PRCorner — After TikTok, What China-Based Application Should U.S. Lawmakers Tackle Next?
By Andy Keiser, NSI Senior Fellow
Headline:
While almost everyone has heard of TikTok and its 170 million monthly users, few know about Temu, a popular shopping platform that has 100 million monthly users. Yet Temu’s application poses many of the same threats that national security-minded policymakers have expressed worry over when it comes to other applications, such with TikTok.
Background:
Temu is a Chinese-based e-commerce app that is owned and operated by PDD Holdings, which also owns Pinduoduo. Its business structure is like Bytedance and its holding of TikTok, meaning the CCP maintains significant influence over PDD Holdings, and its subsequent platforms, operations, and data management.
The Temu shopping platform first went live in the United States in September 2022 and created a splash with its “shop like a billionaire” SuperBowl ad earlier this year.
Why it Matters:
At the end of the day, Temu is an application on 100 million Americans’ phones, just like TikTok. Temu, and its parent company PDD Holdings, are beholden to the Chinese Communist Party and China’s national and cyber security laws, which enable the Chinese military and intelligence service the potential to use the Temu application for propaganda purposes, and to steal data, manipulate data, or conduct surveillance, as well as to cause disruption [NSI1] such as disabling millions of Americans’ phones during a conflict or ahead of a major development like the Chinese crossing the Taiwan Strait.
These concerns are nothing new when it comes to Chinese owned applications, as they make up the main warnings against TikTok. As NSI CTC Senior Fellow and American Enterprise Institute Nonresident Senior Fellow Klon Kitchen has explained, Chinese-based applications like TikTok or Temu are like “sensors” on our phones — easily used for nefarious purposes with or without the company’s knowledge. Like TikTok, Temu presents a tremendous threat to the security of Americans’ data. For example, it has been caught deceptively collecting Bluetooth and Wi-Fi network information as well as biometric data.
Temu is also a beneficiary of slave labor in the Xinjiang province. In a blistering report last summer, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party argued: “American consumers should know that there is an extremely high risk that Temu’s supply chains are contaminated with forced labor.”
The Trendlines:
Like Huawei, Dauha, TikTok, and DJI before it, the threat from Temu has gotten the attention of both sides of the aisle in Congress. In the Senate, Senator Tom Cotton wrote a letter to President Joe Biden asking him to investigate and ban Temu citing it as “a threat to American producers, investors, online retailers, and every single American’s personal privacy.”
In the House, Congressman Brian Mast wrote to the Federal Trade Commission to request they probe Temu’s “business nexus” with the Xinjiang province, citing the company’s own admission that it “does not expressly prohibit third-party sellers from selling their products based on their origin in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region.” Mast stated that “whether it’s TikTok or Temu, behind these friendly English words, hide three nefarious letters — CCP.”
Ally Chatter:
In Europe, where Temu reaches 75 million Europeans every month, Temu’s data practices have also caught the attention of the European Union, where it is set to face stringent EU and European Commission content-moderation rules.
The Bottom Line:
As the old saying goes, if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. There is a reason why the Chinese government is heavily subsidizing the cheap products being sold on Temu and it is similarly why the Chinese government subsidizes Huawei, ZTE, Dahua, and the country’s electric vehicle industry — it’s because they are interested in you, your data, and access to your communications networks to do what they want, when they want.
With the TikTok forced divestiture bill concluded, Congress and the Biden Administration would be wise to set its sights on the next digital threat emanating from Beijing — Temu.
Andy Keiser is a Senior Principal at Navigators Global and Senior Fellow at the National Security Institute at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University. Mr. Keiser previously served, among other positions, as a Senior Advisor to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Mr. Keiser also conducts cybersecurity consulting and federal lobbying for several companies, including in the telecommunications and technology sectors.
