Reuters World News - TikTok test, Trump’s CIA op and Russian refinery attacks

Episode Date: March 14, 2024

A House bill forcing Chinese-owned ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a US ban meets outrage from platform users. A Reuters report reveals that when Donald Trump was president, he green lighted a CIA campaign to turn the Chinese public against Beijing. And Ukraine drone attacks on Russian oil refineries are a serious blow to its energy sector.  Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, a bill to force TikTok's Chinese owners out of the company passes the House, as Reuters reveals that Trump launched a covert CIA influence operation against China when he was president. Ukraine strikes Russia's refineries in the most serious attack in recent months. And chocolate lovers, beware, prices are set to keep climbing. It's Thursday, March 14th. This is Reuters' world news, bringing you everything you need to. to know from the front lines in 10 minutes every weekday.

I'm Kim Vinal in London. And I'm Christopher Waljasper in Chicago. Convierre your passion in a business with Shopify and bathe records of ventas with the form of pay with a better conversion of the world. Has you heard it? The mejor conversion of the world. The incredible system of pay of Shopify facilitates the on your site web,

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On this vote the yeas are 352 the nays are 65 The House

votes overwhelmingly to pass a bill forcing Chinese-owned bite dance to sell

TikTok or face a US ban and now the White House is urging the

Senate to take up the bill so the president can sign it. China's foreign ministry says there's no evidence it's misusing American's data. Lawmakers who support the bill, like Wisconsin Republican Mike Gallagher, say otherwise.

TikTok is a threat to our national security because it is owned by ByteDance, which does the bidding of the Chinese Communist Party. We know this because ByteDance leadership says so and because Chinese law requires it. In an election year, the legislation could be radioactive. The platform is used by about 170 million Americans. And lawmakers have complained their officers have been flooded with calls from people who oppose the legislation.

TikTok content providers protesting on Capitol Hill say their livelihoods are at risk. Duke Alexander Moore founded a tax service for creators that took off on the platform. I went from literally sleeping in my truck to living in a penthouse to now employing people. We have a team of 17 people. If TikTok was stripped away from a small business owner like myself, I'm very afraid to have that difficult conversation that says, hey, man, this isn't going to work out. Hey, man, you know, your kids, I can no longer take care of them. While U.S. lawmakers attempt to ban TikTok for fear of Chinese surveillance in the U.S.,

new Reuters reporting reveals that in 2019, former President Donald Trump authorized a CIA campaign meant to turn the Chinese public against Beijing. Joel Shechtman is in D.C. and has reported on how a small team of CIA operatives used fake internet identities to spread negative narratives about Xi Jinping's government, according to three former officials. Well, the backdrop in context is important here. For years, U.S. intelligence agencies, and even like the Justice Department, have accused China of trying to secretly influence public opinion in the United States,

using front groups, using student organizations, using money in Hollywood. And the idea of the Trump administration, and among some people at the CIA at the time, was that the time had come to strike back, not just in China, but in other countries that China was trying to influence, that America should try to get its message into places that message might not be heard or might not be respected or listened to if it was known that it was coming from the American government. So the idea was try to influence people like inside a China to know about alleged corruption by the Chinese government or to know about how money was being allegedly wasted through the Belped and Road initiative. So the idea here was to try to use

kind of fake accounts and kind of bots and avatars online in China to try to get those messages to a Chinese audience and try to turn back the influence game against this kind of adversary. Now, it strikes me that a covert influence campaign, that's a very delicate operation. How could something like this go wrong? Yeah, I think when the United States tries its hand at trying to plant news articles or these kind of narratives, even if they're true narratives, but when they try to plant them in deceptive ways, I think the real danger is that you run the risk of kind of confirming the accusations of China, which all along has claimed that whenever there's any kind of

criticism of them, that it's really kind of like a ploy by the West to kind of undermine their rising status. And China, have they responded? China has responded by saying that this kind of confirms the allegations that they've been long making, that the United States is really trying to meddle in its domestic affairs while stating that they would never do such a thing here in the United States. Both the CIA and the Trump administration have both declined to comment right now. And I think for both them, it's a very sensitive topic, and they haven't been willing to go on the record and discuss it. Now, the Biden administration is often critical of Trump's tenure, but he's also left many of Trump's policies towards China in place. What do we know about the current status of this operation under President Biden?

So we haven't been able to uncover that yet. It's well possible that at least the authority for the CIA to do these types of operations remains in place. But we just don't know. And the White House has declined to comment on that. You can read the whole report on roiders.com or on our app. An Israeli airstrike on a UN food distribution center in Gaza killed four people, including a UN worker. Israel says a Hamas commander who was the target of the attack was also killed. Speaking in Washington, D.C., Secretary of State to Anthony Blinken said the Israeli government

had an obligation to ensure the safety of humanitarian workers. Humanitarian workers, the agencies, they need to be able to do their jobs with as much security and as much confidence as possible. A UN report has concluded that an Israeli... tank strike killed Reuters reporter Isam Abdullah in Lebanon. The report says the October 13th strike broke international law. Asked about the UN report, an Israeli military spokesperson said the Israeli defense forces were continuing to examine the incident.

Kidnappers have demanded more than $600,000 for the release of schoolchildren in Nigeria. Gunmen kidnapped 286 pupils. and staff in northwestern Kaduna State last week. It's the first mass kidnapping since 2021. A planned partnership between former CNN anchor Don Lemon and social media platform X has been canned. Lemon was due to host a show on X three times a week. The announcement came just hours after Lemon conducted an interview with ex-owner,

Elon Musk, which had yet to be aired. If you are a chocolate lover, then you're probably well-eastern. aware there is a global crisis in the cocoa market. But it looks like things are about to get worse. Carmel Crimmons has more. Yes, three years of poor cocoa harvests have hollowed out supply and a fourth bad year is forecast. Royders is reporting that major cocoa plants in Ivory Coast in Ghana have stopped or cut processing because they can't afford to buy beans. Chocolate makers rely on processors to turn beans into butter and liqueur that can be made into chocolate. And these two countries are the biggest producers of cocoa. So this development means chocolate price.

around the world are likely to keep soaring. Ukraine has struck Russian oil refineries in a wave of drone attacks that Vladimir Putin claims is an attempt to disrupt his country's presidential election. These are some of the most significant attacks since the war began. Mike Collett White is covering the story. Mike, what makes these attacks so significant? What's interesting as well as the scale is that they are clearly targeting oil infrastructure in Russian territory. Oil, as we know, is the lifeblood of the Russian economy, which is effectively

funding the war in Ukraine. So Ukraine sees this as justified, and they struck at least four oil refineries, including some of Russia's biggest, and managed to cause extensive damage at some of them, forcing units or, in fact, the whole refinery in one case to shut down. Is this a new focus of attack by Ukraine? It's trying to get an advantage against a much bigger enemy, and it sees the best way of doing that is striking at the heart of the Russian economy. One extra point on refineries is that while Russia has plenty of oil, it does rely on Western technology to refine that oil. And so if they cause a lot of damage, the Ukrainians will be forcing the Russians to scrabble around to find spare parts, basically. Are these attacks deliberately timed with Russia's elections?

I think one of the big questions here is whether this is, as you suggest, timed to embarrass Putin and to undermine him, or whether it's the beginning of a more sustained and large-scale attack on Russian energy infrastructure. I think if it's the latter, then it's a big worry for Putin because air defences only go so far in bringing down drones when dozens are fired at you every day. That's it for today's episode. We'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show. If you want to stay ahead on all the big news from around the world, listen in for 10 minutes every weekday. And don't forget to subscribe on your favourite podcast player

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