Bipartisan legislation surrounding tiktok. Ve a conversation about the threat the Chinese Communist party poses to the United States and how he is leading in congress to take this complex issue head on in a way that makes some progress. Congressman kevin represents oklahomas first district. Can i call you kevin for a minute . That. Kevin was born on an air force base and gained early appreciation for the sacrifices m make. He really has a quintessential american background. He earned an Architectural Technology school, she used to work and pay for his engineering degree. After undergrad, kevin went on to work as an Aerospace Engineer for rock will international. Kevin was out of work when it rocked the industry. He saved purchases for his Mcdonalds Restaurant by operating Small Businesses writing computer programs. In 1997 he built a farm and bought his first Mcdonalds Restaurant inhe purchased two s restaurants. He grew that organization over the next decade owning 24 Mcdonalds Restaurants that employed thousands of people in northeastern oklahoma. Congressman hearn has worked because everyisle, serving in various leadership positions within the mcdonnell system. He served 13 years in the national leadershiprepresented. Franchises. Eight years as the she will have to tell me because i dont have it here. And charge of franchise relations. Rebeccah in addition to mcdonalds he has been a successful entrepreneur and banking, manufacturing development, multiple Technology Companies in sports publishing. This is so important for our topic today because the congressman really has firsthand experiences in all of these different ways thatll businesses operate, and the importance of the United States having really strong and sound institutions for technology, aerospace, our ability to produce and make our own food on the prosperity of the american people. Really has some really interesting and diverse backgrounds. He currently serves on the ways and means committee. He is the chairman of the Republican Study Committee were members of congress agree on basic principles and then Work Together to collabore with initiatives for the congress. Last i checked, there are 173 members of the committee. Rep. Hern 180 now. Rebeccah 180 now. Its incredible. Its really important conservative Principal Group within the republican covers men house of representative. What lets begin with talking about this tiktok because you are cosponsor. Something everyone is thinking about. You tell us about this bipartisan tiktok bill . Rep. Hern first of all, thanks for having me. The Hudson Institute has been around since i was born. Its great what you all have done, really smart people. We have had rc as recently as two weeks ago. You came by and talked with us about china. Very smart in that space. As a relates to tiktok, first thing we need to dispel as we are not here to disband tiktok. We are trying t protect america and americans from, sometimes their own selves. As we saw last year when the ceo of bytedance testified to congress, one of the most poignant questions asked of him was, do you allow the same data gathering where the same techniques to be used in china as you do in the United States. His response was sort of stuttering and saying no, then the followup question to that is, you have the algorithms in place to turn this off or leave it on. Not acknowledge or deny. But we are saying with tiktok is is, china, by statute of one of the five adversarial nations. However you want to call it, it is going to use that medium tiktok to collect data with american citizens and of that ad thats what this bill is about. Its a bipartisan bill. I want to give a big shout out to the former speaker. Speaker mccarthy tried to get this tiant China Task Force together in 2019 and Speaker Pelosi would not do it. So when he became speaker of ths together. Its very bipartisan, led by Mike Gallagher in the work they are doing is really good. Rebeccah just on the facts, tiktok is owned by bytedance, which is then controlled by the ccc. The . legislation requires bytedance to get control from the ccp. It can go any longer as a nonadversary entity controlling th hern we are looking at it wednesday percent threshold. They can own to any percent. They lose control of the company at that point in time. From bytedance is, their worries is essentially youtok out of the nation. If thats what you believe, you must be doing something nefarious with the gather you with the data you are gathering. Rebeccah it was passed completely unanimously 500. And then the tiktok app used through its gorithms and have a button there for young people who are using the app to put in their area code and it would give them■a it against this particular legislation. It really shows how this can be used not just for economic benefit for china. Imagine it where china wants to invade taiwan and could really push out information to young people and save the United States destabilizing. It could misinform and calvo galvanize support for interests. Rep. Hern if you look at as sof the hightech they have in the things they are doing to mine data, you look at their unbelievable growth. It came out in 2012. You look at the unbelievable growth thats compared to the domestic companies. Not here to try to bring parity between the platforms. But we are saying is,yo nation, and its just one part of the bill you talk about today, it is a Data Collection device, one oc vehicles that we are putting forth, we are going to do everything to address each one tccah its really an Encouraging Development to see the bipartisan support for it and really just see tiktoks efforts to lobby against it and it may have backfired and hadnt affected the increase solidified support. Really encouraging. I would like to move on to the republican china bill that was ju introduced. Kind of surprised how comprehensive it is. Rep. Hern 357 pages. Rebeccah its really interesting. I think not even just for the legislation itself, but as a teaching guide to go through and harm the United States and what are things you can try to unwind some of it. Congressman, i kind of went through it, i did not get all the way through it, but i was trying to understand the approaches. Two things came to focus for the its trying to shore up americas own strength and you could talk about that in technology and advanced tech. Trying to protect tt we can go grow stronger and innovative, and then it tries to stop what china is doing in its fabehaviors. Is that fair, those two pillars . I think what so rep. Hern i think what so dierent about china versus the Hudson Institute founded against the ussr, the cold war and bringing space race or a Nuclear Arms Race then more physical blunt force troops on the ground. And then we also had spying around. Throwing a little spying here and there. Today, this is a different d, in my time as rnc chair, is that china wants to destroy us economically■gnd and they are moving very rapidly to do so. If we think about this, they have only been on the world stage since 2001 when they were brought into the wto. We thought we could democratize china. Im sure at that time we h anidr economy. Their economy is important to the United States and our producers. Just as our pe when we look at out downed investments in the United States and we look at the tremendous growth in certain sectors, especially when it comes to National Defense areas, areas of technology, whether it be aerospace or chipall of these tr proliferation, or even in looking at ourome of the stuff there. Look it up. All of these things we had to look at. So what we are focusing on is, first of all, are we doing what we need to do at home. Tiktok is one example. We can talk about 80 of the cranes in our ports are chinese developed. We saw cellular modems where they are tracking ships and whats happening out our ports. Look out pound is what were doing to report and have transparency. We have some of our largest invement firms tt unds that are completely focused on china technology. You can invest ymo directly in a Chinese Support for the aerospace programs. When you look at a day in the paper, they document 79 tha few years, six or seven years that they want to basically, in their words, this slayingy. Other investments in the western world. R technology platforms. They are building the steel ip from our greatest Technology Companies, and then turn around yi to push you out through regulatory action, not choose you as our supplier with big mainframes or our software for our government. World are from 50 down to four of in five to six years. So they are moving very quickly, stealing rip, and we are finding that through our outbound in there was a public debate about how do wets like y assured destruction between the u. S. China, ever since we welcome china and the w. H. O. Wpo, republicans and democrats sought rep. Hern know they own the w. H. O. Rebeccah thats a different problem we have to solve. That we enrich china. So they have had their hand and did their time, and now they are healthy and thats where we see a more aggreive behavior. The challenge is, how do we unwind some of this . You actually not advocating dec, second largest economy in the world, 14. 14 trillion, so now the challenge is how do we look at thosepe sure we are not continuing to empower the country that is trying tothe un. Its about rep. Hern its about bringing transparency. We talked about this interviewee are at an economic war. I dont mean it bad, thats what s what we did as we rose as a nation. We were competing against europe as we grew. We did this because we wanted to create better products. We wanted to treat our people well. We wanted to have good human rights. And everything that i just ■cned, china is a bad example of all of us. We need to expose them. What this bill does is bring all of the topics together. Members of leadership legislative, creators, bring this together to point out that when you bring all this together, im sure we will talk about the border, belton road, education, all of these together , when you bake that cake, it doesnt look very good. Rebeccah i think its really the committee are tracking this concept that china is really a key part of how china things about technology, Civil Military fusion. Thats why your bill goes in these different sectors. Commercial or intercommercial purposes. Its directly applicable to the military. That distinction between private and civil versus military is not i think its important for people to understand what that means. In the United States we have a commanderinchief is a civilian. We have a delineation that our military is our military. We develop products an technogy china is different. They are one in the same. Any time they develop something for civilians, itstary in mind. And its the other way around for military, maybe the civilians get to use it. But a perfect example of thisiw difficult it is for us to get cybersecurity people in our military. Weve china, the other day chin the everyday chinese person is recruited. Test our systems, to do hacking attempts. They get paid a penitence to do that. In the military. So, their whole society, if they want to be unified, works in unification to come after the United States of america because we are in the lead. Rebeccah great. You mentioneddy and i appreciated you mentioned that hudsons role, during the cold war, the work thatme, i wasnt s on the scene soon after. Theyre concerned about combating ussr durg the cold war. So now lets talk about the think tanks in the United States now in washington. Its not necessarily the case that thear objectively seeking beginning from a pro America Perspective and doing what we can to make the United States stronger■enemies. The really interesting thing is about requirements, more transparency for where you are getting your money, your influence and support. So, that is another big aspect that china has been very successful at influencing not just think tanks but retired members of congress and lobbying efforts and other educational efforts. You talked about how you all thought about that particular challenge. Rep. Hern you just alluded to it a minute ago. After the bill passed 500 yesterday, we had people call us , call our offices that there is a conservative seen on many other issues. ■; have some of our most conservative think tank peoples who are industry people lobbyists reach out to us. Rebeccah tiktok proposing the bill . Rep. Hern absolutely. These are people that should be in would be stng but because it was tiktok and because they were maybe getting compensated, and these include former members that are now lobbing for the ccp, you have alluded this, china is very smart. We have been very open about our representative republic and our freedoms around the world. He has been very savvy. Ing thats his unofficial title. His official title is of the Chinese Communist people. People need to realize theyre coming after us in this way, so we want to know who is in the United States on their behalf. One of five is china. It was iran, russia, north korea and venezuela. If they are lobbying on behalf of those nations, we want know whoy are and if they want to do this because they think china has to have representation, they can do it free of charge. Rebeccah this is another thing that is remarkable, you are leading the Senate Committee to is because it takes some courage to say, we will not do this anymore. You could be of congress me sure they are lobbying on behalf of these things we know that are being pushed by the Chinese Communist party, so it really. I have found that every time there is an effort, it seems like there is bipartisan support to and thi like i can dj a drone cover and by the ccp. Just when you think its going to overwhelming lobbying effort, and then it stops and suddenly goes away for a while. That is a very gd aspect of the bill. Rep. Hern many of our fortune 100 companies have a massive presence in china. Its a big economy. You want them to take it vantage because the more they can grow and have more production, the less kospi pay as consumers, we demand it as a free market, but also, w there, i reminded often about what china is trying to do, and they want to suck a sin. To your point, bill goes by the wayside, a singular bill, you dont hear from these folks anymore. I dont hate china, i just love america. So i think if we had that narrative that america isi knowe feel uncomfortable, but we have to look at it that way because they are looking at china first. You brought up a point thats missing in the discourse which is understanding the ideological on. If this was a country that shared ideas about reciprocity and trade, those are the principles that they base their ideas. They would have they are trying to push the United States out to be the mto. That means there in that means they are infringing on america freedoms. Rep. Hern they can come in and be the white horse to rescue these other formations, and they are doing just that. If we had the general speak to us a few months ago regarding the unrest in the middle east and whats happening in ukraine, you have to love the guy and the knowledge he has about seeing this firsthand. He set a mistake we should not e and western worlds is that we should not make the mistake to think that iran is not the center of all of this. Furthermore, we should not make a mistake to not understand that china is the one thats bankrolling all of this. So you have a person, a proxy in iran that is using palestinian, hamas, and the list goes on, to put the money out there. China is back in russia, china is back in north korea, china is in venezuela. Cha hrough the economic power, creating the unrest. I could talk about rebeccah i could talk about this for an hour with you. This is how this ties together. Things are not going well on the world stage. Weve got crises that you d in the red sea. We have crisis russia invasions of ukraine still ongoing. Then you have chinese provocative reckless behavior in the pacific really threatening using water canyons, etc. , against the philippines. Alus behavior. They are actually not unrelated. I want to just get back just to make the final point on whats ■goin i sea with iran driving all of this. And these uranian proxies are not even going to hit. So the chinese flagship will go through the red sea and the russian flagship can go through the red sea unscathed. Buthe who sees houthis will continue hitting this in the red sea. Rep. Hern think about how many days that ships have to go around Southern Africa to bring coming from china. Ted statesr if you know that your ships will never be sunk, you have no problem with dean there. You will always have lower cost goods from anybody else moving stuff out of india, southeast asia, australia or anywhere. So there is a concern about this. And then when you look at the chinese, what they arebring souo south america i was just in the six fleet talking to people in africa and on the eastern seaboard western seaboard of africa, china is dicause thatst connection on ships between south africa and south america, straight to venezuela. Just recentlye government in lima, peru saying they are building a huge super poor, three and a half billion doll port, you cant have customs there, you cannot have security customs there. So, thats the closest to china to come into south america. So while we live in comfort with the pacific in a atlantic, china is moving through south ame