TikTok Hires US Official Who Worked For Joe Biden, Pentagon: Report

A former campaign spokesman and one of the three press secretaries for US President Joe Biden has been hired by Chinese-owned TikTok, according to a report in Fox Business. Jamal Brown, who worked as deputy Pentagon press secretary at US Department of Defense from February 2021 to February 2022, has taken the job at video sharing platform as communications director. According to a Politico, Mr Brown will "manage policy communications" at TikTok. His hiring by the Chinese firm has shocked experts as TikTok has been touted as a national security threat.

The platform is banned in India and several other countries.

TikTok has not released any statement announcing the hiring of Mr Brown, but his LinkedIn profile has already been updated to say that he started working for the company in October.

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His work experience includes working for the White house for more than six years under the Obama administration. He was part of the US Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Fox Business report said.

Missouri Senator Josh Hawley has condemned the hiring, calling the "cozy relationship between the Biden administration and TikTok as alarming", according to a New York Post report.

TikTok's parent company ByteDance is bound by a Chinese Communist Party law that requires it to share user data when requested.

The Chinese-owned company has spent millions of dollars on lobbying, according to Fox Business, adding that the target has been the White House.

The officials of the Biden administration have said that a national security review of the platform is underway. The Trump administration had said that TikTok could be exploited by the Chinese government to obtain data of US users illegally.

Over 86 million Americans have a TikTok account, which is more than 25 per cent of the US population, said the Post.