HELENA – Attorney General Austin Knudsen joined Len Khodorkovsky, former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and current senior advisor at the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy, to discuss Montana’s TikTok ban and the threats and dangers within the ByteDance-owned application in an interview released today.

“It’s incredibly concerning when you’ve got a company like Bytedance that answers to the Chinese Communist Party and, by a lot of allegations, is actually fully controlled by the Chinese Communist Party – and that’s the company who’s behind TikTok,” Attorney General Knudsen said in the interview.

The Attorney General also covered the Chinese spy balloon that flew over the State of Montana in February and the implications for Montana.

“We have several military installations here in Montana, and we have one of the nation’s nuclear missile bases here as well. We also have missile silos all over the State…” Attorney General Knudsen said. “I think China was definitely taking electronic intelligence off of a lot of our sensitive sites. It looks like they were maybe even we’re looking at a lot of our electrical infrastructure. So I think that really is what crystallized SB419 for certainly the legislature, and I think a lot of Montanans.”

To watch the full interview, click here.

About the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue

The Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue is a “bipartisan initiative under the Purdue Research Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit affiliated with Purdue University.” Its “experts provide research and training to policymakers, diplomats, and other key stakeholders on 5G/6G, artificial intelligence, energy and climate, hypersonics, rare earth elements, semiconductors, quantum computing, synthetic biology, and other tech sectors that are vital to U.S. foreign policy and national security interests.” To learn more, click here.