China’s potential usage of the app for influence campaigns (propaganda, if you will) is a near certainty. I just do not agree with characterizing these operations as culture destroying to the US, or to the West. I have no qualms about suspecting the CCP of using TikTok’s massive cultural reach to push/suppress narratives they find beneficial/hurtful, I am just skeptical of how much cultural eradication can occur. Both major political parties claim the same regarding their narratives (push/suppress) by the American owned tech companies but they are both still here and both conservatives and liberals, in the American context, are still using Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and Google.
tl;dr - Sure the CCP is probably doing ‘the thing’, but it is not going to lead to the downfall of the mythical ‘West’
I'm fairly certain the CCP is already doing this pushing topics that affect traditional national interests while making it magically seem "viral", and successfully mobilizing their user base to vehemently _defend_ the platform with the addiction of an alcoholic. If I name the issues here, I'll trigger said users, but it's not hard to see it as a non-consumer of the platform.
tl;dr - Sure the CCP is probably doing ‘the thing’, but it is not going to lead to the downfall of the mythical ‘West’