The TikTok ban: national security threat or surveillance and speech fight?

The Short Version

The four guests who took up the TikTok law on The Joe Rogan Experience split on which danger is larger, a foreign government's reach into American phones or Washington's power over what Americans may use. Jonathan Haidt supports forcing a sale because Chinese law lets the Communist Party direct what the most influential platform among American children shows them, and Mike Baker agrees that the ability to shape what 170 million American users see is the real threat [1][4]. Tulsi Gabbard opposes the law because, as she reads it, it hands the government the power to decide which platforms Americans may use, and because it was passed together with an expansion of warrantless surveillance [2]. Kurt Metzger grants the concern about China but thinks the urgency came from somewhere else, the videos from Gaza circulating on a less censored platform [3]. The one point shared across the Haidt, Gabbard and Baker conversations is unease about giving Washington power over social media, which is why even the law's supporter asks people not to think of it as a ban [1][2][4].

Table of contents

What They Said

Jonathan Haidt: not a ban on a harmful product, a national security move

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt came to the subject from his work on children and phones [1]. He suspects TikTok, popular from around 2018 to 2020, may explain a further acceleration in teen depression: unlike stories on Netflix, it offers short, incoherent, often disturbing clips with little nutritive value and far greater addictiveness [1].

When Rogan raises the push to ban the app, he puts the hesitation plainly: many people are torn "because they don't want to give the government the ability to ban social media" [1]. Haidt's first move is to split the question in two: "let's separate the national security issue from the mental health issue" [1].

On mental health alone he would not support a ban. "I have a lot of libertarian friends I have a lot of libertarian sympathies I would be uncomfortable about the government banning a company," he says, and for a product that is merely bad for children he thinks the answer is age verification [1]. If the argument were only that this is really bad for children and so should be banned, he says he does not think he would support that [1].

His exception: "TikTok is different because it is a Chinese owned company" [1]. By law, he says, every Chinese company must do what the Chinese Communist Party tells it to do [1]. Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts might have similar effects on children, he allows, but the Chinese government can tell ByteDance to change what kids are seeing, and it does this inside China, dictating which kinds of content must and must not appear [1].

His evidence comes from a podcast episode by Tristan Harris on the national security risks, which he says showed that on the day Russia invaded Ukraine, TikTok in Russia changed radically [1]. From there he draws the comparison he also credits to Harris: imagine if in the 1960s the Soviet Union had owned and controlled PBS, ABC, NBC and all the kids' programs; "we would never have allowed that" [1]. He stresses the timing, mounting tension with China and the possibility of a war [1].

So he backs the bill, and asks listeners to describe it differently: "I hope people will not see it as a TikTok ban but they'll see it as an urgent national security move" to force ByteDance to sell to a non-Chinese owner [1].

Rogan asks what specifically the national security risk is supposed to be [1]. Haidt says a lot of it seems to be about data. Facebook pioneered the model in which "the user is the product not the customer," and TikTok has enormous amounts of data that can be used psychologically, because it knows exactly how long you hesitated and how much you liked certain kinds of videos; many people, he says, have written that TikTok seemed to know they were gay before they did [1]. To the company's assurance that the data sits on a server outside China, he answers: "Come on, come on. There's no way it could possibly be the case that the data is really separated and not available to the Chinese Communist Party." [1]

But he is candid that he does not know which worry motivated the bill, and that data is not what alarms him most [1]. What alarmed him in the Harris episode was the ease of influencing American kids to be for this or against that on any political issue [1]. The reply in the conversation is that this is visible now with Palestine and Gaza, and with the banning of people opposed to things the platform encourages; Rogan raises the swimmer Riley Gaines, banned from TikTok for her views on trans athletes [1].

The conversation ties this to an older pattern. It is noted there that Vladimir Putin was a KGB agent, and that the KGB decided decades ago on what the speaker thinks were called active measures to mess up American democracy, such as spray-painting racial slurs and putting swastikas on synagogues [1]. Cheap bot armies now let anyone, foreign intelligence services included, create a fun-house world of distorted mirrors, he says [1].

His wider preferences explain why he is comfortable with this law and uncomfortable with others. He favors content-neutral changes to the architecture of platforms over content moderation, for example identity authentication through third parties so that users prove they are real people of a certain age in a certain country while still posting anonymously [1]. On the problem of children and phones he says he is not counting on the social media companies or on Congress [1].

Tulsi Gabbard: read the language, it is not about TikTok

Former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard was asked by Rogan for her opinion after the law had passed, and her answer was immediate: "I oppose it. I oppose it on the grounds of free speech and civil liberties." [2]

She grants how the bill sounds from its supporters' talking points, which she notes come from many people in Congress on both sides of the aisle: a national security risk, concern for our kids [2]. Her argument is about the text. When you read the language and understand its implications, she says, "it's not really about TikTok at all." [2] In her reading, "It's about government being able to choose what platforms are acceptable and what are not" and what Americans are able to get information from or put information out on [2].

She gives four specifics.

Enforcement. If the government gives itself that authority, she asks, how is it enforced? That leads into Fourth Amendment territory: looking into your phone to find out whether you are the one using a VPN to download the app illegally [2].

The threshold. The law covers a business with a 20% or greater ownership stake tied to a designated foreign adversary [2].

Who decides. A few countries are listed, but the president would have the power to designate any other country a foreign adversary without Congress having to act: "It's a unilateral move." [2]

Who else is caught. You are also implicated, she says, if the government determines you are influenced by or connected with one of these countries [2]. She cites Elon Musk's warning and spells out the scenario: a government that disliked a country Musk does business with could say that X should be shut down because of the association [2]. It is said in the conversation that Musk was the only one among the American big tech companies to call it a very bad bill, while the others, to the speaker's knowledge, were silent or supportive [2].

She paraphrases Ron Paul calling the legislation the most egregious violation of civil liberties since the Patriot Act, and says the arguments for both are eerily similar in invoking national security [2]. The language, she says, "is intentionally vague" in a way that puts far more power in the hands of the executive branch, as the Patriot Act did [2].

Then the surveillance link. The TikTok measure, she says, was lumped together in the same bill with a two-year extension of FISA authorities [2]. Section 702 gives the government authority to surveil foreign actors to identify terrorist threats; the summary of the conversation records her account that it allows warrantless capture of Americans' communications with foreign targets, now reaches further into data such as Wi-Fi activity, and that the secret FISA court approves nearly every surveillance request [2]. Her complaint is about the oath: every elected official swears to defend the Constitution, yet "they are so ready to undermine our Fourth Amendment rights in the Constitution in the name of national security" [2]. She calls the choice between safety and liberty a false one [2].

Her answer to the data argument is a consistency test. If the bill's supporters are concerned about data security and privacy, "you got to do it across the board," because every social media and big tech company collects as much as it can and, she says, sells it to the highest bidder, American or foreign [2]. She asks why the government is not treating every social media company Americans use by the same standard [2]. It is also said in the conversation that the Biden administration has been very successful at working with Google and Meta to control what it calls disinformation, X and TikTok aside [2].

Rogan's contribution in this conversation is the general principle behind her objection: "The government is just people," and people in power naturally try to gain more of it, so the best way for them to get better at telling you what to do is to be able to surveil everything you say and do [2]. The two also discuss Adam Curry's view that the uproar is partly about China having built a more addictive, data-hungry app than American companies [2].

Gabbard does not deny foreign manipulation of social media. In the same conversation Rogan argues that campus radicalism may be amplified by foreign governments and bots, and it is said that Chinese TikTok is all academic accomplishments, martial arts demonstrations and science achievements, with a cutoff at 10 p.m. [2] Gabbard herself says Hamas planned its information war to win sympathy after October 7 [2]. Her objection is to the remedy [2].

Kurt Metzger: a legitimate concern, and a different reason for the hurry

Comedian and writer Kurt Metzger discussed the ban while it was still a proposal, in a conversation whose summary warns that much of what is said is opinion, joke or unverified [3]. It starts from surveillance in general. Rogan thinks David Tell has it right with his flip phone, and Metzger's line is: "Everybody has North Korea in their pocket at all times," with the joke that you had better hope several governments want your data so that at least there is competition [3].

On the ban, Metzger argues that while there are legitimate concerns about Chinese control, the real urgency came from Israel: TikTok is less censored, so videos that Israeli soldiers post of themselves in Gaza were reaching young Americans [3]. That is his claim about motive; the material gives no evidence for it beyond his saying so [3]. He places it within his wider view that shadow banning and debanking are forms of social control [3].

Mike Baker: the threat is real, and the power is dangerous

Mike Baker, a former CIA covert operations officer, takes TikTok up at the end of a conversation about how cheap deception has become [4]. Asked how much foreign governments influence what people promote on social media, he says they do a tremendous amount [4]. His example is the campus protests: nobody is happier with them than the Iranian regime, he says, and Russian and Chinese outlets and bots amplify the chaos to discredit democracy and capitalism [4]. He adds that seemingly grassroots campaigns against US mining can have outside backing, and that China has learned to influence local and state regulation [4].

On TikTok itself he ranks the risks. The bigger threat, he says, is not data harvesting but the ability of the Chinese regime to shape what 170 million American users see going into an election [4]. He notes that the Biden campaign itself uses the platform [4]. Rogan contrasts Chinese domestic TikTok, full of science and athletic achievement, with the American version [4].

A prediction is also made in this conversation: that TikTok will not actually be banned [4]. Someone will see an opportunity to buy it, it is said, and although ByteDance was saying it absolutely would not sell, it probably will; the speaker cannot see the app being pulled from app stores, given the angst that would cause among tweens and teens [4].

Then the worry arrives in this conversation too. The fear voiced is about the law's language: that it could be interpreted as the ability to censor others, and that the government cannot be given that power, with the Twitter files given as the reason [4]. The summary records that both men worry any law giving the government power over social media could be used to censor [4]. The argument made is about who holds the power next: it may sound good now to censor or suppress something, "but we're not going to be in charge forever" [4].

Baker's own answer is not legislative. Detection tools and apps matter, he says, "but ultimately it comes down to the individual": it is on each person, for themselves or for their kids, to be curious and make the effort to understand what they are seeing, reading and hearing [4]. It takes time, it may sound daunting, and you might prefer the government to do it, but in his words "that's not a good idea" [4]. He admits he is not optimistic about individual responsibility as a solution, but does not see another way around it [4].

Where They Agree, and Where They Don't

They agree foreign governments use social media against Americans. Haidt, Baker and Rogan all describe it, and Gabbard speaks of Hamas's information war, and Metzger grants that concerns about Chinese control are legitimate [1][2][3][4].

They disagree about what the law is. For Haidt it is a forced sale to a non-Chinese owner, after which the app can still operate [1]. For Gabbard it is a general authority over platforms, with a 20% threshold, a president who can add adversaries alone, and wording loose enough to reach X [2]. Haidt reasons from the purpose of the bill; Gabbard reasons from what its text would let a future government do [1][2]. Haidt spoke while it was a bill he hoped would pass, and Gabbard after it had passed together with the FISA extension [1][2].

They disagree about what the threat is. Haidt is unsure whether the bill's authors care more about data or influence, and says influence is what alarms him [1]. Baker says outright that influence outranks data [4]. Gabbard addresses the data argument and calls it a falsehood so long as American companies are left free to collect and sell [2]. Her test bites on data and less on Haidt's and Baker's point, which is about who can direct the feed; Haidt's answer to the comparison with Instagram and YouTube is that only TikTok's owner must obey the Chinese Communist Party [1][2][4].

They disagree about whose manipulation to fear. Haidt and Baker fear Beijing's hand on the algorithm [1][4]. Gabbard fears Washington's, and says it is already at work through American platforms [2]. Rogan, across the conversations, voices both fears [1][2][4].

They read the Gaza content in opposite ways. In the Haidt conversation, what young Americans see about Palestine and Gaza is offered as an example of how easily a platform can steer them [1]. For Metzger the same material is what a less censored platform lets through, and the reason people in power wanted it gone [3]. Baker and Gabbard both describe the Gaza information war as something foreign actors work to win [2][4].

They disagree about what happens next. In the Baker conversation a sale and no ban is what is expected [4]. Gabbard expects the power, once granted, to be turned on other platforms [2].

They mostly agree that government power over speech is dangerous. Haidt's discomfort with banning a company, Gabbard's whole case, and the slippery-territory exchange with Baker point the same way [1][2][4]. Haidt alone concludes that this case justifies it [1].

Why It Works

How a platform can be directed. Haidt's mechanism is legal: a Chinese company must do what the party tells it [1]. His evidence that this is used is the reported change in Russian TikTok on the day of the invasion of Ukraine, and the difference between what the Chinese government requires on the domestic app and what American children see [1]. Rogan makes the second point in the Baker conversation as well [4].

Why the data matters. The app records how long a viewer hesitates and what holds them, which Haidt says allows psychological inferences as intimate as sexual orientation [1]. He does not believe a server location can keep that from the Chinese state [1].

Why influence is cheap. Bots and fake accounts let a small actor look like a crowd; Rogan cites an FBI security specialist's estimate that around 80 percent of Twitter accounts were bots, and Haidt says the most extreme 3 percent on each side plus a few prolific posters hold outsized influence [1]. In the Baker conversation the game is described as suppressing and promoting, aimed at an audience that is for the most part very vulnerable [4].

Why a narrow law can become a broad one. Gabbard's mechanism is in the drafting: a percentage threshold, a designation the president can make alone, and a test of being influenced by or connected with an adversary [2]. Rogan's is in human nature: agencies are people, and people with power seek more [2]. The Baker conversation adds the turn of office: the tool passes to whoever governs next [4].

Why surveillance grows in the same breath. Gabbard's account of Section 702 is that surveillance aimed at foreign targets captures the Americans who communicate with them, without a warrant [2]. She connects this to Tucker Carlson's claim that the government read his Signal messages about arranging a meeting with Putin; in that exchange the two conclude that nobody really knows what is secure [2].

Where It Applies, and Where It Doesn't

These are four conversations from a few months in 2024, on one show. Haidt spoke days before his book's release, Metzger while the ban was proposed, Gabbard after the law passed, and Baker in May 2024 [1][2][3][4]. None of them describes what happened afterward, and the forecast of a sale made in the Baker conversation is a forecast [4].

The legal claims are one participant's reading. The 20% threshold, the presidential designation and the reach to people deemed influenced are Gabbard's description of the law, with Ron Paul paraphrased and Elon Musk cited in support [2]. Haidt does not discuss the text [1].

The evidence of Chinese direction is secondhand. Haidt relies on Tristan Harris's podcast for the Russian example and says he does not know what motivated the bill [1]. Baker states the threat as a capability [4].

Metzger's claim is unsupported in the material. The summary of his conversation says many claims in it are opinion, jokes or unverified stories [3].

The mental health question is separate. Haidt keeps it apart on purpose, and would not ban a product for being harmful to children [1]. His remedies there are norms for parents and schools: no smartphone before high school, no social media until 16, phone-free schools and more independence [1].

The argument reaches beyond TikTok. Gabbard's consistency test applies to every company that collects data [2]. Baker's point about individual responsibility applies to every platform and to deepfakes, which he says detection cannot keep pace with [4]. Haidt's architectural fixes are meant for social media generally [1].

What To Do With It

1. Separate the questions before taking a side. Haidt's distinction is the most useful tool in these conversations: whether an app is bad for children and whether a foreign government controls it are different questions with different remedies [1].

2. Read what a law does, not what it is called. Gabbard's case rests on the text, the threshold, who designates adversaries and who else is covered [2]. Haidt's rests on the remedy being a sale and not a shutdown [1]. Check both against the wording.

3. Ask who holds the power next. The test offered in the Baker conversation is to remember that a power to censor or suppress passes to whoever governs next, since no one stays in charge forever [4].

4. Apply the data standard evenly. If data privacy is the reason given, ask with Gabbard why it does not apply to every company collecting the same information [2].

5. Assume the feed is curated, whoever owns it. Haidt and Baker describe a platform that can promote and suppress [1][4]; Gabbard describes government pressure on American platforms to do the same [2].

6. Take Baker's responsibility on yourself. Be curious, check where what you are seeing comes from, and do it for your children as well as yourself [4].

7. Use the phone less. Rogan's and Metzger's opening point is that a smartphone used sparingly is probably the healthiest approach [3]. For children, Haidt's norms are no smartphone before high school and no social media until 16 [1].

8. Prefer fixes that do not judge content. Haidt's proposal of third-party verification that a user is a real person of a certain age in a certain country, while still posting anonymously, is aimed at bots without deciding what may be said [1].

Sources

1. Jonathan Haidt on The Anxious Generation: Phones, Social Media and Rescuing Childhood · The Joe Rogan Experience
2. Tulsi Gabbard on Hemp, Surveillance, the TikTok Ban, the Border and Maui · The Joe Rogan Experience
3. Kurt Metzger on Media Distrust, Gaza, Culture Wars and Conspiracy Rabbit Holes (Joe Rogan Experience #2125) · The Joe Rogan Experience
4. Mike Baker on Deepfakes, Campus Protests, Gaza, Ukraine and CIA Disguises · The Joe Rogan Experience