The main national security threat is not through privacy but through the manipulation of public opinion. TikTok controls the feed, and so it can spread ideas t

The main national security threat is not through privacy but through the manipulation of public opinion. TikTok controls the feed, and so it can spread ideas to a very large number of people. They have something like 80 million users in the U.S., and they spend a substantial amount of time per day using TikTok. If the Chinese government has any ability to control TikTok's recommender algorithm, they could drastically alter U.S. public opinion. Trump got a taste of something like this (not suggesting that the Chinese gov did this, but it shows what's possible), when tens of thousands of people got tickets to his Tulsa rally because of TikTok videos that encouraged people to get tickets to the rally and then not go. More recently supposedly there has been a trend of ordering free Trump campaign merchandise (yard signs etc), and then making videos burning it in the backyard, etc. Even if things like this are totally domestic and organic, TikTok merely has to amplify this signal and put these videos in 80 million people's feeds.