Real story of TikTok ban: US senator reveals Israel connection

At the Munich Security Conference this week, Senator Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the intelligence committee of the US Congress, hinted at the “real story” behind the bill that led to the TikTok ban.

“I want to see if you will tell the real story,” Warner said, addressing former Congressman Mike Gallagher, with whom he was on the same panel.

Gallagher, along with Warner, was the first to introduce a bill claiming TikTok is a national security threat and is now the head of the Silicon Valley giant Palantir.

Gallagher explained that the national security bill was “dead” until the 7 October Aqsa Flood operation launched by Hamas against Israel, but after 7 October the bill came back to life.

Gallagher said, “So we had a bipartisan consensus. We had the executive branch, but the bill was still dead until 7 October. People started to see a lot of antisemitic content on the platform and our bill came back to life,” Gallagher said.

Gallagher also said in Munich that TikTok had made a “huge miscalculation” in its attempt to circumvent the ban. When TikTok sent a notification to its millions of users urging them to call their members of Congress to oppose the bill, Gallagher said it “proved” that the social media company had “brainwashed” American youth.

Israeli officials and lobbyists have long been telling US officials in Washington that TikTok’s algorithm is fueling American youth opposition to the Israel-Hamas war.

Last year, for example, journalist Ken Klippenstein quoted a State Department source as saying that a senior Israeli diplomat had ranted about the “malign role” of a Chinese algorithm. Israelis believed that TikTok and similar social media platforms were fueling anti-Israel protests, especially on university campuses.

Around the same time, NPR reported on a memo written by Emmanuel Nahshon, Deputy Director General of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, who accused TikTok’s algorithm of “inciting young people against Israel.”

Senator Mitt Romney, one of the supporters of the TikTok ban, linked his support for the closure of the most popular social media platform among young Americans to the Palestinian issue. Romney said that the frequency of pro-Palestinian posts on TikTok was “overwhelming” compared to other platforms.