In China’s information war, TikTok is a vital weapon in their arsenal
One of the crucial roles of a democratic government is to share understanding of evolving challenges to peace, prosperity and security with its electorate. Public opinion which is not informed honestly about risk from hostile actors is not likely to support stringent changes of policy needed to combat new threats at home and abroad.
No UK government in living memory has devised a policy grounded in national interests to shape Britain’s relationship with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime, let alone tried to articulate it sensibly to the public.
For decades Britons have largely been left to draw their own conclusions from happenings such as the appalling Cultural Revolution, the 1989 Tian’anmen massacre, the Covid pandemic, destruction of civil freedoms in Hong Kong and CCP support for Putin in Ukraine. In public life a few strident critics highlight risks; a larger cohort of siren voices murmur about benefits; and a large middle ground of popular opinion remains largely unaware of how much China increasingly endangers us all.
Blame for this enduring cloud of unknowing rests ultimately with UK governments across the political spectrum who, one after another, have lacked the courage and leadership to identify the CCP regime for what it is and act accordingly. But it is only fair to point out the vital part played by that regime itself in concealing truth and promoting falsehood about their own agenda.
The CCP survives by collecting, controlling and manipulating data. Contemporary digital communications and social media enable them to do so with Orwellian thoroughness and speed. Big data is captured and exploited both for internal repression and overseas espionage and sabotage. Social and news media provide platforms for all aspects of information warfare- propaganda, disinformation, manipulation and distortion designed to further the CCP’s global revisionist objectives.
Thus it is that apps as superficially innocuous as TikTok ( and presumably its current surrogate, Xiaohongshu or “Red Note”) are used by China-based operators to hoover up audio and video data which can be forged into harmful deepfake weapons.
These are now being used for criminal and political purposes including penetration of face and voice recognition security, attacks on sensitive institutions and facilities, and interference in democratic electoral processes.
This weekend it should become clear whether the US legal system will succeed in forcing the sale of TikTok to a safe US operator, or if not, banning it outright as a grave threat to national security. While the previous UK government required TikTok not to be installed on devices used by senior officials, no comprehensive disruption of this ubiquitous herd of Trojan horses has been contemplated here.
Following prolonged vacillation over what to do about Huawei kit in our telecommunications system, resolved only when Mike Pompeo descended on Europe and Britain like a ton of bricks, our new government appears to be drifting back into complacency despite repeated wake-up calls by the UK intelligence and security services about growing danger from Chinese as well as Russian cyber warfare.
A top Microsoft manager in the US wrote on January 6 comparing the current threat from Chinese AI to Western systems risking a reprise of Huawei’s compromise of Western 5G. But the Prime Minister’s new plans for a surge of investment in AI have raised serious security concerns, particularly that generative AI capable of creating spurious information could be incorporated in sensitive decision-making systems.
A specialist in this field has commented that “it is critical that the government look beyond a narrow set of extreme risks and bring forward a credible vehicle and roadmap for addressing broader AI harms”.
Indeed it is; and here one could just as well replace “AI” with “China”. With so much information being swept up by hostile actors, at the start of any plan to use AI more widely, using it more securely must be prioritised.
There is a profound challenge for the government of a liberal democracy to maximise the free exchange of data while minimising concomitant harms. The greatest harm of all, at this crucial stage when authoritarian adversaries are able to drain and exploit so much sensitive government and private information under our noses, arises when no coherent actions are taken to preclude hostile access in the first place.
The CCP regime directs a growing army of Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups to infiltrate target organisations around the world, conducting known attacks on US aerospace and defence establishments, semiconductor designers, government and military agencies and civic emergency services. There is a clear shift from data collection to preparations for potential sabotage.
China’s approach increasingly indicates that they have taken a leaf out of Russia’s gray-zone disruption playbook. The UK government should heed Baudelaire’s timeless warning- “The devil’s cleverest trick is persuading you he doesn’t exist”- and think hard about what a “durable, respectful and consistent relationship” with the CCP might really entail.