TikTok is a Dual-Use Weapon

Unrestricted Warfare and the Miscultivation of Youth

TikTok poses a credible threat to the future of the United States because of its influence on the minds of American youth. At the beginning of Western political philosophy are comments on the importance of instructing the youth so as to inculcate them in the morals and ethos of their polity, that they may one day join the ranks of men and citizens. Our time is no different. The stories passed down from and within generations shape our map of the world in ways difficult to dislodge after early development. Every political community coheres around a set of broadly agreed-upon narratives that form the substrate upon which its continued existence is justified. Wrong, misleading, or subversive stories undermine this substrate and are necessary prerequisites for revolutionary fervor. Even more threatening, is the absence of such narratives altogether. A people deracinated to such an extent as to have no meaningful connection to its past cannot have a future and is doomed to the eternal present. TikTok’s corrosiveness appears first in the form of competing and alternative stories that sever connection to the shared substrate of American political identity, and second, more insidiously, in the medium itself, which puts in the place of structured, long-form storytelling a kind of schizophrenic and frenetic flurry of content that is incoherent. This two-pronged assault on American integrity makes TikTok functionally a dual-use weapon. A dual-use weapon is a technology or software that has both civilian and military applications. Under the doctrine of Unrestricted Warfare, the blending of civilian and military utility takes on a hybrid, rather than modal form, and thus this doctrine provides a useful lens through which to understand the weaponized nature of TikTok.

Plato on Instruction of Youth

Plato’s Republic, perhaps the most foundational text in Western political philosophy, puts great emphasis on education of the Guardian class. This class of warriors have many stringent demands placed upon them meant to dissuade corruption such as relinquishing ownership of personal property, and foregoing family; but also education in gymnastics and music to train their bodies and souls. The emphasis of this education is proper moral training, so as to make them fierce to their enemies and gentle towards fellow citizens. Guardians themselves are also preselected on the basis of temperament, and must be sharp, fast, and strong to qualify for such training¹. According to Socrates, this program ought to begin in the earliest years of childhood, when they are most impressionable and pliable to good formation. The aim is to make them enthusiastically predisposed to the oral history and teachings of their polity, and hostile toward novel ideas². Tales imparted on them must therefore be tightly censored and chosen to show them spirited and appropriate models to emulate, and not include bad examples, because, so it goes, young children lack the discernment of good and bad, before their moral instruction takes place³. All these efforts are made to shape their souls in ways desirable to the polis. Classical values of courage, moderation, and justice are to be encouraged, and ostentatious displays of laughter, grief, or licentiousness are to be guarded against. Illuminated in these dialogues on the ideal city is the importance of moral training of youth for those who are to take up the mantle of protecting the polity.

Hearts and Minds

Compare the moral education above with the influence of TikTok on America’s impressionable youth. Instead of precise and calculated moral education in a set of socially desirable virtues, youths on TikTok are exposed to a plethora of narratives and memes that encourage reckless behavior, deride the history of the United States, and offer an endless stream of distracting, low-information-density content to consume. Granted, this is not their only or even primary educational experience, but there is reason for concern because many American teens are spending an alarming amount of time on the app. In addition to the deteriorating effects of the content itself, there is also a problem with the models it introduces for emulation. Many have cited the divergence between Chinese and American kids’ professional aspirations, with ‘social media influencer’ being the top choice for Americans, and ‘astronaut’ being number one for Chinese children; in one survey of 3,000 children ages 8-12. Not all, or even most, children are would-be Guardians, it may be said. Indeed, the commoners of Plato’s Republic are free to engage in commercial activity, a mode forbidden to the Guardian class, but maintaining the moral core of the society depends upon having a fruitful pool of unvarnished souls to draw from. If more and more American youths are exposed to such disintegrating media, then the pool becomes ever-more shallow.

All that is needed is the ability to launch an attack in a certain place, using certain means, in order to achieve a certain goal. Thus, the battlefield is omnipresent - Unrestricted Warfare

War, Unrestricted

A shallow pool of potential guardians would seem a desirable outcome for any geopolitical opponent. Unrestricted Warfare, the doctrine articulated in 1999 by PLA colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, laid the groundwork for incorporation of information technology into a suite of technological, economic, and cultural tools for waging non-kinetic war against China’s main geopolitical opponent, The United States. They posited a world where “information will be omnipresent, and the battlefield will be everywhere.”⁴ This condition necessitated the introduction of a “new concept of weapons” that “demands lucid and incisive thinking.”⁵ Expansive thinking was to lead to "the progressive breaking down of the distinction between military technology and civilian technology, and between the professional soldier and the non-professional warrior… the battlespace will overlap more and more with the non-battlespace, serving also to make the line between these two entities less and less clear.”⁶ Airwaves and even the electromagnetic spectrum itself were to be reimagined as potential future battlespace. This blending of the military with the civilian heralded renewed emphasis on “non-military” or non-combative means of achieving military objectives; including but not limited to: psychological warfare, smuggling warfare, media warfare, drug warfare, network warfare, technological warfare, fabrication warfare, and international law warfare.⁷

The revolution in military thought is, in the final analysis, a revolution in fighting forms and methods. - Unrestricted Warfare

Under this multidimensional framework a confluence of “nonviolent” pressures and entanglements was meant to provide an alternative to the existing military paradigm of U.S. dominance. Taken together, “[t]hey comprise a new pattern which threatens the political, economic and military security of a nation or nation.”⁸ A revolution in fighting forms was needed to upend U.S. military prowess which was tied to, and delimited by, older, more conventional understandings of power projection. The extent to which this little book informs current Chinese-American military affairs is questionable, but its description of overarching patterns in non-combative methods of undermining its purported opponent still seems prescient 30 years on. A quick glance at the ongoing trade war, technology theft, backdoors in tech infrastructure, and fentanyl smuggling that has plagued Sino-American relations in recent decades gives the impression that its influence is not to be understated.

TikTok, a service owned by Chinese internet technology company ByteDance, may be one tendril among many intended to undermine U.S. sovereignty and military dominance. It is certainly reasonable to declare that a geopolitical rival holding potentially detrimental sway over the preoccupation and entrainment of a nation’s youth represents a mortal threat to the integrity, and therefore continued existence of, its body politic. The youth are a crucial vector for ideological infiltration and subversion of American ideals because it is in their minds that the ethos of a people lives on. The cultivation of their minds, bodies, and souls, will yield the fruits of tomorrow. If the soil is enriched, so that their roots may be grounded in our past and aspiring to a bright future, then new cohorts of guardians may be planted for the coming trials of a mature nation. However, there are those who would salt the earth on which the next crop of American citizens are to be sustained under the guise of entertainment or commercial activity. Just as in Plato’s Republic, it behooves us to guard against subversion, both internal and external. If, under the doctrine of Unrestricted Warfare, TikTok may be understood as a dual-use weapon, then it is time we stopped training it on our kids.

1. Allan Bloom, The Republic of Plato, 2nd Ed. (Basic Books, 1968), 375A.

2. Allan Bloom, The Republic of Plato, 2nd Ed. (Basic Books, 1968), 375C.

3. Allan Bloom, The Republic of Plato, 2nd Ed. (Basic Books, 1968), 377C.

4. Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, Unrestricted Warfare, (Beijing: PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House, February 1999), p. 12.

5. Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, Unrestricted Warfare, (Beijing: PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House, February 1999), p. 24.

6. Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, Unrestricted Warfare, (Beijing: PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House, February 1999), p. 43.

7. Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, Unrestricted Warfare, (Beijing: PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House, February 1999), p. 55.

8. Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, Unrestricted Warfare, (Beijing: PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House, February 1999), p. 116.