Technologies

Politicians Push for TikTok Ban, Saying It’s a Threat to National Security

Tech experts say that might not be the right way to handle the problem, and instead argue for privacy protections.

Some American lawmakers want to ban TikTok over worries that its 150 million US users could be a powerful weapon in the hands of the Chinese government.

Proposals bouncing around both the US House and Senate would do just that, though the technical details remain fuzzy. And an unprecedented move like this would undoubtedly prompt legal challenges from free-speech advocates, the tech industry and others, especially in the absence of any direct evidence showing Chinese government ties or surveillance.

The growing calls for such a ban follow the more than four-hour grilling of TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew by a House committee last month. During the meeting, several members angrily charged that the app could be used to both gather intelligence about Americans and spread dangerous disinformation in service of that government’s agenda.

They also railed against the company’s perceived data collection and sharing habits, as well as the potential effects of explicit and otherwise inappropriate content on the growing minds of kids and teenagers.

Chew repeatedly insisted during the hearing that his company, which is based in Singapore and Los Angeles, operates independently from both its China-based parent ByteDance and the Chinese government.

After the hearing’s conclusion, TikTok also released a statement accusing the committee members of «political grandstanding» and failing to acknowledge the company’s efforts to address data protection concerns through efforts like Project Texas, which the company says would keep American user data in the US.

While some security experts agree it’s possible that TikTok could pose a danger to national security, they argue that a ban isn’t the right way to handle those concerns. Instead, they argue that political leaders should focus on passing federal digital privacy legislation that would regulate how all social media companies collect, protect and share user data.

«We’re not China,» said Justin Fier, senior vice president for red team operations at the AI security company Darktrace. «There’s no ‘Great Firewall’ here. We don’t monitor every packet that goes back and forth.»

Fier said that from a practical standpoint he doesn’t understand how such a ban would work in the US, other than by forcing companies like Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores, which in itself would be a «massive» move.

That said, Fier and other data security experts say politicians are right to be worried about TikTok’s impact on national security.

«From a targeting perspective, it’s the perfect data set,» he said, noting that Chinese intelligence officials could easily filter the massive amounts of data collected by the app to find specific Americans to target for espionage purposes.

Anton Dahbura, executive director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University, agrees. He says that Chinese efforts to gather data on the American population at large are nothing new, noting that its government has been tied to everything from the massive data breach of the Marriott hotel chain to swarms of surveillance drones discovered in the skies of Washington, DC.

Meanwhile, he says the stakes continue to increase as the definition of what’s now considered critical infrastructure continues to broaden. While facilities like meat-packing plants and schools may not have been considered to be part of this category a few years ago, they are now, Dahbura says. But their data security resources and practices haven’t kept pace, making them soft targets for nation-state hackers.

Data collected by TikTok could give those digital intelligence operators the information they need to target them, he said.

«This is something everyone should take seriously,» he said. Dahbura added that while other social media companies are also collecting that same data, «it’s over the top to have an open pipeline directly to foreign governments for them to use as they please.»

Despite that, he agrees that a ban would do little good, saying that Americans will find a way around it or move to imitators that will inevitably pop up.

Dahbura says the mishmash of complaints and issues thrown around by the politicians calling for a ban shows how members of Congress don’t really understand how social media and the technology behind it work.

There were at least a handful of times during the hearing where representatives asked questions that didn’t make any sense, including whether TikTok accessed home Wi-Fi networks. Apps don’t access networks, but devices like phones and laptops do, then apps connect to the internet through them. Another such question was whether TikTok monitors pupil dilation. Chew said it doesn’t. It just identifies the eyes on a person’s face when they’re using certain kinds of filters.

At the same time, some of the committee members tried to put the focus on the perceived evils of social media as a whole, for example, pointing to the suicide death of a teenager last year that allegedly happened after the teen watched TikTok videos promoting suicide.

While those are big problems, they aren’t unique to TikTok, Dahbura said. «That eliminated their credibility for me,» he said of the panel.

Fier said that given the vast amounts of data social media companies collect and store, the government will have to ultimately decide whether it wants to regulate them as it does financial institutions and other data-heavy industries.

Given the millions of people and businesses that use TikTok and social media,»it would be a tough culture shift to go backward,» he said.

Both experts said that one thing Congress could do is finally pass a federal privacy law. Right now, in the US tech companies are governed by a patchwork of state laws. While admittedly this wouldn’t stop Chinese espionage efforts, it could go a long way toward addressing other long-running concerns about social media as a whole.

«Our politicians have become extremely reactive in regards to technology,» Dahbura said. «But the way technology is moving, we can’t be reactive anymore. We have to be proactive.»

Technologies

Google races to put Gemini at the center of Android before Apple’s AI reboot

Google is using its latest Android rollout to position Gemini as the AI layer across phones, Chrome, laptops and cars.

Google is using its latest Android rollout to make Gemini less of a chatbot and more of an operating layer across the phone, browser, car and laptop, just weeks before Apple is expected to show its own Gemini-powered Apple Intelligence reboot at WWDC.
Ahead of its Google I/O developer conference next week, the company previewed a number of Android updates, including AI-powered app automation, a smarter version of Chrome on Android, new tools for creators, a redesigned Android Auto experience, and a sweeping set of new security features.
Alphabet is counting on Gemini to help Google compete directly with OpenAI and Anthropic in the market for artificial intelligence models and services, while also serving as the AI backbone across its expansive portfolio of products, including Android. Meanwhile, Gemini is powering part of Apple’s new AI strategy, giving Google a role in the iPhone maker’s reset even as it races to prove its own version of personal AI on the phone is further along.
Sameer Samat, who oversees Google’s Android ecosystem, told CNBC that Google is rebuilding parts of Android around Gemini Intelligence to help users complete everyday tasks more easily.
“We’re transitioning from an operating system to an intelligence system,” he said.
As part of Tuesday’s announcements. Google said Gemini Intelligence will be able to move across apps, understand what’s on the screen and complete tasks that would normally require a user to jump between multiple services. That means Android is moving beyond the traditional assistant model, where users ask a question and get an answer, and acting more like an agent.
For instance, Google says Gemini can pull relevant information from Gmail, build shopping carts and book reservations. Samat gave the example of asking Gemini to look at the guest list for a barbecue, build a menu, add ingredients to an Instacart list and return for approval before checkout.
A big concern surrounding agentic AI involves software taking action on a user’s behalf without permissions. Samat said Gemini will come back to the user before completing a transaction, adding, “the human is always in the loop.”
Four months after announcing its Gemini deal with Google, Apple is under pressure to show a more capable version of Apple Intelligence, which has been a relative laggard on the market. Apple has long framed privacy, hardware integration and control of the user experience as its advantages.
Google’s Android push is designed to show it can bring AI deeper into the device experience while still giving users control over what Gemini can see, where it can act and when it needs confirmation.
The app automation features will roll out in waves, starting with the latest Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel phones this summer, before expanding across more Android devices, including watches, cars, glasses and laptops later this year.
The company is also redesigning Android Auto around Gemini, turning the car into another major surface for its assistant. Android Auto is in more than 250 million cars, and Google says the new release includes its biggest maps update in a decade and Gemini-powered help with tasks like ordering dinner while driving.
Alphabet’s AI strategy has been embraced by Wall Street, which has pushed the company’s stock price up more than 140% in the past year, compared to Apple’s roughly 40% gain. Investors now want to see how Gemini can become more central to the products people use every day.
WATCH: Alphabet briefly tops Nvidia after report of $200 billion Anthropic cloud deal

Technologies

Waymo recalls 3,800 robotaxis after glitch allowed some vehicles to ‘drive into standing water’

Waymo issued a voluntary recall of about 3,800 of its robotaxis to fix software issues that could allow them to drive into flooded roadways.

Waymo is recalling about 3,800 robotaxis in the U.S. to fix software issues that could allow them to “drive onto a flooded roadway,” according to a letter on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s website.
The voluntary recall is for Waymo vehicles that use the company’s fifth and sixth generation automated driving systems (or ADS), the U.S. auto safety regulator said in the letter posted Tuesday.
Waymo autonomous vehicles in Austin, Texas, were seen on camera driving onto a flooded street and stalling, requiring other drivers to navigate around them. It’s the latest example of a safety-related issue for the Alphabet-owned AV unit that’s rapidly bolstering its fleet of vehicles and entering new U.S. markets.
Waymo has drawn criticism for its vehicles failing to yield to school buses in Austin, and for the performance of its vehicles during widespread power outages in San Francisco in December, when robotaxis halted in traffic, causing gridlock.
The company said in a statement on Tuesday that it’s “identified an area of improvement regarding untraversable flooded lanes specific to higher-speed roadways,” and opted to file a “voluntary software recall” with the NHTSA.
“Waymo provides over half a million trips every week in some of the most challenging driving environments across the U.S., and safety is our primary priority,” the company said.
Waymo added that it’s working on “additional software safeguards” and has put “mitigations” in place, limiting where its robotaxis operate during extreme weather, so that they avoid “areas where flash flooding might occur” in periods of intense rain.
WATCH: Waymo launches new autonomous system in Chinese-made vehicle

Technologies

Qualcomm tumbles 13% as semiconductor stocks retreat from historic AI-fueled surge

Semiconductor equities reversed sharply after a broad AI-driven advance, with Qualcomm suffering its worst day since 2020 amid inflation concerns and rising oil prices.

Semiconductor stocks fell sharply on Tuesday, reversing course after an extensive rally that had expanded the artificial intelligence investment theme well past Nvidia and driven the industry to unprecedented levels.

Qualcomm plunged 13% and was on track for its steepest single-day decline since 2020. Intel shed 8%, while On Semiconductor and Skyworks Solutions each lost more than 6%. The iShares Semiconductor ETF, which benchmarks the overall sector, fell 5%.

The sell-off came after a key gauge of consumer prices came in above forecasts, and as conflict in Iran pushed crude oil higher—prompting investors to shift away from riskier assets.

The preceding advance had widened the AI opportunity set beyond longtime industry leader Nvidia, which for much of the past several years had largely carried the market to new peaks on its own.

Explosive appetite for central processing units, along with the graphics processing units that power large language models, has sent chipmakers to all-time highs.

Market participants are wagering that the shift from AI model training to autonomous agents will lift demand for additional AI hardware. Among the beneficiaries are memory chip producers, which are raising prices as supply remains tight.

Micron Technology slid 6%, and Sandisk cratered 8%. Sandisk’s stock has surged more than six times over since January.