Forbes’ Emily Baker-White on the Superpower Struggle to Control TikTok

With TikTok's 1.6 billion active users worldwide and unprecedented power it wields over culture, politics, and commerce, the social video app's addictive algorithm is one of the greatest prized in America’s technological cold war with China.

How did this social media platform become so wildly popular and a source of contention in international politics?

In her book Every Screen on the Planet, Harvard-trained lawyer and investigative journalist Emily Baker-White charts TikTok’s rise from the Chinese founders’ ambitions to its emergence as the world’s most valuable startup―and a potential surveillance and propaganda tool for strongmen―to the dramatic events surrounding its ban and tenuous resurrection in January 2025.

Come hear about the reporting that caused TikTok to track the author and led to an ongoing criminal investigation. Baker-White’s engrossing narrative takes us inside the struggle as hawks in Congress push the company to the brink while the U.S. government seeks backdoor access to observe and influence TikTok’s data stream. Touching on politics, finance, business, and technology, she explains that the war for TikTok will either create a blueprint for autocrats to warp our information landscape or close the open internet as we know it.

SPEAKERS

Emily Baker-White, Reporter, Forbes; Former Criminal Defender; previously led the Plain View Project investigation into police misconduct on Facebook

Moderator TBA

5 p.m. doors open & check-in5:30–6:30 p.m. program6:30 p.m. book signing(all times Pacific Time)

Host or Publisher Inforum at the Commonwealth Club