Rep. Val Demings is on her way to fundraising gold.
But Sen. Marco Rubio wants to frame the Democrat as a tool of the Chinese Communist Party to do just that.
In a new online ad released Wednesday, Rubio, R-Fla., opened a new front in his re-election campaign by comparing his anti-communist undertones to the Demings campaign’s prolific use of the wild social media app, which is owned by him. from a Chinese company.
Last month’s revelations that private user data was accessed by China put TikTok on the defensive and intensified concerns about the company’s relationship with Beijing and the possibility of data leaks. The CIA views TikTok as a national security threat and is banned on official US military equipment.
The Democratic National Committee, which advised candidates against using the platform in 2020, recently created an account but controls access from special devices that are protected by software and other devices to protect data, Politico reported last month.
Demings’ campaign told NBC News that it is taking similar technological precautions as the committee.
But ultimately, the attention, engagement and money raised by the platform make using TikTok — which is especially popular with young people and was said to be the most downloaded app in the world as of April — worthwhile for Demings.
“We’re on TikTok for one simple reason: That’s where the voters are,” said Christian Slater, a spokesman for Demings. “The Demings campaign is working tirelessly to reach voters wherever they are, in person or online, in our fight to defeat career politician Marco Rubio.”
Rubio, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a senior member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said Demings was irresponsible, considering her positions on the House Homeland Security and Intelligence committees.
“Val Demings should know better. Every time Demings shares a TikTok, she encourages Americans to use a platform that leaves their personal information more vulnerable to China,” Rubio spokeswoman Elizabeth Gregory said. “Meanwhile, Marco Rubio has called for action and underscored the threat serious about personal privacy and US national security that TikTok represents.”
Rubio and the Republican National Committee aren’t on TikTok, but several Republican candidates are. The company did not return an email seeking comment.
The senator’s efforts to make TikTok a campaign issue marks the first time a statewide general election candidate has tested a middle-of-the-road attack that targets an opponent’s simple use of a social media platform, rather than its own content. posted on it. according to political insiders in both parties. Demings is one of the most high-profile politicians to embrace TikTok, where politics is a hot topic. Videos with the politics hashtag have received more than 20.8 billion views, and two hashtags related to overturning abortion rights have garnered more than 5 billion views, according to data on the TikTok platform.
Rubio’s broadside TikTok tries to hit multiple notes: Republican hostility to China and Big Tech, first popularized by former President Donald Trump. It’s also part of the GOP’s Florida playbook of branding Democrats as socialists or weak on communism — an attack that has historically had appeal in sizable portions of Florida’s right-leaning Hispanic communities, anchored by Miami’s Cuban-Americans like Rubio.
Demings, a former police chief, is harder to pin down with those labels. In the House of Representatives, she has taken care to criticize China, Cuba and Russia.
Polls show Rubio leads Demings by two terms. While nominally ahead, his team this week launched an aggressive advertising campaign targeting the former police chief’s law enforcement records. Demings is running ads criticizing Rubio’s congressional attendance record.
Demings outraised Rubio in the last financial quarter, $12.5 million to the Republican’s $4.5 million, and her campaign attributes much of her success to her “digital fundraising army,” which includes TikTok and brought in $9 million. dollars at the time.
Since launching the TikTok account in February, Demings’ campaign has been reporting uptake 2.7 million video views, nearly 900,000 likes and 51,500 followers. Her notable videos include a Spanish-language post with over 87,000 views and another criticizing Rubio for supporting Florida’s controversial law that prevents teachers from discussing issues of sexual orientation and gender identity in classrooms.
Political polling on TikTok has been sparse and inconclusive since Trump proposed banning it in 2020, and experts are divided on the severity of the threat TikTok’s data mining poses when compared to other companies, such as Twitter or Meta, that own Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
These companies, however, do not have a Chinese parent company. Critics have long argued that TikTok is ultimately controlled by the ruling Chinese Communist Party. Beijing has made social media data mining an instrument of its military and security policy, according to a Washington Post report.
Ryan Fedasiuk, a research analyst with Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technologies, said TikTok’s terms of service ultimately allow the Chinese government to examine its data. He said China’s involvement in TikTok isn’t just a privacy concern: By controlling an influential social media app, China has already censored information on the brutal oppression of Uyghurs and Tibetans. And it could affect American voters in far more profound ways than Russia did on Facebook in 2016.
“As with any type of algorithm-based social media platform, there is an opportunity to inject narratives with strategic consequences into PKK [Chinese Communist Party]or that benefit particular political candidates in the United States,” Fedasiuk said.
Despite political concerns about widespread privacy risks and the mining of data collected by social media companies and smartphones, Congress has resisted calls to pass laws governing best practices for Americans’ personally identifiable information.
Adam Segal, director of the Council on Foreign Relations’ digital policy and cyberspace program, said China doesn’t need TikTok to mine Americans’ data. She can just buy it.
“No one has shown why making a funny video or the data that comes from it is a national security risk. … I don’t think it’s a big threat,” he said. “When it comes to an American politician or an important businessman, the Chinese will target that person through many more effective ways than through TikTok.”
