The Lead with Jake Tapper: Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), Is Interviewed About Montana's Ban On TikTok
Interview
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Well, Jake, I think the concern I have is a national security concern, as you were describing. That comes from the work that I've done on the Intelligence Committee. The fact that there are 120 million Americans or so that spend a month on TikTok every single year, that whenever TikTok wants to use its algorithms to have a completely different news feed on Hong Kong or on the Uighurs or on Taiwan or anything else, they can do it.
I think that puts us in a horrible position with respect to Beijing's use of that technology. We're going to obviously have a debate about the First Amendment issues that are at work here. We should have that debate. That's not a reason to not have a conversation about whether it's a great idea for Beijing to beam this technology into America or among the American people. And I'll say beyond that, I just want to be very clear about this, that I feel extremely strongly that we should be regulating the large American digital, you know, platforms, which we haven't done.
And our poor kids in this country who have had to rely basically on their student councils to do those negotiations need somebody who's going to stand up and negotiate with Zuckerberg and the rest of these guys on our privacy rights, on our economic interests, and on the civil liberties in this country. We haven't done that either. So I don't want to stop just because the ACLU says this is a bad idea in a press release.
I think we need to have this debate in our country, and I particularly think we need to do it for the national security issues that are at stake and because our kids mental health have been affected in a profoundly negative way by a decade of completely unregulated social media. Whether it's coming from Beijing or it's coming from Northern California. That particularly part of it doesn't matter to me.
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You can throw me in your --
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There's all these fancy marvel pillars.
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No. I know. I don't think that's the reason. I think it's because we move at a snail's pace. We move at a glacial pace. This is why I believe, and I've said this for years now, I've just reintroduced this bill, actually today, that we should have a new federal agency in Washington, like the Federal Communications Commission, like the Food and Drug Administration. Staffed by experts who can help not just get the data you're pointing to, which is so important because we don't have the data to make the kind of assessments that need to be made that in any other era.
We'd have for a consumer agency, but in my view, to help us make the judgments about whether we want to accept and I don't these algorithms to addict our kids to social media. So we are slow to act. We are painfully slow to act. I think there's a consensus emerging now around the advent of AI that is calling the question on Washington and on the American people.
And I believe, you know, we're going to move past this daily discussion about TikTok and into a world where we're saying, what do we have to do to protect our democracy? What do we have to do to make sure the American people's privacy rights are protected and to make sure that we put the American people into a negotiation with, you know, Zuckerberg and the rest of these guys about what the economics ought to actually be.
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It's staggering. Look, see, you don't have to take my word for it. Seven former Secretaries of Defense, Republicans and Democrats, wrote a letter last week saying, Senator Tuberville's hold, which is on all flag officers promotions in the DoD, is hurting our readiness. It's hurting our national defense. And why is he doing it? He's doing it because in the wake of the first constitutional right being stripped from the American people in our history since reconstruction, a women's right to choose.
The Department of Defense is trying to make it a little less miserable for people that are serving in DoD who have not picked to serve, for example, in Alabama, where abortion is banned, no exceptions to rape or incest, where if you're a doctor who's performed an abortion, you could go to jail for 99 years. What the DoD is saying is, under those circumstances, we'll actually allow you to travel.
We'll allow you to get paid. We'll allow you to take paid leave. Tommy Tuberville is saying, I'm so mad about that I'm going to do something no senator has done in the history of America, which is hold up 230 flag officers that are waiting for their appointments to post all over the globe, all over the world. This is extreme, substantively, because his position is way out of whack with where America is on the issue of a woman's right to choose. But he's also chosen a procedural mechanism that is compromising, seriously compromising the readiness of our armed forces.
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Thanks for having me. Good to see you.
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