Nate Lavoy, a summer associate at the RAND Corporation, stated that publicly posted videos on TikTok pose a threat to U.S. national security. He explained that entities with access to these videos could use them to train artificial intelligence (AI) models to create "deepfakes," or digitally altered videos that can be used to spread misinformation. Lavoy shared his statement in an August 14 commentary.
"Most of the individual videos that Americans post on social media platforms are harmless at face value, but the 34 million videos posted daily on TikTok become ideal training material for massive generative AI models," said Lavoy, according to RAND Corporation. "These models will be able to create astonishingly convincing deepfakes and could be used to launch discreet, large-scale, and highly targeted influence operations. This is not an abstract future threat. Policymakers need to understand that in the age of generative AI, bulk audiovisual data can be more valuable than the birthdays and email addresses users use to sign up for apps like TikTok."
According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), there are multiple national security concerns over TikTok. These concerns include potential influence by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), collection of Americans' personal data, and the possibility of malicious software being downloaded through TikTok app updates. CSIS said, "One area of real risk is in installing and updating the TikTok app… TikTok users are voluntarily downloading Chinese software into which they have minimal or no insight onto their devices."
Lavoy's commentary further elaborated on the national security threat posed by TikTok due to the large quantity of user-created videos, which can be utilized as an information resource for teaching AI how to create more realistic deepfakes. In response to these concerns, TikTok has created an initiative called "Project Texas," which stores "protected U.S. user data" such as emails, birthdays, and behavioral data on U.S.-based servers.
In April 2024, President Joe Biden signed the 21st Century Peace Through Strength Act, which imposes new sanctions on Russia and Iran and includes a section prohibiting "foreign adversary-controlled applications" in the U.S. According to Lavoy's commentary, under this act, ByteDance must sell the TikTok platform to an American buyer by January 2025 or face a ban. Failure to comply will result in a fine of $5,000 per U.S. user, totaling almost $1 trillion. Due to this development, TikTok is suing the U.S. government on First Amendment grounds.
OpenAI reported that it engaged in a collaborative information-sharing initiative with Microsoft to disrupt state-affiliated malicious actors. They identified two China-affiliated threat actors known as Charcoal Typhoon and Salmon Typhoon. Charcoal Typhoon used OpenAI’s services to "research various companies and cybersecurity tools, debug code and generate scripts, and create content likely for use in phishing campaigns," while Salmon Typhoon used it to "translate technical papers, retrieve publicly available information on multiple intelligence agencies and regional threat actors, assist with coding, and research common ways processes could be hidden on a system."
Lavoy is part of the 2024 RAND Summer Associate Cohort introduced from the RAND Graduate Student Summer Associate Program. According to RAND's website, he is currently pursuing a master’s degree in computer science at New York University. His research interests include AI, emerging tech, cybersecurity, disinformation, and autonomous weapons.
