Vice President Kamala Harris dodged pressing questions surrounding what needs to be done about TikTok on Wednesday during the New York Times Dealbook Summit.
Moderator Andrew Ross Sorkin asked the vice president, in light of recent controversies surrounding the Chinese-owned platform, what needs to be done to protect national security. Rather than give a clear answer, Harris pointed to her experience on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
"Well, I'll step back for a moment and say that one of the things that should keep all of us up at night is the level of mis and disinformation that is rampant and has been facilitated in a most extreme way by social media. There's no question about that. I was a member of the United States Senate when I was for four years. My favorite committee, I served on the Senate Intelligence Committee, where we would meet in a skiff in a bipartisan way," Harris began.
She continued, "One of the reasons it was my favorite is because when we walked in there, people just took off. No cameras, no public people took off their jackets, rolled up their sleeves, and we were just Americans, not Democrats or Republicans."Â
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Harris then discussed the investigation behind Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
"When I was on that committee, we investigated Russia's interference in the 2016 election, and then we declassified our findings, and it's available for anyone here to read who's interested. Russia interfered in the 2016 election targeting specific groups of Americans with dis and misinformation, with an intention to undermine the American people's confidence in our institutions, including our electoral—" Harris said.
"That was with American owned social media platforms," Sorkin interjected.
"That was in 2016, which is a lifetime ago in technology, by the way," Harris continued. "As an example of that, most of the method was by text, literally words and letters."
Sorkin pressed, "Do you believe a Chinese-owned social media platform, which virtually everybody in the country is now looking at on a daily basis, if not hourly basis, needs to be regulated or in some states? As you know, they're trying to ban it completely."
Rather than respond, Harris emphasized the need to "take very seriously" that "nation-states" are attempting to "undermine the democracy of the United States of America."
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"And it is incumbent on us with one of the highest, if not the most important priority being national security to take seriously any attempts to undermine our security as a nation. Period," Harris said.
She did not answer whether China was among the "nation-states" attempting to undermine democracy.
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Various Republican-led states have led efforts to ban TikTok on government devices with some states hoping to ban the app entirely. Many GOP lawmakers have cited concerns over Chinese surveillance as well as youth mental health as reasons behind these actions.
