TikTok’s central role in the ever-swelling youth mental health crisis is well-chronicled . The Chinese-owned social media app is a veritable breeding ground for mental health disorders. It functions less as an online community and more as a supercharged version of the “negative influence” friend that has kept mothers awake at night for generations. Its power to condition the minds of young adults through endless streams of short clips is so strong that it even caused an outbreak of “tics” during the COVID-19 pandemic. Children around the globe, linked only by their consumption of videos made by TikTok influencers with Tourette syndrome, suddenly began to seek medical care for jerking movements and verbal outbursts.

Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) rightly referred to the Chinese-owned app as “digital fentanyl” given its corrosive effect on its mostly teenage users. Much like regular fentanyl (which is also, incidentally, a Chinese import), users become so addicted to TikTok that they would give anything for another fix. Indeed, a recent study from Reboot Foundation found that a bone-chilling 64% of 13-17-year-olds would exchange their right to vote for continued access to the app.

Beyond the app’s alarming effects on mental health, TikTok poses a significant security threat to nations around the globe not named China. Many, including the United States and Canada, have banned employees from using the app on government devices. It is widely believed that the Chinese Communist Party uses TikTok to collect data on foreign users (a recent lawsuit in California brought by the former head of engineering for TIkTok’s U.S. operations alleges that the CCP “maintained supreme access” to all data) and to carry out pernicious foreign influence campaigns. It is telling that the Chinese version of the app, Douyin, only produces wholesome, educational content for Chinese youth, while the version used by American teenagers is cluttered with mind-numbing and malevolent nonsense that causes mass psychosis.

Over the weekend, one particular trending video on TikTok stood out as an egregious example of a CCP psyop designed to further unravel the American social fabric. The clip features a young blond woman gazing at an engagement ring that hovers in front of her face. As her finger draws close to the ring, she receives dark premonitions about her future as a wife and mother. In successive clips, she sees herself scrubbing dishes, folding laundry, mopping the bathroom floor, and straining to carry a heavy baby in her arm. At the end, she yanks her finger away from the ring and backs away from the proposal, having seemingly dodged the bullet of a lifetime.

Only 16 seconds long and set to catchy electronic music, the video leaves an indelible impression on the consciousness of the viewer. TikTok videos are designed to be viewed not once but multiple times, which gives the content a hypnotic quality. It doesn’t merely deliver a message, it drives it home through endless repetition. In one sense, the app is an ultramodern and dystopian cyber weapon; in another, it’s a campy gadget straight out of an early Bond movie. All that’s missing is the pocket watch and the sinister voice of the villain saying, “You are getting very sleeeepy.”

Perhaps in their arrogance, the CCP didn’t work hard enough to scrub its fingerprints from this video. The main character is meant to appear American, but key background details give away the game, including the Chinese characters on the clothes she’s folding, the Chinese people in the background, and what appears to be the Chinese-style apartment complex in which the video is shot. These details are only noticeable upon close study since the frames fly by in rapid succession.

The motive behind this particular psyop is that it promotes a civilizationally destructive behavior to a population that, due to its own cultural degradation, is susceptible to manipulation. No country is better acquainted with the pitfalls of draconian family planning than China, whose aging population is the driving factor behind its deteriorating economic conditions. Thanks to the fruits of the disastrous one-child policy, which was brutally enforced through forced abortions, deaths outnumbered births for the first time in recorded Chinese history in 2022. The country’s population decline is producing more elderly citizens who require expensive medical care and fewer young workers to grow the economy that will fund the care.

China’s sudden hawkishness on the world stage is largely the result of its failed domestic policy; the CCP knows that the era of rapid economic growth is over, so in order to fulfill its destiny to become the preeminent global power it must expand its military influence and promote the downfall of its geopolitical rivals.

The recent viral video works to this end by perpetuating one of the most pernicious and culturally destructive lies of the modern age: That happiness and meaning arise as a result of having little to no responsibility. Anyone who has worked hard to raise a big, happy family will testify to the opposite — that without the inherent responsibilities of family and community, life would be stripped of its greatest joys. But, thanks to the continued erosion of traditional culture in the U.S., this lie is one that young people seem eager to embrace to their detriment.

“All warfare is based on deception,” wrote the ancient Chinese general Sun Tsu in The Art of War. And there should be little doubt that we are at war. May we wake up from our hypnotic slumber before it is over and all is lost.

Peter Laffin is a contributor at the Washington Examiner and the founder of Crush the College Essay. His work has also appeared in RealClearPolitics, the Catholic Thing, the National Catholic Register, and the American Spectator.