A left-wing think tank opposing anti-TikTok legislation that could lead to it being banned in the United States can thank the China-tied app for helping to keep its light on, records show.
The Center for Democracy and Technology has continued to take aim at a bill aiming to force the Chinese company ByteDance to divest from TikTok over national security concerns or else see its popular video app kicked off U.S. app stores. That same Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group counts TikTok as a donor to the tune of at least $200,000 since 2020, according to financial disclosures.
That the Center for Democracy and Technology is partially funded by TikTok underscores the broader influence the app has gained in the nation’s capital in recent years as TikTok deploys high-powered lobbyists tasked with swaying lawmakers against a ban. To one China expert, TikTok’s financial support of the Center for Democracy and Technology is “the classic D.C. swamp game.”
“It’s revealing that the loudest voices in America defending TikTok are getting paid by TikTok,” Michael Sobolik, a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council, told the Washington Examiner. “There’s no substantive defense for protecting the Chinese Communist Party’s control of the social media app, so TikTok makes up for that shortfall with money.”
The anti-TikTok bill passed the House earlier this month, though it faces an uncertain future in the Senate. President Joe Biden asserted he would sign the bill if it clears both chambers. White House national security adviser John Kirby on Sunday called on the Senate to “move swiftly” to advance the bill.
“We want to see divestiture from this Chinese company because we are concerned, as every American ought to be concerned, about data security and what ByteDance and what the Chinese Communist Party could do with the information that they can glean off of Americans use of the application,” Kirby said on Sunday.
In early March, the Center for Democracy and Technology sent a letter with other groups to congressional leaders claiming that the anti-TikTok bill “would violate the First Amendment rights of Americans across the country who rely on TikTok for information, communication, advocacy, and entertainment.”
The organization’s “free expression project” director, Kate Ruane, was quoted in a Sunday NBC News article titled “A TikTok Ban Could Embolden Authoritarian Censorship, Experts Warn.” Ruane told the outlet a potential TikTok ban would give “license to authoritarian regimes around the world to do the same to U.S.-based platforms.”
What the article did not mention, however, was TikTok’s funding of Ruane’s group.
The Center for Democracy and Technology received at least $100,000 from TikTok in 2022, according to its website. In 2021 and 2020, TikTok dropped at least $50,000 each year into the think tank’s coffers, archived financial records show.
Those donations were some of the largest that the think tank received during those three years, next to checks from the George Soros-funded Open Society Foundations, WhatsApp, Google, Amazon, the Ford Foundation, the John S. & James L. Knight Foundation, and others, according to the Center for Democracy and Technology.
The Center for Democracy and Technology did not respond to a request for comment. According to its website, “Financial supporters have no influence or control over CDT’s projects or priorities, including the content of educational programs, research, written reports, or other work product.”
But the think tank’s gift acceptance policies outline that contributors may offer support “for restricted purposes,” which means it will “respect the intent of the donor” if the conditions align with the think tank’s “mission and priorities.”
To Brent Bozell, founder and president of the conservative Media Research Center, Ruane and her think tank clearly have a conflict of interest on their hands. Moreover, NBC News should be “ashamed and embarrassed” for not mentioning the donations in its Sunday article, Bozell told the Washington Examiner.
“If she didn’t point out the conflict of interest, then shame on her, and she should lose all credibility in the public sector,” Bozell said. “No reporter should talk to her again because that would be deceitful. If she was honest, then NBC has some explaining to do.”
NBC News and TikTok did not return requests for comment.
It’s not the first time an outlet quoted Ruane as a purported expert in connection to the bill. In mid-March, Vox ran an article titled “Is the new push to ban TikTok for real?” that included a quote from Ruane noting it “would be a better path forward” for lawmakers to pass “digital privacy legislation” rather than the anti-TikTok bill. Vox did not respond to a request for comment.
Bloomberg Law published a story on the TikTok bill in December quoting Ruane that did not mention the app’s funding of her group. The outlet also did not return a request for comment.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Regarding the Center for Democracy and Technology, the group has other foreign ties that have been on the radar of watchdogs. It received $120,000 in 2016 from Kaspersky Labs, which the Center for Democracy and Technology listed on its tax forms as having an address in Massachusetts, according to tax forms obtained by the Capital Research Center think tank.
Kaspersky Labs is a Russia-based cybersecurity company that former President Donald Trump banned in 2017 from being used within the U.S. government over concerns about its ties to Moscow. Biden’s Commerce Department has weighed taking further enforcement action against Kaspersky, according to the Wall Street Journal.