House Republicans have kicked off their investigations. The House Oversight Committee brought Twitter employees before them, like James Baker and nul Wroth, to grill them on Twitter's collusion with the FBI to censor the media, to censor Americans. We all know and remember what they did with the Hunter Bided laptop story and what they did to the New York Posts government ever contact you or anyone at Twitter to censor or moderate certain tweets? Yes or no. We received legal demands to remove content from the platform from the US government and governments all around the walking of these people for weeks and months, years prior to this League game. They have specifically told you in October that the potentially involving Hunter Biden's laptop legately and literally prophesized what happened, and you contacted them, Sir, I did not, did Mr Roth? Do you personally think that you have a political bias? And did you have on when you worked in Twitter, a personal political bias? No, sir, as you didn't. You know. That's that's remarkable because it's pretty much you did have strong biases compared when you compared, ironically using Twitter people that worked in the Trump White House to Nazis, they were good folks that you simply disagreed with politically and art representative republic, and you compare them to the most evil people on the planet there murdered sixty million people, or at least we're responsible for those deaths. Do you think that was a little bit hyperbolic. We'll talk to Kara Frederick, the director of the Tech Policy Center at the Heritage Foundation, about all of it. What do you need to know about what happened in that hearing, what does it mean, and what does it mean moving forward. We'll also get her take on TikTok about how China uses the social media app to spy on you and brainwash your kids. What do you need to know about that? How worried should you be? All that? And more on the Truth with Lisa Booth Kara Frederick's My guests, stay tuned. So, Karen, Republicans kicked off their oversight hearings looking at the collusion between the FBI and Twitter as well. You know, what did you make of these hearings? Obviously we wouldn't know about any of this if Elon Musk kind of released the Twitter files, But you know, what are your takeaways from all of it? Yeah, I thought it was pretty unsatisfying, to be honest. Um, I left with a lot more questions than answers. Um, you know that you'll wroth of Gota, James Baker. These guys are all coach, They're good at what they do. Um. The other Twitter employee was she was a little more fast and loose, especially when it came to the First Amendment and free speech. But but the other guys had it pretty buttoned down. So I was pretty unsatisfied with what came out of it. However, you know, given what Elon Musk has basically revealed, and we saw like little shreds and data points of what we believed to be happening. We wrote about this at the Heritage Foundation back in February two. But when Elon Musk actually had those Twitter files released through the spade of independent journalists, UM, we were able to see and you know, in stark reality like what was actually going on. So we knew before from the Intercept reporting that there had been meetings with the FBI and Big Tech ahead of We knew that Zuckerberg, remember when he admitted on Joe Rogan that the FBI warned a Facebook of a propaganda dump that might look akin to Russian hacking prior to their decision to suppress the laptop story. But then when Ellen came out with it, it was like okay, bam, like it is absolutely indisputaful. So I thought that was a great service, But in my mind, I'm kind of wondered why, wondering why the rest of um, you know, the main cream media and um, the rest of America isn't as exercised about this collusion now that we have verifiable proof that this was happening, that you know, they they effectively the FBI ran an influence campaign against you o roth um Uh former Twitter executive by bringing him out to Aspen, having an entire exercise focused on Hunter Biden specifically and what potential laptop league and documently could look like, um if it was part of you know, foreign influence campaign. So you know, the FBI is kind of doing at this point what they're accusing other other countries, but militians intent of doing. And in my mind, Americans should be really really ticked off. And I hope the Oversight Committee keeps going after these people. I hope that the FEC opens their investing, reopens their investigation because the Twitter executives at that point had said that Twitter, the Twitter was not working with the Biden campaign. Again, these Twitter files were real that that was not true. So I'm I'm hoping to get consequences out of this and not just sort of a theatrical here. And we we need to to actually have legislation, um be the result of these hearings. And I think some you know, there's draft legislation underway. I think those should go to a vote, and and I think this collusion should end. Yeah, I hear you and that. I mean, look, I was getting frustrated to just because they weren't being honest. I mean, we know that the FBI had these weekly meetings with Twitter officials like you'll Roth. They're warning them about this hack and leak operation, you know, heading into all of this, heading into this stopping of this New York Post article. And also we know that the FBI sent you'll Roth documents the night before they stopped the New York Post from sharing this article. And I think what concerns me the most is obviously, if we lose the First Amendment, we cease to be a free country. We ceased to be a republic exactly. And you know, everybody used to sort of say, oh, the First Amendment only applies to government actors, when we as conservatives would be like, hey, these private companies are are actually you know, restricting our free speech. But we have a culture of free speech of course, so that matters too. But then secondly, this is the smoking gun when it comes to government actors restricting our free speech, and those are um, at least in my estimation. I'm not a lawyer, but that's a pretty clear by elation of the First Amendment. And this is another thing that I think people don't now they're starting to understand about tech companies, But we used to I I used to work at Facebook, and we would call ourselves, um, those the people that are building an airplane in midflight. So these guys are sort of making it up as they go. They've proven that over the past few years. But now we see that their ideological actors sort of retrofitting explanations for enacting their political proclivities, and they make that decision, they find a justification later, like they did with the you know, the hacked materials, which turn out not to be true, and then they actually admitted that's not true. Then the election happens and they get the result that they supposed they want, and now it's maya copa, maya coppa. We shouldn't have done that, but it's too little, too late, and this happens time and time and time again. You mentioned working for Facebook. It what's really concerning, it's just how much influenced all of these tech companies have and me, if you look collectively at Google twy or Facebook, etcetera, they control so much almost you know, most of the information that we see or that we read, you know, talk a little bit about that, oh exactly. And you know, it's not just sort of the content that they're censoring under the term content moderation, which really amounts to censorship, like you said, it's the information flow, it's access to information. And that's particularly troubling. And we as conservatives harp on this vignette over and over again because I think it's important, and that vignette is the Parlor one. So when Amazon or excuse me, when um, Apple and Google decided to purge uh Parlor, which at that time was at the top of the Apple's app store from their their apps from their stores. It was like, okay, well maybe you can get it on you know, the desktop. You can still look at Parlor. It was still sort of alive but on life support. But then when Amazon Web Services decided to restrict or not just restrict, but take away cloud hosting services from Parlor, it was dead in the water. It didn't exist anymore. So it's not just at you know, the top layer, that the digital platform layer, but it's that these mid tiers of what we call the digital stack that actually prevents access to consumers to information. You could not get Parlor at that point at all in any form, in any digital form. So you know, this goes further and further down to things like internet service providers, more foundational layers of that stack. So Americans don't just have to be concerned about how their content is manipulated and restricted and sort of the the influence in the propaganda that you were thinking of, um, that's both cut off and and pushed them by specific companies. Um. But they do have to be concerned about their access to information, which I think is that is the seat change, that is the crossing of the rubicon in my mind, when you start to get down into those foundation or foundational layers of that digital stack which prevents Americans from actually seeing this information. So it's not just breaking the links in direct message, does it Twitter? It's actually lights out for these entire companies if they displease a specific big tech platforms that frankly have an ideological event. And one of the big problems is that so many of these American companies are being led by people who do not believe in freedom. They don't believe in free speech. I mean, you'll roth sit there during the hearing talking about how somehow you know censorship preserve speech. I mean, how does that even make sense? Or you look at Apple, Apple change the air drop feature in China so protesters couldn't circumvent the government. So even if you make changes in Congress, even if you change policy in Congress, we still have people leading these companies who do not believe in free speech. So where do you go from there? No, that's exactly right. And that's when I when I first came from California to the Hill, I basically would walk around, you know, briefing members and say, hey, you guys have to look at these companies differently because they don't see themselves as American companies. They see themselves as global companies responsible to a global constituency. And you look at a company like Facebook or now Meta, which has their user base outside of the U. S. And Canada. So they will, you know, if they're hauled in front of Congress, they'll pretend that they bleed red, white and blue, or incorporated in Delaware. You know, we're American companies, but they really think differently because they do. They're they're concerned about growth, their bottom lines first and foremost, and they want to make sure that when they're making decisions that it could apply to the countries within which they're operating, and that's not just America. And I think that the biggest manifestation of this was when the former CEO of Twitter, Parague eper Wall, when he specifically talked and tweeted about you know, the First Amendment and free speech right, they're more concerned with safety and harm. He's basically said that free speech is not you know, it's not absolute, it's not something that um we care about first and foremost. It's you know, preventing harm and and that you know, harm as is as you know, a catch off for all kinds of things, especially on the left, that that we necessarily wouldn't agree with. So, um, where do you go from there? That's a good question, I think generally, Um, and you'll see this in the China question that you raised. We we need to recover a sense of you know, American self interest, frankly, because with with China it's the whole. Now there's a big movement to onshore a lot of our capabilities, whether it be ppe for you know, the next pandemic um or the ability to to make a semiconductor chips that power pretty much everything that that we're going to use, from cars, computers, to watches, etcetera. So I think that we need to sort of press into that momentum m you know, bring things back to America and recover our sense of of what it means to be American innovators who care about America. And you know then that has naturally resulted in being a force for good as the world. So we we need to get back to where we started from if we're going to frankly succeed going forward. I mean, it seems to be common sense that you want to be independent, that you want to bring manufacturing back home, that we want to be energy independent and we want to be less reliant upon our enemies. It seems like common sense, but Joe Biden doesn't get it. Democrats don't get it as well. But you know, I want to keep talking about China here. So there's obviously been this increased focus on TikTok after the Chinese aircraft was going around basically doing god knows what, taking pictures of our nuclear silos and air force bases and all of that. But do you think the concerns here over TikTok and China's influence over TikTok? Is that overblown? Pun intended or what's your takeaway? Oh? Not overblown at all. And and it's really funny that, um, you know, we're in in the position to say, is this overblown? Because when we were working on this prob ablem back in the Heritage Foundation was working on I was working on in a different passy center, Holly, Um, I felt like we were voices alone in the wilderness, and people were like, you're crazy, what are you talking about. This is a great cup above and the fact that we've gotten this far to to be able to expose this digital platform for what it is, I think is great, So I'll take that as a win, um, but not overblown at all. As you said, Beijing based parent company by Dance. That matters, and it matters because of a few reasons. And the first and most important one is China has a seventeen National Intelligence law that effectively requires every private company to provide access to the state. So every private entity is working in service of the Chinese Party state that the Chinese Communist Parties UCP UM. That is, so whenever they say, oh, you know we are we're totally separate. We store our data in the US and in Singapore, so nobody has to worry about our Chinese ties that were actively trying to downplay We know that given internal communications that were released and reported on that they actively try to downplay that tie. Um. That that matters because when Beijing comes knocking, Bye Dance via TikTok or Tiktokavians is not going to say no, they can't. And then we know that Byte Dance actively employees former CCP state media members. There's a report that had over three hundred UM profiles declared that they had been members of the Party state at some point UM, and then further, one of three by dance board seats held by a UM person with active CCP ties. So this is I mean, it's very very obvious. And that that alone is you know, those are facts, and then you look at what's happened since UM we can establish those facts for the American people, and we know that US user data has been accessed in China by Bye Dance engineers. So again they're saying, oh, there's a sundering between our Chinese operations and our US operation is not true because Chinese engineers in China have access to US user data. Further, a new revelation forbes UM basically UM released that TikTok planned to surveil the location of specific Americans journalists. So these are Byte Dance employees in China using TikTok to gather i P address location or attempting to gather i P address locational information for these specific journalists to find their sources. UM. So it is being used TikTok as a surveillance app that it is by by Dance employees in China. So anything that these companies are saying, and I'm gonna be watching with with bated breath the TikTok CEO when he goes in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on March twenty three, um to to hear what he has to say, because all of these equivocations UM frankly amount to falsehoods, and they know they're being deliberately misleading given what we know from recent reporting on accessing user data from China that that rift between the Chinese and American company does not exist like they say it does. But what's wild is Adam Schiff, who previously was the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, is audit. I mean, he should know better. And then you have people like GERK Swollwell, who was also on the Intel Committee, who had a relationship with a Chinese spy. You have Senator Diane Feinstein who employed a Chinese spy for for twenty years. You've got the Biden family who have made money off of China as well. You've got all these American companies previously you know mentioned Apple, you know you got the NBA. So I mean, I guess, do do we have the will to to go after China, to hold China's feet to the fire since everyone is still beholding to them. I honestly believe that that is the biggest problem that we're facing and the biggest problem that the China Select Committee is going to face. Two. You know, we need to end China's land grabs in the American heartlands. We need to end p l A influence in U S universities. And when people are, you know, getting part of their paycheck from the CCP or Chinese related end z s, I think you know that they're they're compromised. UM, and a lot of especially the Democratic Party, as you mentioned swallow Well shift, even Biden. We know about his dealings from the Hunter Biden laptop relations UM and his son's dealings with CCP members, the CCP spy master in fact. UM. So so you're right, when they're in the pockets of Beijing, it's going to be harder and harder to UM figure out solutions. And I really believe it's incumbent upon especially the Republicans on the China Select Committee. I'm glad that there's bipartisan efforts UM. Some of the TikTok bills actually UM in the House are bipartisan led efforts of Christian Morthy, Democrat Representative is co sponsoring the Bill with Mike Gallagher UM, in addition to Mike Warner really sounding the alarm on TikTok um at Democrat from Virginia. So I think it's UM. It's very important for UM for people to obey the dictates of their consciences at this point because UM this whole you know, extracting wealth from America. My friend Page wildly talks about that. A lot of people sort of getting their's and you know, while the rot is UM is still pervasive, so that you know this, it carries on as it was without UM being you know, who we used to be as a country. I think I think people are just they're they're trying to get their's uh, and then they're trying to secure that for their posterity and their own children. Perfect example of of how that that looks in the real world. And Americans just have to say no UM. At the Heritage Foundation, you know, we've talked to a lot of people who are who are very interested in this question, people with UM who have made a lot of money, businessmen and one and they're like, I cannot allow this to go on. I I have UM for a sense of morality. And this is where you know, we're pulling out of China and being able to see that, especially when you're big tech companies like Apple, UM, who gets a lot of their revenue from China. That's a huge market for them. Uh and they can't see that. But the average you know, American business owner and not average, but you know, good solid American business owners can. I think we need more of those those men and women, UM and and frankly, it needs to be exposed. I don't think people know what you know about UM apples in China and partnering with the CCP, propaganda arm Um, Google attempting to make a search engine in China called Dragonfly for you, and UM. You know, we need to expose the fact that a lot of these big tech companies, these global is frankly UM are are in bed with the CCP because that's the world they think is successful. Those are all really great points. You look at TikTok, more than a hundred million American users. They spend an average of more than eighty minutes per day on the app. You've got roughly thirty six percent of Americans over the age of twelve now use TikTok, including sixty one of Americans ages twelve through thirty four, I mean massive influence. And I worry that beyond just the data privacy issues, I worry about the brainwashing aspect of this as well. Uh, there was this article I was reading and the Daily Mail is talking about concerns in the UK. They said something like the hashtag trance has been used almost twenty six billion times and you look at that, you look at things like puberty blockers leading to infertility at a time when we face declining birthrates. I mean, if you're China, would would you do anything differently? Absolutely not? And you know we know from this has been popularized. Now China is doing all of this all while insulating Chinese kids through the more wholesome and joy in at their Chinese version of TikTok um. And it's particularly concerning for the next generation of citizens. So TikTok is they're winning the battle for the next generation in America, frankly, and two thirds of American teams around TikTok We know that parents surveyed by Pew said that of their pre teens, these are nine to eleven year olds are on TikTok and it indoctrinates American youth through pushing harmful content like eating disorders, like suicide, content like verbal, verbal and physical ticks UM content with influencers that exhibit those UM particular symptoms. And there's one report from the Wall Street Journal UH last year that basically said, all of the young women who went to a Texas hospital who were exhibiting these verbal and physical ticks, all of a sudden, they traced all of their their UM, their habits back to looking at a particular TikTok influencer. So this is all happening all while China insulates their own children through the more wholesome app called in the Chinese version of TikTok UM. And we know that, you know, even adults are starting to get their news and a lot of their content here on TikTok. The number of American adults using TikTok for news has tripled in the past two years. So we're plugging ourselves into this application that's pumping UH these influence campaigns as propaganda. We know that pro CCP narratives are also pumped into UM TikTok algorithms and their feed So understanding what this is doing to the next generation, what what effect this could have on our citizens who are going to vote and who are charged with the future of our republic. We haven't even seen the impacts of that yet, so not just on mental health, but also on you know, how we how they successfully stored this nation going forward. And as you said, if I, you know, if I was trying to if I was a CCP, if I was chusing being, I would not do anything differently. Z turning out and droves for Democrats believing abortion, climate change, gun control, all these different things, you know, are are the biggest issues that you know, they're all going to lead to the demise of the country. But I wanted to ask you, you know, if if if you could wave a magic wand what would you do about big tech? What what would you like to see get done in Congress? Yeah, well, starting with TikTok, I think this is a no brainer. It's time to ban it outright from operating within the United States. It's both a CCP spy app and as you said, something that that really brainwashes our children and also puts them in the CCPs clutches for um, you know, when they're playing the long game, for for blackmail, for espionage, all kinds. They have patterns of life on our children now and we should not be tolerating that. So that would be great. Just absolutely, it has to happen at the federal level. States are moving out. It's great what they're doing when it comes to banning TikTok on government devices, but it's not enough. They can still access the data, especially if you connect to government WiFi, etcetera. So it's only a partial solution. Um. And then you know, I think there's a great suggestion by SCC Commissioner Brendan Carr who says, hey, remove TikTok from Google and Apple app stores. You did it to Parlor, so why can't you do to TikTok. We have a lot of evidence that and security justification that this is extremely harmful. Then second, the collusion between big tech and the government, that's something that we should impose costs on. So there should not be it should not be permitted to allow the federal government to use these tech companies and these executives as agents to chill the speech of Americans and polices speech of Americans. So that's huge too. And then third, I think you need to look at the way these companies do business like their ad tech models. Center. Ely has a great bill that I hope he introduces and Conress Congress reintroduces UM that takes a look at their at tech. You know, you can't have be UM on the buy side and the cell side and operating ad exchange. It helps these companies sort of accrew all of that power to themselves and then they can visit the censorship decisions that you know don't run down to the benefit of most American citizens, especially on the right UM. And it's it's that consolidation of power that is really UM preventing Americans from getting the access they need to specific service as well as UM giving them the potential to influence UM. You know what Americans see, especially before an election, as we know with Google and Gmail and their spam filters and how they inordinately filtered out into their spam conservative candidates, uh and not Democratic candidates. So there's a litany of things. I think those three things are are the top things that you do right now, and then you work on frankly, data privacy and children. I think that's the next frontier. That's something we really need to think hard about. Again, there's some really interesting bills percolating like the Kids Online Safety Act UM and I think Republicans need to lean into those UM and conservatives as well, and we could get some you know, bipartisan consensus along the way, because everybody sees what this is doing to our children and nobody's happy about it. And these tech companies they're they're doing it on purpose. They're deliberately designing these platforms to maximize engagement and even targeting these UM quote small but untapped audiences like pre teams. So this is something that should be nipped in the bud right away. America can do it. All of this goes in the direction of harming Republicans, as it always does. Kara Frederick, thanks so much for joining the show. Super insightful. I really appreciate your time. Thanks Lisa, so was Kara Frederick, director of the Tech Policy Center at the Heritage Foundation. Interesting conversation. Obviously knows a lot about the issue. I want to thank you guys at home for listening every Monday and Thursday, but you can listen throughout the week. I want to thank John Cassio, my producer, for putting the show together. Feel free to leave us a review on Apple podcasts, or give us a rating. I love to look at those until next time.

House Republicans have kicked off their investigations. The House Oversight Committee brought Twitter employees before them, like James Baker and nul Wroth, to grill them on Twitter's collusion with the FBI to censor the media, to censor Americans. We all know and remember what they did with the Hunter Bided laptop story and what they did to the New York Posts government ever contact you or anyone at Twitter to censor or moderate certain tweets? Yes or no. We received legal demands to remove content from the platform from the US government and governments all around the walking of these people for weeks and months, years prior to this League game. They have specifically told you in October that the potentially involving Hunter Biden's laptop legately and literally prophesized what happened, and you contacted them, Sir, I did not, did Mr Roth? Do you personally think that you have a political bias? And did you have on when you worked in Twitter, a personal political bias? No, sir, as you didn't. You know. That's that's remarkable because it's pretty much you did have strong biases compared when you compared, ironically using Twitter people that worked in the Trump White House to Nazis, they were good folks that you simply disagreed with politically and art representative republic, and you compare them to the most evil people on the planet there murdered sixty million people, or at least we're responsible for those deaths. Do you think that was a little bit hyperbolic. We'll talk to Kara Frederick, the director of the Tech Policy Center at the Heritage Foundation, about all of it. What do you need to know about what happened in that hearing, what does it mean, and what does it mean moving forward. We'll also get her take on TikTok about how China uses the social media app to spy on you and brainwash your kids. What do you need to know about that? How worried should you be? All that? And more on the Truth with Lisa Booth Kara Frederick's My guests, stay tuned. So, Karen, Republicans kicked off their oversight hearings looking at the collusion between the FBI and Twitter as well. You know, what did you make of these hearings? Obviously we wouldn't know about any of this if Elon Musk kind of released the Twitter files, But you know, what are your takeaways from all of it? Yeah, I thought it was pretty unsatisfying, to be honest. Um, I left with a lot more questions than answers. Um, you know that you'll wroth of Gota, James Baker. These guys are all coach, They're good at what they do. Um. The other Twitter employee was she was a little more fast and loose, especially when it came to the First Amendment and free speech. But but the other guys had it pretty buttoned down. So I was pretty unsatisfied with what came out of it. However, you know, given what Elon Musk has basically revealed, and we saw like little shreds and data points of what we believed to be happening. We wrote about this at the Heritage Foundation back in February two. But when Elon Musk actually had those Twitter files released through the spade of independent journalists, UM, we were able to see and you know, in stark reality like what was actually going on. So we knew before from the Intercept reporting that there had been meetings with the FBI and Big Tech ahead of We knew that Zuckerberg, remember when he admitted on Joe Rogan that the FBI warned a Facebook of a propaganda dump that might look akin to Russian hacking prior to their decision to suppress the laptop story. But then when Ellen came out with it, it was like okay, bam, like it is absolutely indisputaful. So I thought that was a great service, But in my mind, I'm kind of wondered why, wondering why the rest of um, you know, the main cream media and um, the rest of America isn't as exercised about this collusion now that we have verifiable proof that this was happening, that you know, they they effectively the FBI ran an influence campaign against you o roth um Uh former Twitter executive by bringing him out to Aspen, having an entire exercise focused on Hunter Biden specifically and what potential laptop league and documently could look like, um if it was part of you know, foreign influence campaign. So you know, the FBI is kind of doing at this point what they're accusing other other countries, but militians intent of doing. And in my mind, Americans should be really really ticked off. And I hope the Oversight Committee keeps going after these people. I hope that the FEC opens their investing, reopens their investigation because the Twitter executives at that point had said that Twitter, the Twitter was not working with the Biden campaign. Again, these Twitter files were real that that was not true. So I'm I'm hoping to get consequences out of this and not just sort of a theatrical here. And we we need to to actually have legislation, um be the result of these hearings. And I think some you know, there's draft legislation underway. I think those should go to a vote, and and I think this collusion should end. Yeah, I hear you and that. I mean, look, I was getting frustrated to just because they weren't being honest. I mean, we know that the FBI had these weekly meetings with Twitter officials like you'll Roth. They're warning them about this hack and leak operation, you know, heading into all of this, heading into this stopping of this New York Post article. And also we know that the FBI sent you'll Roth documents the night before they stopped the New York Post from sharing this article. And I think what concerns me the most is obviously, if we lose the First Amendment, we cease to be a free country. We ceased to be a republic exactly. And you know, everybody used to sort of say, oh, the First Amendment only applies to government actors, when we as conservatives would be like, hey, these private companies are are actually you know, restricting our free speech. But we have a culture of free speech of course, so that matters too. But then secondly, this is the smoking gun when it comes to government actors restricting our free speech, and those are um, at least in my estimation. I'm not a lawyer, but that's a pretty clear by elation of the First Amendment. And this is another thing that I think people don't now they're starting to understand about tech companies, But we used to I I used to work at Facebook, and we would call ourselves, um, those the people that are building an airplane in midflight. So these guys are sort of making it up as they go. They've proven that over the past few years. But now we see that their ideological actors sort of retrofitting explanations for enacting their political proclivities, and they make that decision, they find a justification later, like they did with the you know, the hacked materials, which turn out not to be true, and then they actually admitted that's not true. Then the election happens and they get the result that they supposed they want, and now it's maya copa, maya coppa. We shouldn't have done that, but it's too little, too late, and this happens time and time and time again. You mentioned working for Facebook. It what's really concerning, it's just how much influenced all of these tech companies have and me, if you look collectively at Google twy or Facebook, etcetera, they control so much almost you know, most of the information that we see or that we read, you know, talk a little bit about that, oh exactly. And you know, it's not just sort of the content that they're censoring under the term content moderation, which really amounts to censorship, like you said, it's the information flow, it's access to information. And that's particularly troubling. And we as conservatives harp on this vignette over and over again because I think it's important, and that vignette is the Parlor one. So when Amazon or excuse me, when um, Apple and Google decided to purge uh Parlor, which at that time was at the top of the Apple's app store from their their apps from their stores. It was like, okay, well maybe you can get it on you know, the desktop. You can still look at Parlor. It was still sort of alive but on life support. But then when Amazon Web Services decided to restrict or not just restrict, but take away cloud hosting services from Parlor, it was dead in the water. It didn't exist anymore. So it's not just at you know, the top layer, that the digital platform layer, but it's that these mid tiers of what we call the digital stack that actually prevents access to consumers to information. You could not get Parlor at that point at all in any form, in any digital form. So you know, this goes further and further down to things like internet service providers, more foundational layers of that stack. So Americans don't just have to be concerned about how their content is manipulated and restricted and sort of the the influence in the propaganda that you were thinking of, um, that's both cut off and and pushed them by specific companies. Um. But they do have to be concerned about their access to information, which I think is that is the seat change, that is the crossing of the rubicon in my mind, when you start to get down into those foundation or foundational layers of that digital stack which prevents Americans from actually seeing this information. So it's not just breaking the links in direct message, does it Twitter? It's actually lights out for these entire companies if they displease a specific big tech platforms that frankly have an ideological event. And one of the big problems is that so many of these American companies are being led by people who do not believe in freedom. They don't believe in free speech. I mean, you'll roth sit there during the hearing talking about how somehow you know censorship preserve speech. I mean, how does that even make sense? Or you look at Apple, Apple change the air drop feature in China so protesters couldn't circumvent the government. So even if you make changes in Congress, even if you change policy in Congress, we still have people leading these companies who do not believe in free speech. So where do you go from there? No, that's exactly right. And that's when I when I first came from California to the Hill, I basically would walk around, you know, briefing members and say, hey, you guys have to look at these companies differently because they don't see themselves as American companies. They see themselves as global companies responsible to a global constituency. And you look at a company like Facebook or now Meta, which has their user base outside of the U. S. And Canada. So they will, you know, if they're hauled in front of Congress, they'll pretend that they bleed red, white and blue, or incorporated in Delaware. You know, we're American companies, but they really think differently because they do. They're they're concerned about growth, their bottom lines first and foremost, and they want to make sure that when they're making decisions that it could apply to the countries within which they're operating, and that's not just America. And I think that the biggest manifestation of this was when the former CEO of Twitter, Parague eper Wall, when he specifically talked and tweeted about you know, the First Amendment and free speech right, they're more concerned with safety and harm. He's basically said that free speech is not you know, it's not absolute, it's not something that um we care about first and foremost. It's you know, preventing harm and and that you know, harm as is as you know, a catch off for all kinds of things, especially on the left, that that we necessarily wouldn't agree with. So, um, where do you go from there? That's a good question, I think generally, Um, and you'll see this in the China question that you raised. We we need to recover a sense of you know, American self interest, frankly, because with with China it's the whole. Now there's a big movement to onshore a lot of our capabilities, whether it be ppe for you know, the next pandemic um or the ability to to make a semiconductor chips that power pretty much everything that that we're going to use, from cars, computers, to watches, etcetera. So I think that we need to sort of press into that momentum m you know, bring things back to America and recover our sense of of what it means to be American innovators who care about America. And you know then that has naturally resulted in being a force for good as the world. So we we need to get back to where we started from if we're going to frankly succeed going forward. I mean, it seems to be common sense that you want to be independent, that you want to bring manufacturing back home, that we want to be energy independent and we want to be less reliant upon our enemies. It seems like common sense, but Joe Biden doesn't get it. Democrats don't get it as well. But you know, I want to keep talking about China here. So there's obviously been this increased focus on TikTok after the Chinese aircraft was going around basically doing god knows what, taking pictures of our nuclear silos and air force bases and all of that. But do you think the concerns here over TikTok and China's influence over TikTok? Is that overblown? Pun intended or what's your takeaway? Oh? Not overblown at all. And and it's really funny that, um, you know, we're in in the position to say, is this overblown? Because when we were working on this prob ablem back in the Heritage Foundation was working on I was working on in a different passy center, Holly, Um, I felt like we were voices alone in the wilderness, and people were like, you're crazy, what are you talking about. This is a great cup above and the fact that we've gotten this far to to be able to expose this digital platform for what it is, I think is great, So I'll take that as a win, um, but not overblown at all. As you said, Beijing based parent company by Dance. That matters, and it matters because of a few reasons. And the first and most important one is China has a seventeen National Intelligence law that effectively requires every private company to provide access to the state. So every private entity is working in service of the Chinese Party state that the Chinese Communist Parties UCP UM. That is, so whenever they say, oh, you know we are we're totally separate. We store our data in the US and in Singapore, so nobody has to worry about our Chinese ties that were actively trying to downplay We know that given internal communications that were released and reported on that they actively try to downplay that tie. Um. That that matters because when Beijing comes knocking, Bye Dance via TikTok or Tiktokavians is not going to say no, they can't. And then we know that Byte Dance actively employees former CCP state media members. There's a report that had over three hundred UM profiles declared that they had been members of the Party state at some point UM, and then further, one of three by dance board seats held by a UM person with active CCP ties. So this is I mean, it's very very obvious. And that that alone is you know, those are facts, and then you look at what's happened since UM we can establish those facts for the American people, and we know that US user data has been accessed in China by Bye Dance engineers. So again they're saying, oh, there's a sundering between our Chinese operations and our US operation is not true because Chinese engineers in China have access to US user data. Further, a new revelation forbes UM basically UM released that TikTok planned to surveil the location of specific Americans journalists. So these are Byte Dance employees in China using TikTok to gather i P address location or attempting to gather i P address locational information for these specific journalists to find their sources. UM. So it is being used TikTok as a surveillance app that it is by by Dance employees in China. So anything that these companies are saying, and I'm gonna be watching with with bated breath the TikTok CEO when he goes in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on March twenty three, um to to hear what he has to say, because all of these equivocations UM frankly amount to falsehoods, and they know they're being deliberately misleading given what we know from recent reporting on accessing user data from China that that rift between the Chinese and American company does not exist like they say it does. But what's wild is Adam Schiff, who previously was the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, is audit. I mean, he should know better. And then you have people like GERK Swollwell, who was also on the Intel Committee, who had a relationship with a Chinese spy. You have Senator Diane Feinstein who employed a Chinese spy for for twenty years. You've got the Biden family who have made money off of China as well. You've got all these American companies previously you know mentioned Apple, you know you got the NBA. So I mean, I guess, do do we have the will to to go after China, to hold China's feet to the fire since everyone is still beholding to them. I honestly believe that that is the biggest problem that we're facing and the biggest problem that the China Select Committee is going to face. Two. You know, we need to end China's land grabs in the American heartlands. We need to end p l A influence in U S universities. And when people are, you know, getting part of their paycheck from the CCP or Chinese related end z s, I think you know that they're they're compromised. UM, and a lot of especially the Democratic Party, as you mentioned swallow Well shift, even Biden. We know about his dealings from the Hunter Biden laptop relations UM and his son's dealings with CCP members, the CCP spy master in fact. UM. So so you're right, when they're in the pockets of Beijing, it's going to be harder and harder to UM figure out solutions. And I really believe it's incumbent upon especially the Republicans on the China Select Committee. I'm glad that there's bipartisan efforts UM. Some of the TikTok bills actually UM in the House are bipartisan led efforts of Christian Morthy, Democrat Representative is co sponsoring the Bill with Mike Gallagher UM, in addition to Mike Warner really sounding the alarm on TikTok um at Democrat from Virginia. So I think it's UM. It's very important for UM for people to obey the dictates of their consciences at this point because UM this whole you know, extracting wealth from America. My friend Page wildly talks about that. A lot of people sort of getting their's and you know, while the rot is UM is still pervasive, so that you know this, it carries on as it was without UM being you know, who we used to be as a country. I think I think people are just they're they're trying to get their's uh, and then they're trying to secure that for their posterity and their own children. Perfect example of of how that that looks in the real world. And Americans just have to say no UM. At the Heritage Foundation, you know, we've talked to a lot of people who are who are very interested in this question, people with UM who have made a lot of money, businessmen and one and they're like, I cannot allow this to go on. I I have UM for a sense of morality. And this is where you know, we're pulling out of China and being able to see that, especially when you're big tech companies like Apple, UM, who gets a lot of their revenue from China. That's a huge market for them. Uh and they can't see that. But the average you know, American business owner and not average, but you know, good solid American business owners can. I think we need more of those those men and women, UM and and frankly, it needs to be exposed. I don't think people know what you know about UM apples in China and partnering with the CCP, propaganda arm Um, Google attempting to make a search engine in China called Dragonfly for you, and UM. You know, we need to expose the fact that a lot of these big tech companies, these global is frankly UM are are in bed with the CCP because that's the world they think is successful. Those are all really great points. You look at TikTok, more than a hundred million American users. They spend an average of more than eighty minutes per day on the app. You've got roughly thirty six percent of Americans over the age of twelve now use TikTok, including sixty one of Americans ages twelve through thirty four, I mean massive influence. And I worry that beyond just the data privacy issues, I worry about the brainwashing aspect of this as well. Uh, there was this article I was reading and the Daily Mail is talking about concerns in the UK. They said something like the hashtag trance has been used almost twenty six billion times and you look at that, you look at things like puberty blockers leading to infertility at a time when we face declining birthrates. I mean, if you're China, would would you do anything differently? Absolutely not? And you know we know from this has been popularized. Now China is doing all of this all while insulating Chinese kids through the more wholesome and joy in at their Chinese version of TikTok um. And it's particularly concerning for the next generation of citizens. So TikTok is they're winning the battle for the next generation in America, frankly, and two thirds of American teams around TikTok We know that parents surveyed by Pew said that of their pre teens, these are nine to eleven year olds are on TikTok and it indoctrinates American youth through pushing harmful content like eating disorders, like suicide, content like verbal, verbal and physical ticks UM content with influencers that exhibit those UM particular symptoms. And there's one report from the Wall Street Journal UH last year that basically said, all of the young women who went to a Texas hospital who were exhibiting these verbal and physical ticks, all of a sudden, they traced all of their their UM, their habits back to looking at a particular TikTok influencer. So this is all happening all while China insulates their own children through the more wholesome app called in the Chinese version of TikTok UM. And we know that, you know, even adults are starting to get their news and a lot of their content here on TikTok. The number of American adults using TikTok for news has tripled in the past two years. So we're plugging ourselves into this application that's pumping UH these influence campaigns as propaganda. We know that pro CCP narratives are also pumped into UM TikTok algorithms and their feed So understanding what this is doing to the next generation, what what effect this could have on our citizens who are going to vote and who are charged with the future of our republic. We haven't even seen the impacts of that yet, so not just on mental health, but also on you know, how we how they successfully stored this nation going forward. And as you said, if I, you know, if I was trying to if I was a CCP, if I was chusing being, I would not do anything differently. Z turning out and droves for Democrats believing abortion, climate change, gun control, all these different things, you know, are are the biggest issues that you know, they're all going to lead to the demise of the country. But I wanted to ask you, you know, if if if you could wave a magic wand what would you do about big tech? What what would you like to see get done in Congress? Yeah, well, starting with TikTok, I think this is a no brainer. It's time to ban it outright from operating within the United States. It's both a CCP spy app and as you said, something that that really brainwashes our children and also puts them in the CCPs clutches for um, you know, when they're playing the long game, for for blackmail, for espionage, all kinds. They have patterns of life on our children now and we should not be tolerating that. So that would be great. Just absolutely, it has to happen at the federal level. States are moving out. It's great what they're doing when it comes to banning TikTok on government devices, but it's not enough. They can still access the data, especially if you connect to government WiFi, etcetera. So it's only a partial solution. Um. And then you know, I think there's a great suggestion by SCC Commissioner Brendan Carr who says, hey, remove TikTok from Google and Apple app stores. You did it to Parlor, so why can't you do to TikTok. We have a lot of evidence that and security justification that this is extremely harmful. Then second, the collusion between big tech and the government, that's something that we should impose costs on. So there should not be it should not be permitted to allow the federal government to use these tech companies and these executives as agents to chill the speech of Americans and polices speech of Americans. So that's huge too. And then third, I think you need to look at the way these companies do business like their ad tech models. Center. Ely has a great bill that I hope he introduces and Conress Congress reintroduces UM that takes a look at their at tech. You know, you can't have be UM on the buy side and the cell side and operating ad exchange. It helps these companies sort of accrew all of that power to themselves and then they can visit the censorship decisions that you know don't run down to the benefit of most American citizens, especially on the right UM. And it's it's that consolidation of power that is really UM preventing Americans from getting the access they need to specific service as well as UM giving them the potential to influence UM. You know what Americans see, especially before an election, as we know with Google and Gmail and their spam filters and how they inordinately filtered out into their spam conservative candidates, uh and not Democratic candidates. So there's a litany of things. I think those three things are are the top things that you do right now, and then you work on frankly, data privacy and children. I think that's the next frontier. That's something we really need to think hard about. Again, there's some really interesting bills percolating like the Kids Online Safety Act UM and I think Republicans need to lean into those UM and conservatives as well, and we could get some you know, bipartisan consensus along the way, because everybody sees what this is doing to our children and nobody's happy about it. And these tech companies they're they're doing it on purpose. They're deliberately designing these platforms to maximize engagement and even targeting these UM quote small but untapped audiences like pre teams. So this is something that should be nipped in the bud right away. America can do it. All of this goes in the direction of harming Republicans, as it always does. Kara Frederick, thanks so much for joining the show. Super insightful. I really appreciate your time. Thanks Lisa, so was Kara Frederick, director of the Tech Policy Center at the Heritage Foundation. Interesting conversation. Obviously knows a lot about the issue. I want to thank you guys at home for listening every Monday and Thursday, but you can listen throughout the week. I want to thank John Cassio, my producer, for putting the show together. Feel free to leave us a review on Apple podcasts, or give us a rating. I love to look at those until next time.