as much intelligence as we could to say, you know, you can't be buying Huawei.

We know they're the cheapest. We know they're coming in with hardware, but it's very unsafe for your governments to do it. I think there was a sense that people believed us, but there wasn't an alternative. And so they were calculating that they needed it. It was cheaper and they were going to try to work to mitigate the problem.

I don't believe you can mitigate the problem. I think it's a real serious problem. I think the Chinese have rhetoric that threatens us constantly. But, you know, let me be really clear when the Chinese came to Alaska and sat with Anthony Blinken, they were repeating the Democratic Party's Black Lives Matter messaging. They were calling us a racist country that were pushing slavery.

It was exactly the Black Lives Matter talking points that the Democrats keep pushing. We are in danger when the left critiques and criticizes America in that way, because now our political enemies and others are repeating those claims and their false claims. I mean, even, Ricky, this latest statement, which was in English, you know, it's about our country. So it's Wang Yi, their most senior diplomat, said, I think this was also a shot at the U.S. This is on our infrastructure.

He said, if the United States does not hit the brakes and continues to speed down the wrong path, no amount of guardrails could prevent derailment, which will become conflict and confrontation. So it's like they are watching everything happening in our country. So they know that the talk on the trade derailment is a big topic. So they use all that rhetoric, Rick, in the statement that's threatening us about action.

But it's also I think it's a it's a nod to say, like you were talking about Black Lives Matter, we're watching your country. If you are having these infrastructure problems, we've got better infrastructure. We're better at this. And we're going to mock you at the world stage about it.

Look, you can't blame the Chinese for being aggressive in the face of a weak President. What I would say is, is that the Democrats need to stop with this crazy, radical Black Lives Matter talk because it's damaging us on the world stage. People are beginning to believe that we're a racist, systematically racist country.

And we're not. We have problems. We have to confront those problems.

But to suggest that somehow the system supports it and wants it to happen is wrong and ridiculous and un-American. So I would say we've got to push back hard. The Democrats have created this problem, much like, you know, I say this is a little bit of a spin.

But when the Senate Democrats dropped the Trump sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, Putin's pipeline, they helped create a war in Ukraine. There are consequences for weak policies and weak statements. I think what we're having to do is we're kind of like Americans in general.

They're having to kind of figure this out on their own. They're listening to shows like this. And then I think a lot of people, once they heard that for you, Rick, deleted TikTok.

Yeah, I was one of them. I'm the first person to say this. Pretty much, Rick, the reason of why you should not have this on your phone was enough for me to go, yeah, I probably shouldn't have it on my phone because I, as someone who works in this industry, I obviously always want to be in touch with what's going on. I actually have a problem with people, you know, work in social media and they're like, I don't have Instagram.

It's like, well, you should, because how are you going to function? Right. But I had spent my time on TikTok.

I developed at least a hundred followers and I decided it was time to just deactivate and leave. Now that can't be said for a lot of conservative entities. It can't be said for a lot of media companies.

I'd say most people are still using it. Absolutely. And, and, and maybe utilizing it to the point, like I said, where I think it swayed an election. So you gotta be careful. Even when you're deciding to pull off of these things, not because of the security person, because of your influence. Yeah. Rick, as always, we appreciate your commentary, insight into this. I think a lot of this started with Rick that day, where he said on our broadcast, I delete it from your phone. So I'd be like, he said today, don't even allow it at your house because I think the tech is, it's so much stronger than what we all understand about the app.

And that's what we got so many calls about. Can I even actually delete it off my device? Some of that's a back-end with Apple.

So it's like, how long do they let you decide? Oh, I accidentally deleted something. I want it back.

You look with the apps that you delete years ago. If you go back and see, they're like ready to redownload. So there's something there. Again, we're going to continue talking. We're going to continue to take your phone calls 1-800-684-3110. That's 1-800-684-3110. We'll be right back.

One second. All right, welcome back to Second Hill. We are taking your calls to 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. There's a lot of talk about China, but that's because China's flexing its muscles throughout the world right now. I've been threatening to get involved directly in the war in Ukraine. That was the latest kind of back and forth. And they basically, their message to the US has been, you better stay out of it and don't tell us what to do. And then they go through the litany of countries, wars that we've been involved in and conflicts we've been involved in.

They said, we don't tell you. But again, their decision-making is different. They're taking adversarial, potentially adversarial positions to each of our positions.

So it's becoming clearer and clearer. Again, this was not just about economic competition. Any time that Joe Biden tries to phrase it that way, listen, he wouldn't be banning TikTok if it was just about an economic competitor that we have to deal with in the Chinese. It's a new China first, strengthened Chinese Communist Party, came out of COVID with even more power because the world didn't shun them. They should have been shunned by the world. The world did not shun them. And we got a new piece up at ACLJ.org by Wes Smith.

Wes joining us now. China's grand plan for defeating America. Can you start, Wes, to say defeat comes in many forms. It's not always an outright military defeat and a technical surrender.

Yeah. China has explicitly stated that it is their plan to diminish our influence in the world, to have the world's largest military, to have the world's largest economy. They have a huge economy right now.

Ours is still larger. To do all of that, because as President Xi has stated, their goal, and whenever your enemy, your adversary says something like this, we probably need to take them at their word. His goal is to be the world's only remaining superpower. And they're going about this militarily and economically.

Just two quick examples. Their military budget continues to increase year after year. Right now they have about the same size Navy as we do, but with two aircraft carriers. They have more nuclear weapons launchers than we do. Three years ago they had 200 nuclear warheads.

Now our CIA estimates they have about a thousand. So militarily they are moving on. They're also buying influence militarily in South America and in Asia, Africa. They're building seaports so they can service their large Navy. They intend to circumnavigate the world with their military power.

They have the world's largest standing army. And so militarily they're doing that, but financially they own us on some level. I mean, we have a $30 trillion debt that the CBO says in the next five to seven years will add another $10 trillion to that. So we have $40 trillion. China already owns over a trillion dollars worth of our debt. In other words, basically we're borrowing the money from them.

They continue to import more goods here than we ever export to them. So Jordan financially and militarily, they are working towards that goal of diminishing our influence and becoming a superpower. Yeah. I mean, it seems like unfortunately, and we see this with Russia and we didn't seize the moment. So communism fell and yet we didn't seize the moment. Something failed in our approach to Russia because we're right back into conflict with call them whatever you want.

Yes. And I felt like we've done the same thing with China. They opened up their economy thought by opening their economy, suddenly that's going to change their whole. And it's actually just made them more dangerous because of tick because of they will exploit all of our economic needs.

They'll develop these apps like Tik TOK. They don't let their own people use them that way, but they'll keep selling it to us. It's this, I just think we opened up these countries, sub and logged.

We still have not figured that out. Like how do we, we tell them, you know, stop back or, you know, open up your economy, let's have more dialogue. And that's turned on us with China, where they've made these advancements that you talked about, Wes. And then Russia, they might not be called the Soviet unity anymore, but they are acting in that aggressive way as well.

Something just did not work in the doubt, what we expected to be the changes or the downfall. They may have had temporary, but it seems like long-term still their goal is how do we take down the U S yeah. And they have combined this goal with Russia and Iran just in the last two years, Russia and Iran and China have signed agreements with one another.

The one between China and Russia is called a no limits partnership. They have done joint military exercises, Russia, China, and Iran joint military exercises, because they do intend to defeat the United States. And again, as I said, in my, in my blog, on our website, it doesn't necessarily mean defeat on the battlefield and a formal surrender, but the defeat economically and militarily and influence wise is just as real and just as far reaching.

And at what point have we gotten it wrong where, you know, we talk about in Iraq, we usually talk, we make that distinction. We see you there, but this horrible regime, it's not all the people there, but yeah, I see some people about China say, well, it's about the communist Chinese communist parties, not all people in China. That may be the case, but when you have the largest standing army in the world, it's, it's not just 20 people.

This is a gigantic force. The Chinese, even if all Chinese don't benefit hundreds of millions do. We have to hit wrap our head around this a little differently. Cause we think, I think we Westernize everything. We always say, don't make an enemy out of everybody, but when we've gone to war, you killed all the Germans, right?

You didn't say we're, it's only the people that have this specific, everything was free. Everything was a target at certain point when you go to a full scale war because the country is supporting it. And I think that's why I'm talking about these moments where Russians didn't have to support bringing in another dictator and they did bring in another dictator and they're not rapidly rising up to overthrow them. No, cause there are enough Russians to overthrow.

There's enough Chinese people to overthrow the Chinese communist party. Yeah, they're not. Well, again, it's a different way of thinking. It's a different mindset. We think everybody thinks like we do. I think that's right.

I think that's a big part of the, the American experiment and the problem with it can be sometimes too, is that we Westernize everything with that. Let's go phone calls quickly cause we've been on hold for a long time. Naomi's calling in Alabama on line one. Welcome. Hello.

Thank you for taking my call. I would like to say that I believe the government and our government is spying on us through our devices and through our apps. And I believe that is why they want to ban kick talk because that is a gateway for China to get into our government system. Oh, you'd be, so be it's, you know, tick tock one if they wanted to your government systems, that's the smile of the U S government. But two, I mean they're taking every one of your keystrokes and they're giving it to the Chinese communist party. If Facebook was found to be giving that to the U S government, they would lose all their users.

Like, I mean Facebook would have a series and not all of them maybe, but they would have, they would probably, a lot of people take the risk knowing that they like the content. You, you, you, so I'm not, what I'm saying is I don't think that, I think there's an issue with spying. Your devices have made it easier for all actors to spy and you'd sign a lot of agreements. But at the end of the day, if these American companies were exposed to be giving all of our data over every one of your keystrokes over to the FBI or the CIA, then yeah, I think those companies would be facing some serious trouble even continue to have enough people to operate like that. Even with Rick said, like with the balance, I think when it's right here at home, that would even make it more dangerous.

Yeah, I think so. I think that the danger in there and the danger of tick talk is again, we're all being very easily exposed to what's happening when your federal government starts making these kinds of moves. And when your state governments that are more, when the red state start moving and then all of a sudden the blue states do as well. You got an interesting situation in here. Yeah, this is not something that, you know, it's serious. You know, that's what I mean. You know, it starts when, when things actually become not politicized, which is just about never, that is a pretty big move.

You need to be keeping, keep yourself aware of it. Very rare in our country. All right, folks, as always support the work, the ACLJ ACLJ that are real matching challenge right now. And that is a critical time for us financially. It's double the impact of your donation at ACLJ.org. That's ACLJ.org. And it gets a great time to support our work. It's all up at ACLJ.org. And again, with any of your donations, it's a $25 donation that triggers a matching $25 donation. So it's like $50 for us. Be involved. If you can donate today to ACLJ.org, we'll talk to you tomorrow.