An Obama administration National Security Council official – Jeffrey Collins – is now the Chinese Communist Party-linked TikTok app’s Senior Director of Trust and Safety.
Collins, who identifies himself as having served as Director of the Office of Europe and Eurasia at the National Security Council from 2010 to 2011, has worked at TikTok since November of 2019. While at the White House, he served as a “Presidential advisor and leader of significant initiatives with European countries” along with “regularly advising and briefing U.S. President and National Security Advisor on breaking regional developments.”
The taxpayer-funded position at the National Security Council, therefore, gave Collins high-level access to homeland security secrets and, perhaps, a Security Clearance.
This access, however, Collins exploited to land a gig with TikTok, a subsidiary of Beijing-based Bytedance which has seen its CEO pledge to use his apps to “promote socialist values” and entrench subservience to the Chinese Communist Party.
At TikTok, he describes himself as “building, managing, and leading the growth of a Trust & Safety team” and “covering Product Policy, Product Design, and Moderation Processes, as well as regional teams covering the Americas and ANZ.”
Prior to joining the Obama administration, he served in the Foreign Diplomatic Service from 2002 to 2012 in countries such as Cuba, Venezuela, and Iraq.
And in 2013, Collins uncritically shared a New York Times article with the caption: “Chinese Communist Party issues secret memo warning of subversive Western ideas.”
Chinese communist party issues secret memo warning of subversive Western ideas. #China http://t.co/QH61XLyOEh
— Jeff Collins (@JeffreySCollins) August 20, 2013
A major component of Collins’s job appears to be encouraging parents and young children the app is safe to
He bolstered claims about the security of TikTok in an Axios article entitled “TikTok beefs up parental controls over teens’ accounts,” consoling parents that the company strives to “promote a safer and more trustworthy experience for our users of all ages, but our progress in this area is also never finished.”
