National security group launches 7-figure ad campaign targeting TikTok

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FIRST ON FOX: A fledgling national security watchdog group launched a multimillion-dollar ad campaign Wednesday, seeking to expose the popular social media platform TikTok as a tool of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

State Armor Action – the 501(c)(4) arm of the nonprofit State Armor – is spearheading the campaign, which will mainly feature targeted digital and national TV advertisements. The campaign warns that "TikTok is the CCP" and highlights the role of Zhang Fuping, a CCP official who appears to have assumed a senior role at TikTok parent company ByteDance, a billion-dollar tech firm based in Beijing.

"TikTok is a dangerous, sophisticated communist propaganda and espionage tool. Zhang Fuping’s prominent role as propagandist-in-chief at ByteDance proves this," State Armor founder and CEO Michael Lucci told Fox News Digital. "Through TikTok, Communist Party agents have direct access to over 100 million phones in America, leaving them well positioned to have a serious, malign influence on our everyday discourse and even our 2024 elections."

"TikTok routinely pushes propaganda that is designed to undermine everything Americans hold dear: our family values, our way of life, the mental health of our youth, and even the very basis for our constitutional government," Lucci said. "Worse,