INVESTIGATION
The campaign to save TikTok has been years in the making
TikTok began working to win over the U.S. and European governments long before the
latest concerns about its Chinese ownership.
POLITICO illustration by Jade Cuevas/Photos by iStock
By HAILEY FUCHS, CLOTHILDE GOUJARD and DANIEL LIPPMAN
03/30/2023 04:30 AM EDT
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew was certain to face a blistering onslaught when he testified
before the U.S. Congress.
And so as he prepared to face the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee,
Chew enlisted all the right people to help him get ready.
The Singaporean executive was prepared by former committee staffers and aides to
Speaker Kevin McCarthy and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He received counsel from
Andrew Wright, former director of legal policy for the Biden-Harris presidential
transition and now a partner at the well-connected law firm K&L Gates. Ahead of the
March 23 hearing, Chew scheduled meetings on the Hill with help from several former
lawmakers, including Republican Jeff Denham, Democrat Bart Gordon, a former E&C
member, and Joe Crowley, who was once a senior member of Democratic leadership.
Despite hiring a large group of savvy friends, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew and his company failed
to win over the House Energy and Commerce Committee panel. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
But despite hiring a large group of savvy friends, Chew and his company failed to win
over the panel. The sheer number of seasoned Washington operatives and firms in
TikTok’s employ was no shield against a barrage of bipartisan denunciations.
TikTok’s battle for survival has become a vivid study in how a wealthy, foreign-owned
corporation can use its financial might to build an impressive-looking network of
influence — and also in the limitations of what lobbying can do to protect a company at
the center of a geopolitical firestorm.
The campaign to save TikTok has been years in the making. A POLITICO investigation
revealed an effort by TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, dating back to at least
2018, long before concerns about TikTok’s Chinese ownership reached their current
pitch. Interviews with more than two dozen people, including lobbyists and lawmakers, in
the United States and Europe illuminated the architecture of a lobbying apparatus that
has moved TikTok and its parent company closer to institutions of government, including
European lawmakers, leaders of both American political parties and even the White
House.
In 2019, one recruiter representing TikTok described the company’s goal in superheroic
terms: The recruiter said it wanted to build a “Team of Avengers,” according to one
Washington lobbyist approached for a job, who like a number of others was granted
anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations with a powerful company.
TikTok has tried to overcome some firms’ reservations with a willingness to pay
handsomely. The company recently approached a second Washington lobbyist who works
for Big Tech clients and, according to the lobbyist, asked flatly: “How much will it take?”
The lobbyist declined the overture.
But that approach has worked on others in Washington, London and Brussels, where the
company is facing serious though seemingly less existential regulatory threats than in
America.
TikTok’s battle for survival has become a vivid study in how a wealthy, foreign-owned
corporation can use its financial might to build an impressive-looking network of influence. |
Martin Meissner/AP Photo
In Washington alone, about three dozen people lobbied the federal government for
ByteDance and TikTok in the last quarter of 2022, including former senators and House
members, according to disclosure reports.
Across the Atlantic, TikTok’s public affairs staff includes just under 40 people in Europe,
spread between cities including Brussels, London, Dublin, Paris and Milan. To lead its
European strategy, the company in late 2019 recruited Theo Bertram, a former top
lobbyist for Google and a veteran adviser to the U.K. prime ministers Tony Blair and
Gordon Brown. In the fall of 2020, it appointed Caroline Greer, a seasoned lobbyist with
experience lobbying for telecom companies and U.S. cloud firm Cloudflare, to head its
Brussels operation.
And in Washington in recent months, the company finally succeeded in hiring SKDK, the
public affairs firm that boasts an imposing Democratic alumni network, including senior
figures in the Biden administration. The firm turned down an initial overture from
TikTok during the 2020 campaign, according to two people familiar with the firm who
explained that the decision was due to concerns around the company’s ties to China.
Now, in a moment of existential danger for TikTok, SKDK has agreed to help with
communications on policy matters.
The company has also enlisted Michael Leiter, the former director of the National
Counterterrorism Center, as an important part of its legal team, according to four people
familiar with the matter, including a TikTok spokesperson. Leiter, a partner at the law
firm Skadden, is helping deal with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United
States, an interagency board that recently told TikTok that it must separate from
ByteDance if it wanted to avert an American ban.
The app remains a pervasive presence in the political world, even as the prospect of a U.S.
ban grows more realistic by the week. Indeed, the app is so popular that the White House
has repeatedly acknowledged it as an unavoidable channel for political communications.
Ahead of Biden’s State of the Union address in February, White House senior adviser
Anita Dunn pointed allies toward the app as an influential messaging tool during a
“Women’s Community Engagement Update” hosted by the White House Office of Public
Engagement. Dunn is a founding partner of SKDK and under the White House ethics
policy, she is currently barred from participating in matters involving SKDK.
During the call, Dunn told participants that the White House wanted people to brandish
the administration’s accomplishments on social media, according to two people on the
call.
TikTok remains a pervasive presence in the political world, even as the prospect of a U.S. ban
grows more realistic by the week. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo; Alex Wong/Getty Images
Of course the White House could not use TikTok, Dunn said. But she suggested that if
people on the call were users of the app, then they should share parts of the president’s
speech on TikTok.
Andrew Bates, a White House spokesperson, said there was nothing in Dunn’s remarks
that did not reflect what the administration had openly maintained “for years: that we
work with outside supporters to spread our message on the major social media platforms,
including TikTok.”
The White House declined to address other questions about the administration and
TikTok, including whether the administration believed TikTok was deliberately hiring
advisers with links to the Biden operation and whether Dunn had been aware of SKDK’s
decision to work for the embattled company.
The political tide is running against TikTok and ByteDance, both in the United States and
in Europe. The company has not managed to assuage lawmakers’ worries that TikTok’s
ownership could make American and European user data vulnerable to the Chinese
Communist Party, a charge both the company and the Chinese government have denied.
Last week, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Mao Ning, said the government had
never asked companies to “collect or provide data, information or intelligence located
abroad against local laws.”
Washington remains unconvinced. Momentum is building on Capitol Hill for legislation
that could allow Biden to ban the app. In the European Union, company executives were
blindsided by the news that TikTok had been banned from the work devices of EU
Commission staff.
“At no point was it ever said that: ‘hey, we have this investigation going on, we’re looking
into this, you might want to be aware, we’ll get in touch,’” Greer said.
In a statement to POLITICO, TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter said the company
was “focused on educating lawmakers and stakeholders about our company and our
service,” and pointed out that other tech companies spend far more on lobbying than
TikTok does.
“We plan to continue briefing members of Congress about our company and about the
details of our robust and comprehensive plans to address national security concerns,” she
said. “We work to engage policymakers and stakeholders across the political spectrum on
issues that are important to our business and to the diverse and vibrant community on
our platform.”
More than 150 million users in the U.S. enjoy TikTok’s hypnotic interface, and many could vote
in 2024 when President Joe Biden and members of Congress are on the ballot. | Nathan
Howard/Bloomberg via Getty Images; Shuran Huang/The New York Times via Redux Pictures
In that endeavor, the company has one great advantage: the sheer popularity of its
product.
A person familiar with TikTok’s strategy said that in conversations with Democrats on the
Hill, the company has privately compared banning the app to “Prohibition,” the early
20th-century effort to outlaw alcohol — like TikTok, a highly addictive consumer product
seen as dangerous by federal lawmakers. The ban on alcohol lasted about 14 years and
generated enormous backlash from voters. Oberwetter disputed that this was an
approved part of the company’s message.
But the implication seems clear enough: more than 150 million users in the U.S. enjoy
TikTok’s hypnotic interface, and many could vote in 2024 when Biden and members of
Congress are on the ballot.
A Transatlantic Influence Machine
TikTok and ByteDance have spent more than $16 million on federal lobbying in the U.S.
since 2019, according to public disclosures. But the total that the company has expended
to save its existence in the United States is almost certainly dramatically higher. That
figure does not include lobbying at the state level, or the company’s spending on PR firms
and in-house communications staff responding to its crisis.
TikTok and ByteDance’s registered lobbying spending is still dwarfed by that of Meta, a
powerful competitor which has been lobbying in Washington for more than a decade. In
2022, TikTok and ByteDance spent just about $5.9 million compared with over $23
million for Meta (though both companies dwarf Twitter, which spent about $1.7 million).
But TikTok’s operation is only just reaching the rapid-growth phase. Getting its influence
network to this point took years. The project began even before the app was called
TikTok, when ByteDance realized it needed help from people who understood the inside
of the government bodies that would soon be regulating it.
So the company set out on a recruitment drive in Washington. A job description from the
time, obtained by POLITICO, noted that ByteDance was searching for someone who
could “Source and manage outside counsels and lobbying firms,” among other
responsibilities.
The qualifications for the job stated that “Experience in internet industry and regulatory
bodies is preferred, e.g. EU Commission, FTC” and “Experience with NGOs, international
organizations, industrial associations would be a big plus.”
The Lobbyists
TikTok has assembled an army of lobbyists with government experience as part
of the company's political influence operation.
Beckerman, the former president and CEO of
the Internet Association, is head of public
policy for the Americas at TikTok.
Michael Beckerman
Theo Bertram
Bart Gordon
Bertram, a former top Google lobbyist and
adviser to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown,
leads TikTok’s policy operation in Europe.
Gordon, a former representative and member
of the House Energy & Commerce
Committee, is registered to lobby for
ByteDance.
Shou Zi Chew
The Singaporean businessperson is TikTok’s
CEO.
Michael Leiter
Leiter, the former director of the National
Counterterrorism Center, is now a lawyer
helping TikTok deal with the Committee on
Foreign Investment in the United States.
Joe Crowley
Crowley, a former representative and
member of Democratic House leadership,
helped TikTok’s CEO get meetings on the
Hill ahead of the Congressional hearing.
Trent Lott
Lott, a Republican who was the Senate
majority leader, is now a registered lobbyist
for TikTok.
Caroline Greer
Greer, a seasoned lobbyist with experience
lobbying for telecom companies and U.S.
cloud firm Cloudflare, heads up TikTok's
Brussels operation.
Andrew Wright
Wright, former director of legal policy for
the Biden-Harris presidential transition, is
advising the company on Congressional
investigations.
In early 2019, TikTok brought on Eric Ebenstein as director of public policy. It may have
been a telling choice for a company anticipating scrutiny of its ownership: Ebenstein
previously worked for the Chinese drone manufacturer DJI and would have been familiar
with some of the political challenges of operating in the United States. Before and after
Ebenstein’s departure, DJI has faced criticism from U.S. officials, including allegations
that it took money from the Chinese government and that its drones could be tools for
spying. DJI has denied taking direct government funding and said it could not control
how customers use its products.
But Ebenstein was only the start. In 2019, the company intensified its outreach to staffers
across the tech sector, doing a combination of recruitment pitches and conversations that
seemed more like intelligence-gathering. At a moment when other social media
companies, including Google and Facebook, were many years into struggling with the
federal government, ByteDance was doing research of a more basic kind, according to the
first lobbyist, who heard the “Team of Avengers” sales pitch at the time.
“They were looking to understand how American tech companies were organized, what
sort of consultants they hired, who controlled those consultants, how that reported up
into the executive structure,” said the Washington lobbyist, who kept contemporaneous
notes of at least one of the person’s conversations with the company.
In 2019, it was looking for someone who could “Build strong relationships with
government officials,” according to the lobbyist’s notes of a conversation with a recruiter.
A series of high-profile hires showed the company was making headway. In 2020, it
enlisted Michael Beckerman, a former congressional aide who led the Internet
Association trade group, to take a leading role in building a Washington influence
machine. The company also hired Crossroads Strategies, a D.C.-based bipartisan firm.
Former senators Trent Lott, a Republican who was the Senate majority leader, and John
Breaux, a conservative Democrat from Louisiana, would make the company’s case,
among others. The firm has been paid $910,000 since 2020, according to public records.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, left, speaks with Michael Beckerman, a former congressional aide
who the social media company enlisted to take a leading role in building a Washington influence
machine. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
With the 2020 election approaching, the company seemed to want to hedge its bets on
the outcome. CFIUS had reportedly begun an investigation into the company. Early that
year, ByteDance succeeded in hiring David Urban, a prominent Republican lobbyist who
was also an adviser to Donald Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign. Urban first worked as
an outside consultant and then later as an executive vice president at ByteDance. (He is
now an outside consultant again.)
But the company needed Democratic help, too, since the party figured to have significant
power on the Hill after 2020 even if Trump were reelected.
Fears about TikTok’s foreign ownership were growing, not receding, as the campaign
advanced. Not only did SKDK, the Biden campaign-linked firm, reject an overture to
work for TikTok, but in the summer of 2020 it instructed employees to delete the app
from their phones as a security precaution. Memories of foreign cyber-intrusion in the
2016 campaign, when Russian hackers breached the Democratic National Committee,
were still fresh in the minds of Democratic campaign operatives.
Around 2020, the second Washington lobbyist, who was then in touch with the company,
said that TikTok was in search of someone who could push back on the narrative that they
were collecting data and giving it to China.
In 2021, a third Washington lobbyist, who is a Democrat, recalled being approached by a
TikTok consultant with the message that the company was willing to put a lot of money
on the table for Democratic talent.
Since the 2020 presidential election, TikTok has had considerably more success enlisting
lobbyists and firms with close ties to the Democratic Party. In addition to SKDK’s recent
about-face decision to work for TikTok, the company has enlisted FGS Global, another PR
agency with ties to Biden’s political network. It also retained the public relations giant
Edelman, a powerhouse firm with relationships across both parties. Jamal Brown, former
national press secretary to the Biden campaign who more recently was deputy press
secretary at the Pentagon, is now a company spokesperson.
Many of those working for TikTok and ByteDance, including SKDK, FGS, Edelman,
Crowley, Denham, Gordon, and Leiter, the former counterterrorism official, did not
respond to inquiries or declined to comment on the record.
ByteDance’s lavish spending goes beyond generous salaries and retainer fees for
lobbyists. It also extends to schmoozing, particularly in Europe where there is less fear
among politicians about being seen as cozy with Chinese companies.
Indeed, in Brussels, lawmakers in the European Parliament and officials of the EU
Commission, the EU’s executive arm, describe TikTok’s team as articulate and
ingratiating, and careful to strike a more conciliatory tone than the representatives of
American companies like Twitter, Facebook and Google. They had an agenda to push, but
they would not make aggressive threats about EU laws like the Digital Services Act.
“Their lobbying was not confrontational compared to American companies,” one official
said. “They always said they wanted to cooperate.”
In Europe, at least, TikTok has used the aversion toward American Big Tech to its
advantage. Bertram, the vice president of government relations and public policy for
Europe, told POLITICO the question of TikTok’s ownership “feels like a red herring … As
Europeans, I don’t think we share the belief that every big company needs to be a Silicon
Valley tech company.”
Earlier this year, Chew, the TikTok CEO, appeared at the World Economic Forum in
Davos and toured Brussels to meet with European policymakers. In Belgium, he met with
around two dozen European lawmakers and policy officials from the EU Commission in a
closed-door session at De Warande, an elite members-only club located near Belgium’s
Royal Palace and the American embassy. He snapped pictures with tech-focused
politicians like Dita Charanzová, a vice president of the European parliament,
and Andreas Schwab, a German member who negotiated the Digital Markets Act, a law to
limit the market power of large tech companies.
The TikTok executive tried to send a reassuring message at the event. Even as the
company has confronted growing political hostility in the U.S., many European
lawmakers have continued to see the company in less adversarial terms — as a social
media goliath that needs to be regulated, but perhaps not a uniquely problematic one.
Chew was “very clear about the strong concern in the U.S. about China,” said Schwab,
adding: “They wanted to explain a bit about their legal structure, their precaution
measures, knowing that there might still be doubts.”
After doing a speech about TikTok’s business model, the CEO wanted to listen, said
Charanzová. “He wanted to understand concerns in Europe.”
Under Siege on Two Continents
Chew’s mission of reassurance seemed to go well, or at least that was the impression of
TikTok’s lobbyists in Europe.
The company was stunned when scarcely a month later the EU Commission banned
TikTok from the government phones of commission employees. The measure sparked a
domino-like effect across Brussels where the EU Council — the institution representing
the 27 EU governments — and the European Parliament quickly followed suit, along with
national governments including those of Belgium and the United Kingdom.
TikTok’s team immediately contacted the EU institutions to try to understand what had
happened and hopefully to reverse the policy. The company didn’t hear anything for
several weeks before the Commission said in late March it had sent the company a letter
and was open to a meeting. At the end of the month the device ban was still in place.
“We’ve been trying to reach out to the institutions to understand what the problem is and
to see what we can do to mitigate it and to tell our story, as well as hopefully to get
unbanned, since it has been presented as a temporary suspension,” said Greer, the
Brussels lobbyist.
To address those concerns, the company unveiled a European plan that had been in the
works for several months to secure European users’ data. TikTok said it would operate in
the coming years three data servers in Ireland and Norway and work with a European
security company to audit cybersecurity and data protection controls under “Project
Clover.” The company sent its top executives to tour European capitals such as London,
Paris and the Hague to present the plan, which mirrors a similar idea presented in the
U.S. and branded “Project Texas.”
“We can’t control the geopolitical situation, but we can continue with the work that we
have been doing to help bridge that trust deficit, if it’s there,” said Greer. “We’re not
running away from this.”
But TikTok doesn’t seem to have an option. And the power of its lobbying, PR and legal
operations is being put to the test in other, even more strenuous ways.
The Irish data protection authority is set to decide on its investigation on TikTok’s data
transfers to China. TikTok will also have to open up about its recommendation algorithm
and show the EU Commission how it limits a range of problematic issues like
cyberbullying, disinformation and illegal content or face multi-million euro fines under
the Digital Services Act as soon as this summer. The EU Commission could potentially
order a large fine or a temporary banning of the app if it repeatedly and seriously
infringes on its obligations.
For now, the company is projecting confidence that it can halt any broader ban in Europe
— one that would disrupt its relationship with consumers and not just government
employees. Bertram said using the app was a matter of “freedom of speech for the
public.”
“You’d have to have a very strong legal basis to ban any app in any country in Europe,” he
said in an interview.
In Washington, the company is trying to meet with a wide range of lawmakers to head off
legislative action that would ban the app. But TikTok’s core strategy is in a precarious
state. The company had been arguing that Congress should defer to the Biden
administration and let the regulatory process take its course — a way of sapping
momentum for potentially stronger congressional action.
But the CFIUS decree insisting on a separation between TikTok and its Chinese owners
made plain that punting the issue to the executive branch would not necessarily
guarantee gentler results for the company.
Even Democrats are split on how to handle TikTok; Rep. Jamaal Bowman (top) opposes a ban on
the social media platform, while Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (bottom) has introduced legislation to
do just that. | Alex Wong/Getty Images; Anna Rose Layden/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The company’s best hope in Washington at this point may be drumming up enough
indignation from its vast horde of users to give pause to elected officials — maybe even
including the president — about cracking down on a cherished app in the run-up to a
national election. And there are Democrats who sincerely worry about enraging the young
voters the party depends on.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York, a progressive Democrat who opposes a TikTok ban,
told reporters last week that the seemed driven by xenophobia and favoritism toward
American tech giants. But he noted the political context, too: “Young voters were the
reason why we were able to keep things decent, like almost even in 2022, in terms of the
House.”
Those arguments have not resonated with the lawmakers most determined to eliminate
the app from American life. When TikTok’s Washington team met recently with the
leaders of the new House select committee on U.S.-China relations, it made no headway
in convincing them that there were reasonable precautions it could take to protect
Americans’ data from the Chinese Communist Party.
“The CCP ultimately having access to user data and control of algorithms and potentially
content on the platform is deeply problematic,” said Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois,
a Democrat who has introduced legislation to ban TikTok.
The company is still looking for more help, including a head of policy communications in
Brussels. In the U.S., TikTok is recruiting public policy managers and ByteDance is
currently accepting applications for a “Global Head of Policy Communications.” The
person in that role will be charged with developing communications strategy for both
policymakers and users. The gig, focused on government relations, requires “significant
experience” on communications and with complicated regulatory, legislative, and policy
matters.
That new head of policy communications must also have “significant experience” with
“crisis issues.”