Will There Finally Be a TikTok Deal? | Wes Hodges
Heritage Explains
Heritage Podcast Network
4.7 • 847 Ratings
🗓️ 1 October 2025
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Chinese-owned social media app TikTok collects your most sensitive information. And worse, it uses it in pretty sinister ways. It encourages self-harm and depression among youth. It interferes in elections. It compromises national security.
This week, President Trump signed an executive order authorizing an agreement to separate TikTok from Chinese control. At the Heritage Foundation, we have been talking about TikTok policy for years, and one of the key voices is Wesley Hodges, Acting Director of the Center for Technology and the Human Person, here at the Heritage Foundation. He sat down with me to talk about exactly what this executive order means.
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Heritage Tech Policy: https://www.heritage.org/big-tech
Follow Wes Hodges on X: https://x.com/wesghodges
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Have thoughts? Let us know at heritageexplains@heritage.org
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Three, two, one, zero, all engine run. |
| 0:06.7 | There is no other institution that has the ability uniquely. |
| 0:11.3 | Without a heritage, every generation starts over. |
| 0:14.4 | Ask not to remind the current regime. |
| 0:17.5 | We, the people, tell the governor what it is allowed to do. |
| 0:22.2 | All the action to get back in their box and stay there. |
| 0:28.0 | Lift-off. |
| 0:28.9 | We have a left-down. |
| 0:31.8 | From the Heritage Foundation, this is Heritage Explains. |
| 0:47.3 | Thank you. This is Heritage Explains. I want you to imagine a scenario. |
| 0:50.8 | Let's imagine that you're at home, making dinner, and there's a knock at the door. |
| 0:55.0 | You leave your lasagna and answer it. |
| 0:58.0 | There on the doorstep is a man in a black suit. |
| 1:01.0 | He has clean fingernails, polished glasses, combed hair. |
| 1:06.0 | He's holding a black briefcase. He looks very official. May I come in? he asks. Can I ask why? You reply. I promise you, |
| 1:17.3 | said the man. You'll barely know I'm here. I just want to see what you do. You're not sure what to say to |
| 1:24.9 | this stranger. But before you can respond, he continues. |
| 1:28.8 | I'd like to observe the purchases you make, the transactions you undertake, the positions you hold |
| 1:33.8 | in the stock market. I'd like to look at all your pictures and read all your messages. |
| 1:38.2 | I want to know your political beliefs, your marital status, and everywhere you go at every minute |
| 1:43.5 | of every day. |
| 1:45.0 | I'd like to take all of this information and relay it to one of the most repressive and authoritarian governments in the world, |
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